2025 was a special but relatively uneventful year — 2025.03 was released after the decision was made to release it without the new Store and instead release the upcoming new Store from scratch in a future separate update, and later on in 2025 celebrations began for a major milestone in Feren OS’s history — in 2025, Feren OS finally reached 10 years old!

However, 2025 has also been defined by draining motivation due to both internal and external factors, and a resulting art and coding block being experienced throughout the year, and even briefly in 2026 too. Normally I don’t talk about this, because there’s no need to add such a negative note, but it’s becoming hard to ignore as it also affects Feren OS’s development, isn’t it?

Fortunately, towards the end of 2025 I have begun to realise what the problems that have been consistently causing drained motivation as of late really are, and that my prior strategy of trying to address them has been nothing short of fruitless and that I should instead just walk away from them, so for 2026 I plan on finally doing that so that I can finally (hopefully) develop Feren OS without those problems happening so frequently anymore, hopefully finally ensuring a return to (mostly) form for Feren OS development that is, once again, ready for what lies ahead — my apologies for not realising that fruitlessness sooner, everyone. Hopefully, this year can be the return to form that has been awaiting Feren OS in the years since 2025.03 began development.

Regardless of that:

The new plan

A new plan for Feren OS is now in place, dependant on continuing external and internal factors, including new loose release projections and a revised plan for 10th Anniversary Release which you can read below:

10th Anniversary Release (Early 2026)

The upcoming release, rebased on Ubuntu 24.04 and shipping KDE Plasma 6 for the first ever time, featuring a new design for Feren OS in celebration of its 10 year milestone, and much more, has been pushed back to sometime in early 2026.

This release has taken a while as everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, whether it be internal or external factors — regardless, the plans for this release’s schedule are subject to somewhat change (between prioritising the redesign first or prioritising the system base first), which you will see the result of soon when the Alpha releases. As some examples, the Installer is currently recommending Feren OS be installed to an empty disk, some functionality like Bluetooth connecting is broken, and several more experience-ruining issues pending fixes — it’s an unprecedented mess that’s been taking a long while to fix while also dealing with external factors between.

In the meantime, Inspire 4.0 has been getting redone from scratch, with some early progress, for Plasma 6 (it originally started development on Plasma 5) — here’s some early previews of it so far:

The Major Update for this release is planned to release sometime after the initial release as several checks need to be added to the Major Updater, in lieu of Plasma 6 and its changes, meaning panels and other configurations will need specialised migration changes and all the packages sourced from KDE Neon will need to be modified to reinstate smooth transition paths for all 2025.03 users.

2025.03 Store Update, Unnamed post-”10th Anniversary Release” release (2026)

After 10th Anniversary Release is done, the next release in line will be a pair of releases — one for 2025.03 and another for 10th Anniversary Release — that add the upcoming Store that’s being completely remade from scratch with Feren OS, modularity and increased speed and reliability in mind, as well as providing a unified experience that introduces options currently missing such as an easy way to manage automatic updates and so on.

This release is the remaining piece of 2025.03 that was delayed so that 2025.03 could be released, and is now planned to similarly be the remaining piece of 10th Anniversary Release so the release isn’t held back like 2025.03 infamously was.

Both releases will get unique version numbers, newer than 10th Anniversary Release, however the update to 10th Anniversary Release will be newer than the 2025.03 update to prevent confusion when downloading.

10th Anniversary Artwork/etc. (2026)

Upon the Store Update being released, the 10th Anniversary artwork and more will be released as a new special page of the new Store dedicated to finally celebrating the 10th Anniversary milestone that was reached in 2025.

As for the 11th Anniversary in 2026, I’m not sure yet about what will be done for the occasion — possibly a remake? Who knows.

Unnamed 26.04-powered Release (late 2026?)

Finally, there’s a release planned to rebase Feren OS to Ubuntu 26.04, although this is still a draft plan as circumstances might change beyond my control affecting what actually becomes of this release. What is for sure for this release is that:

It will be a minor release

Nothing special is planned for this release, besides coming with the Store Update pre-equipped upon its release — for those familiar with past teasers after the Store Update, the Transfer Tool rewrite is planned to occur in the release following this release.

It will be exclusively Wayland

However, this release will be making the switch to exclusively using Wayland instead of the legacy software that has powered previous releases (Xorg).

