What happens when you take Ubuntu 17.10, a new desktop interface (one that overlays on top of KDE), snap packages, and roll them all up into a pseudo rolling release? You get Nitrux. At first blush, this particular Linux distribution seems more of an experiment than anything else — to show how much the KDE desktop can be tweaked to resemble the likes of the Elementary OS or MacOS desktops. At its heart, however, it’s much more than that.
First and foremost, Nitrux makes use of snap packages; so installing software is handled a bit differently than the norm. Even though Nitrux is based on Ubuntu, apt install isn’t what you want to use (although it is available).
I’m getting ahead of myself. This distro focuses very much on the GUI — so the GUI should be the route you take. Good thing Nitrux includes a GUI software installer tool for that purpose. That Nitrux uses snaps is good and bad, and it’s the bad that will put users off faster than the good.
Again, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s first talk about what Nitrux is. This particular take on the Linux desktop is focused on the portable, universal nature of snap packages and makes use of a unique desktop, called Nomad, which sits atop KDE Plasma 5. It’s minimum requirements are:
- 2.66 GHz quad-core CPU or better.
- 4 GB system memory.
- 256 MB video memory and OpenGL 2.0 support.
- 4.29 GB of free hard drive space.
On that 4.29GB of free hard drive space, I installed Nitrux as a VirtualBox VM with 10GB of space. Upon installation, I installed the LibreOffice snap package, only to find out I was then out of space. I don’t know about you, but no LibreOffice installation I’ve ever done takes 5GB of space. I say this, only so you’ll be aware, should you opt to text Nitrux via VirtualBox—give that virtual disk about 20GB of space.