The default flavor is based on Trinity DE

Dec 27, 2014 09:03 GMT  ·  By

Q4OS, a Linux distribution built to offer a similar experience to Windows XP, is now featuring a couple of extra desktop environments that should provide some more options for users who want a different look.

Q4OS is probably the only Linux distro out there that intentionally looks like a Windows variant. Other operating systems can achieve this task by adopting themes and icons, but it won't be a complete experience. On the other hand, Q4OS is more than capable of doing this almost natively and it all has to do with the default desktop environment being used, which is Trinity.

Trinity DE was actually forked from KDE 3.5 and that happened a long time ago. The two desktops evolved in different ways and it looks like Trinity is actually moving a little bit away form its Windows path. Each new version released looks less like Windows and more like something else, and that might be a good thing.

Q4OS may look like Windows, but it's much safer

Despite the looks of the system, which might be considered distasteful by many Linux users, when you draw the line you actually have a Linux OS underneath. This means security and stability, two concepts that are not usually associated with Windows.

The Christmas release improves XDG standards compliance, brings more accurate GTK3 theme and fixes screen resolution detection weighty bug. Several internal improvements and bugfixes have been closed as usual.

"Installation of LXDE and XFCE desktop environments alongside default Q4OS is now enabled, sudo users are free to install using terminal commands 'sudo apt-get install lxde' or 'sudo apt-get install xfce4' respectively," said the team in the announcement.

You can check the screenshots in the gallery below and see how the distro looks like. There is no Live CD available, so users will have to install it in order to test it, which might not be handy for everyone. In any case, the system should work just fine in VirtualBox, especially after you install the packages required by the system.

You can also install the system on a regular production machine. Despite its unusual version number, the distro is quite stable and has been this way for some time now. Keep in mind that, if you don't like Trinity DE, you can always switch to LXDE or Xfce.

You can download Q4OS 0.5.23 right now from Softpedia and you can find more details about this new version of the operating system in the official announcement.

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