This switch will grant a smoother screen, greatly improved display scaling, support for modern hardware abilities, and much more on top of enabling the installation and usage of Wayland-exclusive applications such as Waydroid.

To aid in the transition to Wayland, the following is planned to be added in this release:

• Stubs for automation utilities such as xdotool, redirecting to their compatible equivalents
• If possible, transferring various settings such as display scaling automatically that normally would not automatically transfer

If all goes to plan, this release should involve a relatively seamless transition for existing users when updating to this release, although, to compensate for a very limited set of hardware whose graphics drivers won’t be compatible after the switch, there will be checks added in the Major Updater for this release (and those drivers, if still available, will be blocked from installation to prevent accidentally breaking Feren OS after the switch).

Given this, this release is currently expected in late 2026 if not early 2027 as, besides coming with the Store Update, this release’s switch to Wayland will require a lot of preparation, testing and backend changes to be made, alongside adding the aforementioned hardware checks for existing users.

2025: Still relatively uneventful was originally published in Feren OS on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

That being said, these releases are both delayed if that’s all you wanted to know.

While not mentioned, the 10th Anniversary themes will all be made and released, one by one, sometime after 10th Anniversary Release during 2026 (hopefully before the 11th anniversary happens, but who knows these days 🤷‍♂️).

The Store Update

The Store Update has been temporarily paused again to facilitate a focus on 10th Anniversary Release development. However, during 10AR’s development the Store has gotten a slightly newer design mockup, which looks like this:

In order of top to bottom:

• Brief excerpt of the Store’s home page
• Themes section of Home page
• Updates and Installed, featuring 2 system updates, a change of recommended driver (the user would’ve chosen the recommended driver in the driver manager), and a glimpse of planned Firmware Update support

The Firmware Updates are planned to be independent and, for now at least, completely excluded from automatic updates (this may change long-term for whitelisted firmware updates).

As a whole, the plans for Store haven’t changed — the UI is simply going to now have 3 toolbars in reality with the 3rd only displaying when on the Home page.

Although, this mockup leads directly into:

10th Anniversary Release

10th Anniversary Release is currently in a mockup spree, prior to the phase where I begin coding everything for Qt 6 and Plasma 6.x.

So far, there’s a rough sketch for the lockscreen design that is missing shadows, blur, image decoration, etc., plans for the Desktop and Theme, and the aforementioned Store mockups. This combines with the designs from 2023 to form the mockups below, and more ideas for future releases:

Maintenance

Inspired by Mint System Information, filling in blanks on the newly revamped User Guide, and my own desires on low free space scenarios as well as intertwining with the upcoming Store, a new application, replacing System Maintenance, called “Maintenance” is planned.

Maintenance will provide driver management, slight GRUB customisation, the ability to clean up your disk in various ways and schedule cleanup operations, and potentially provide login screen customisation. A link to Timeshift is still being considered, however if I can think of a better feature to fill the 5th section with then it will instead.

Crash reports will be omitted due to DrKonqi existing and a planned Send Feedback rewrite providing bug reporting links for each application that has one, Tasks will be omitted due to the Store handling the majority of those tasks automatically (and Timeshift being considered for inclusion in a new Tour), and System Information will be omitted due to Info Centre providing that information already.

The Donation notification

Now to talk about the elephant in the room… or is it really an elephant in the room, don’t people either feel indifferent or support this? Anyways, this donation notification:

My plan, when the new Store is ready, is to scrap this notification because I will be substituting the notification with a planned feature of the aforementioned planned Send Feedback rewrite in the Store update: A Donation page for the software that makes Feren OS AND all the applications you’ve installed from Store that indicate a donation link in their metadata.

That’s right, every December (after a Feren OS usage duration threshold is reached) the plan is to instead send a notification encouraging users to donate to every project they have installed that they can rather than only KDE.

I didn’t end up making a mockup for the notification, but safe to say it will be a Store notification that is exactly like the above one except that it says:

Support developers this Christmas

The applications and software you use need money to keep going. This Christmas, consider donating to ensure continued software development.

(phrasing not final)

Given it won’t be disabled in the conventional way, there will be an option to disable the notification in the donation dialog’s footer and Store Settings.

