Nitrux now uses KDE software from Debian and will switch from KDE Plasma to Maui Shell
Nitrux, an independent Linux distribution based on Debian and KDE Plasma, has announced the release of version 3.4, code-named “pl”. This update includes the latest software updates, bug fixes, performance improvements, and ready-to-use hardware support. The codename “pl” signifies the continued use of Plasma 5 (5.27.x is an LTS release) until its replacement with Maui Shell in late 2024, ending a decade of KDE Plasma usage.
Nitrux 3.4, based on Linux Kernel 6.7.11-1, brings software updates including Firefox version 124.0.1, MauiKit, MauiKit Frameworks, and Maui Apps version 3.3.0, Nitrux Update Tool System version 2.1.3, Distrobox version 1.7.0.1, Touchegg version 2.0.17, AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan version v-2024.Q1.3, and others.
With this release, Nitrux will no longer use packages from KDE Neon developers, instead sourcing all Plasma, KDE Frameworks, and Qt packages directly from Debian. New components added to the distribution include saferm, a wrapper to intercept the rm command execution, Ethtool for querying and changing settings, utilities for accessing the powercap Linux kernel feature via sysfs, and GeoClue, a D-Bus geoinformation service.
The Nitrux team has updated the linux-firmware package to include newer files from the Linux firmware repository for drivers, such as amdgpu, cirrus, i915, intel_ipu6, iwlwifi, mediatek, and rtl_bt. Nitrux 3.4 also sees the removal of some components, along with several other minor changes and bug fixes.