The release of Q4OS 6.1 has been published, based on the Debian package base and featuring KDE Plasma and Trinity desktops (continuing the development of the KDE 3.5.x codebase). Both user environments can coexist in a single system, allowing users to switch between them. The distribution is positioned as being lightweight on system resources while offering a classic desktop appearance. The size of the boot image with KDE Plasma is 2 GB, and with Trinity it is 1.7 GB (x86_64). There are plans to create builds for the ARM64 architecture.
The release includes several in-house developed applications, including ‘Desktop Profiler’ for quick installation of themed software suites and saving profiles with snapshots of the desktop state, ‘Setup utility’ for installing third-party applications, ‘Software center’ for additional program installations, ‘Welcome Screen’ for simplifying initial setup, Lookswitcher for quickly changing appearances, scripts for installing alternative environments like LXQt, Xfce, and LXDE. An application is provided for installing the distribution in a separate Windows directory, allowing the use of the distribution alongside Windows without allocating a separate disk partition for it.
In the new release:
- The transition to Debian 13.1 package base has been made (the previous release used Debian 12).
- Instead of KDE Plasma 5, the KDE Plasma 6.3.6 release has been adopted. The default KDE appearance is preserved, while those wishing to use a Q4OS-style appearance can activate a separate ‘Debonaire’ theme in the configurator.
- The Trinity desktop has been updated to version 14.1.5.
- Preparations for new releases for i386 systems have been discontinued (the 5.x branch available for i386 will be supported until June 2028).
Separately, enthusiasts are developing Q4OS builds with interfaces styled after Windows XP and Windows 10.
Source: opennet.ru