2015.0 Beta Inspire 1.0 port

Something I was planning originally on keeping a surprise for 10th Anniversary Release is that it will feature a new pre-installed Global Theme for the occasion: Feren OS 2015.x Beta’s Inspire 1.0, ported to Aurorae (QML) and Plasma 6.

The titlebar style is in the works, but is not ready yet and relies on future experimentation (if shadows are possible) to succeed — if not, then the theme will simply use standard Aurorae instead for Window Decorations, until Union is ready to facilitate them, which would be unfortunate.

Currently I’m hoping for 10th Anniversary Release ETA in Spring 2026, so consider it delayed — 10th Anniversary Release has been a weirdly volatile base to develop on so far, so my motivation was drained since by it leading to development block, however if the rebase after 10th Anniversary Release ends up being Ubuntu 26.04 then you should at least expect the next rebase to release within months after 26.04 is released, provided the Store is ready by then. As a whole, I’ve been dealing with sizable designer block, and code block, since the release of 2025.03, hence why there has not been nearly as optimal progress.

As for 10th Anniversary Release, this release is my magnum opus release and also a tribute release in multiple ways, so expect me to take my sweet time cooking this release — atop the delay due to 2025.03’s development hell, there’s an icon set, new widgets, new theme coding, Plymouth BGRT forking, new login screen and lock screen QML, and misc. preparation to be done, I want to ensure this release, and its redesign, is as polished as can be.

As for how Store will play into all of this: If need be, then there’ll be a Store Update for 10th Anniversary Release too. Guess we shall see, going into 2026.

An update on the upcoming Feren OS releases was originally published in Feren OS on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The following changes have been made in this ISO:

Secure Boot

Secure Boot now uses a new signature from Ubuntu 24.04, meaning usage of the Feren OS ISO should no longer result in ‘Security Violation’ errors and should instead now just work immediately as expected once flashed to a USB. Despite the signature being from Ubuntu 24.04, Feren OS 2025.03 is still based on Ubuntu 22.04.

Startup Applications and Tour

Startup Applications functionality has been reverted to the legacy functionality, from 2023.04, in this update to fix issues with various applications not having functional automatic startup in the original 2025.03 release.

This also fixes Tour not starting on the first login, meaning you will now see Tour when booting Feren OS for the first time again, just like it used to in Feren OS 2023.04.

TLP

TLP has been replaced with Power Profiles in this update, meaning you can now change power profiles from the Battery popup found in the System Tray.

Region & Language

The Region & Language page of System Settings has been hidden as it duplicates existing functionality that exists in the Languages application, has less functionality than it, and therefore serves to only be a source of potential confusion.

Software Sources

The Software Sources application has received minor updates to fix the Repair button in the application, if essential software sources are missing, not repairing essential sources successfully. From now on, it should regenerate the missing software sources as expected.

Misc. changes

• Feren OS’s ISO is now based on Ubuntu 24.04, although as already stated the actual OS you boot into and install is still currently based on Ubuntu 22.04 — this was ultimately required to fix Secure Boot
• In the process, the language select you see when booting into Feren OS’s ISO is now the exact same regardless of hardware — both supported ways to boot Feren OS’s ISO now use GRUB as the bootloader (this was a change planned during the original 2025.03 release’s development but was originally scrapped due to issues producing the ISO with this change)
• ntfs3 is now a blacklisted module, meaning NTFS partitions will now be mounted via the old and venerable ntfs-3g project again, guaranteeing system stability and data integrity.

A note about older hardware

Due to the changes made to Feren OS’s ISO in this release, this update may break the ability to install Feren OS on hardware made in the 2000s or earlier — because of this, the original release of Feren OS 2025.03 has been made available as a separate download on Feren OS‘s Sourceforge page (the website you download Feren OS from normally).

The 2025.03 Bugfix update is now available was originally published in Feren OS on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hello everyone and welcome to a historic moment in Feren OS history! As of July 29th 2025, it has officially been 10 Years since Feren OS’s first ever public release on July 29th 2015.

That’s right everyone, Feren OS is now a decade old!

Feren OS has seen countless Linux Distributions come and go, inspired competition, took charge of several innovations that are now commonly expected features in Linux Distributions, and been a go-to for existing and new users alike throughout the last 10 years, and I’m proud of that.

It goes without saying that this is a major milestone in Feren OS’s history, and is therefore worth celebrating, and celebrating I absolutely plan to do — here is a snippet of what is to come:

Here’s what to look out for in the future

2025.03 Bugfix update — 2025

A bugfix update is in the works for Feren OS 2025.03, which will grant new Feren OS users with:

• Fixes for Startup Applications
• Fixes for Tour not appearing automatically on first login
• An updated Security Boot signature
• Pre-installed system updates
• More minor fixes

The update is not yet available as I am currently still figuring out compiling a new release with a newer Secure Boot signature, but once that is figured out in a reliably functioning way the update will be released in place of the current downloads for 2025.03.

The Store update — 2025

Feren OS 2025.03 Store Update will be a new release of Feren OS, predating 10th Anniversary Release, that will bring with it the missing, delayed, pieces of 2025.03: A new Store made entirely from scratch, a remade and heavily improved Tour, and more.

Unlike what the current name implies, this will not be 2025.03 but instead a new 2025.XX release when completed.

Feren OS 10th Anniversary Release — 2025

Speaking of, here’s the big guns of the 10th Anniversary of Feren OS: Currently codenamed the “10th Anniversary Release”, this release of Feren OS will bring with it:

• A completely new redesign of Inspire: Inspire 4.0
• A new rebase on Ubuntu 24.04
• KDE Plasma 6
• New widgets
• A new icon set made from scratch (also Inspire 4.0)
• New default applications
• A new login screen
• New themes
• More

I can’t wait to share more with you all as development progresses!

I wanted to release an Alpha for this release, but unfortunately Ubuntu 24.04 is being unexpectedly non-compliant to develop on, so I’m still figuring out making Ubuntu 24.04 actually behave for now. Sorry :v

10th Anniversary Themes, Wallpapers, and More

Finally, it wouldn’t be a worthy celebration without plenty of memorabilia.

Therefore, to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Feren OS, I will be, after the finalisation and release of the upcoming 10th Anniversary Release, releasing:

• New wallpapers
• New icon sets
• New Global Themes
• A new 10th Anniversary bootscreen theme
• Ports of old wallpapers
• Ports of previous themes and icon sets
• Ports of old bootscreen designs, including the moodlamp bootscreen from the Ubuntu 16.04-based Feren OS era

To the new Store in the 10th Anniversary Release, ready to be downloaded and installed at any time.

Watch the upcoming new Store, when it releases, for 10th Anniversary Celebration content to appear on the featured section of Store’s homepage when they release for the 10th Anniversary Release.

Let’s make it 20 years.

There’s still much more left for Feren OS yet, and a bright future with a big change ahead — let’s reach for 20 years next, shall we, everyone? 🎉

New social media

Feren OS also now has new social media! From now on, you can now also catch Feren OS news, such as anniversary releases and Store drops, on Bluesky as well as the previous social media platforms it was previously on.

To keep track of where you can find Feren OS on Social Media, check here: https://ferenos.weebly.com/feren-os-on-social-media.html

Celebrating 10 years of Feren OS — what to look out for in the future was originally published in Feren OS on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s with a very heavy heart that I must announce that today marks the end of the Ubuntu 20.04-based Feren OS era. This means the following versions of Feren OS have reached End of Life:

• Feren OS November 2020 Snapshot
• Feren OS January 2021 Snapshot
• Feren OS April 2021 Snapshot
• Feren OS July 2021 Snapshot
• Feren OS 2021.10
• Feren OS 2022.03
• Feren OS 2022.04
• Feren OS 2022.07
• Feren OS 2022.10
• Feren OS 2023.01
• Feren OS 2023.04

What does this mean for users running these Feren OS releases still?

This is bad news for those still running the above versions of Feren OS. Unless you update to the 22.04-based Feren OS at the very least (supported until 2027):

• You will stop receiving software updates
• You will stop receiving security fixes
• Software will gradually stop supporting your Feren OS version
• Packages in Store’s “Customisation” page may start to fail to install
• You will stop receiving improvements to Feren OS

Updating your system to a supported version of Feren OS

Updating your system to a supported version of Feren OS is as simple as going into Update Manager, installing all the updates available on your system, and then pressing OK on the red banner about the end of Feren OS 2023.04 updates, followed by going through the Feren OS Major Updater’s pages until you reach the option to start the update to a newer, supported, Feren OS version.

Looking back

It would be an understatement to say this era of Feren OS was an extremely important era for Feren OS, with many important changes occurring throughout its prevalence, from start to its eventual finish. Given how significant this era of Feren OS truly was, let’s look back at the highlights of this era one last time:

The entire removal of the Linux Mint repository

Feren OS November 2020 Snapshot started off the era with a significant change to Feren OS: The release commenced the first ever time the Linux Mint repositories were no longer in use whatsoever, putting to an end with it the infrequent confusion at the time about if Feren OS was still based on Linux Mint or not (it wasn’t as of December 2019 Snapshot).

This era was the first ever era to not use Linux Mint’s repositories in any way, shape or form, instead electing to mirror some of Linux Mint’s packages into the Feren OS “software” repository that has come as standard since at least November 2019 if not significantly earlier.

Inspire 3.x, ft. Inter

But that wasn’t all: In light of growing concerns about the usage of custom stylesheets in GTK 3 applications, Feren OS took charge as one of the first distributions to completely remake their theme using Adwaita as a base.

However, this presented an opportunity to completely redesign Feren OS’s theme, and therefore led to the creation of Inspire 3.0, with Inspire 3 staying around to this very day, now at Inspire 3.2, as the default, light and dark themes that you first experience Feren OS through.

Furthermore, inspired by elementary OS’s switch to Inter, Feren OS November 2020 Snapshot introduced Inter as a new default font to coincide with the new refreshed Feren OS look and feel, and is another change that is still seen to this very day in Feren OS.

As a whole, Inspire 3.x was a redesign based on addressing every single criticism of the previous Feren OS design, and with it brought a fresh, clean new look that I am still proud of to this day and that has received continued positive reception to this day, darkening light mode, refining dark mode, introducing full KDE Plasma colour scheme compatibility and being one of the first, and only, GTK 3 stylesheets to ever support KDE Plasma colour schemes.

Introducing the Feren OS Tour

November 2020 Snapshot also saw the debut of the Feren OS Tour, a mainstay to this day that launches on your first login into Feren OS and guides you through your first steps towards setting up Feren OS to your liking.

The Tour has been fairly robust throughout the nearly 5 years it has been around for, and with plans for a complete overhaul to finally fully replace the old Welcome Screen once the 2025.03 Store update is complete and releases, the future of the Feren OS Tour has never been brighter.

ZSTD Compression, greatly speeding up the live session

Another important change introduced by the November 2020 Snapshot was the switch to ZSTD Compression for the Live Session that powers the pre-installation Feren OS environment that you run via a USB or DVD drive. The switch to ZSTD, while increasing the size of Feren OS ISOs, has provided a major boost in the speed and responsiveness of the live session, and as such has become a change retained to this day.

Hardware Enablement becomes the default

But not everything happened in the November 2020 Snapshot. In the January 2021 Snapshot instead, hardware enablement became the default choice for the kernels that power Feren OS to this day, marking a move towards better hardware compatibility, especially with newer hardware, in the long-term. This is, obviously, therefore an important change that persists to this day.

New version naming — “Snapshot” no more

And then, Feren OS 2021.10 happened. As of this release, it and all releases since have had a new naming scheme for their releases, being inspired by Feren OS’s naming scheme prior to August 2017 Snapshot, and various other naming schemes.

As a result, Feren OS now goes by a YYYY.MM naming scheme and has done so ever since.

New splash and lock screens

In other changes introduced in Feren OS 2021.10, a new splash and lock screen design was introduced, being designs you may be all too familiar with yourself:

As you can very likely tell, this same splash screen and lock screen design has been retained throughout these past 4 years of Feren OS’s lifetime, and I do not plan on stopping that anytime soon.

A new Mozilla Firefox configuration

Feren OS 2021.10 also introduced a new optional pre-configuration for Mozilla Firefox, accessed by performing a clean installation of Firefox from the Web Browser Manager. Among various other tweaks, this pre-configuration included:

• Compact Mode and no titlebar by default
• None of that Stories stuff in New Tab (and other New Tab distractions)
• No Pocket by default
• Library being in the toolbar (as was intended by Mozilla themselves during early Proton design ideas) instead of Pocket’s button
• Most, if not all, the Telemetry values being off, including the ones you can’t change via Settings
• Home button in the toolbar by default
• Skipped Welcome Screens to allow you to get right into the action
• Later on, the GTKless mod

Unfortunately, this pre-configuration has since been retired, but for the time it was present it did a lot to improve the experience for those wanting to use Mozilla Firefox as their web browser.

Introducing the Applications Menu

Going backwards in time, the Feren OS April 2021 Snapshot debuted Feren OS’s signature default Applications Menu, with the Applications Screen debuting shortly after its release, finally replacing Simple Menu which provided an applications menu for all builds of Feren OS with KDE Plasma up to that point.

Here’s how it originally looked:

Themes for Snap Store applications

Furthermore, in April 2021 Snapshot, the Feren OS GTK 3 stylesheet was made available for applications from the Snap Store for the first ever time.

This is a change welcomed by those who used applications from the Snap Store, and while the purpose of the availability of the GTK 3 stylesheet is becoming less and less important as time passes on lately, the stylesheets remain available for those who need them for Snap Store obtained applications.

An all-new Feren OS Start Page

Also in April 2021 Snapshot was the introduction of a newly redesigned Feren OS Start Page for Vivaldi users — this redesign completely overhauled how the Start Page looks, feels and even behaves, alongside adding customisable and scrollable bottom shortcuts for quick access to websites you may need to frequently go to.

The Start Page is no longer in use nowadays, because quota, although I do want to convert it into a New Tab Extension in the future to bring it back someday in a more user-friendly manner than ever before.

Pre-installed/configured Chinese Japanese Korean Input Method when their respective keyboard layouts are in use in future installs

Starting in July 2021 Snapshot, meanwhile, support for automatically installing and configuring Chinese, Japanese and Korean input methods was added. To this day, if you select Chinese, Japanese or Korean keyboard layouts in the Feren OS Installer, the respective input methods will attempt to be automatically installed and, if successful, will be automatically configured to be active on your first login to Feren OS.

This change makes it significantly easier to use these keyboard layouts immediately in Feren OS, and has only been expanded further in Feren OS 2025.03 to support even more keyboard layouts and their input methods.

Introducing themes for the respective Desktop Layouts

July 2021 Snaphot also overhauled the existing “Layout” Global Themes that debuted in November 2019 Snapshot, turning them into their own entirely distinct custom Global Themes, notably:

• Traditional -> Doors
• Redmond -> Classical
• Cupertino -> Mac ’n’ Cheese
• Ubuntu Unity -> Human

To this day, they remain their own distinct Global Themes for Feren OS, with plans to make them more distinct than they ever have been in the upcoming 10th Anniversary Release.

Koko and KDE Partition Manager make their pre-installed debuts

Finally, July 2021 Snapshot added Koko and KDE Partition Manager to the set of pre-installed applications in Feren OS, replacing elementary OS Photos and GParted respectively.

If you update to 2025.03 from a release with the prior two applications, yo will keep both applications, although Photos will be replaced with its official release from elementary OS AppCenter so that it can continue to receive updates to this day.

The end of Theme Colouriser

Then, Feren OS 2022.04 released, bringing with it KDE Plasma 5.24 which introduced accent colours and, as a result, completely substituted Theme Colouriser.

Theme Colouriser was a tool introduced in Feren OS 2017.0 that allowed users to recolour select themes with their choice of an accent colour. For the time it was around, it was a flawless substitute to native accent colour support, however with Inspire 3’s changes beforehand, when KDE Plasma gained accent colour support itself all the pieces were finally in place to provide the functionality that Theme Colouriser provided prior, now without the need for Theme Colouriser, and thus Theme Colouriser was put to rest, remaining in Feren OS Classic exclusively until Classic reached end-of-life in April 2023.

Existing users had their colours exported to a text file in their home folder, and that was that for Theme Colouriser.

A tribute to Feren OS’s history as the curtains closed on Feren OS Classic

Then, concluding this era of Feren OS was Feren OS 2023.04, a snapshot made in tribute of the aforementioned Feren OS Classic as it released during the final weeks before the end-of-life of Feren OS Classic, and thus the end of an era of Feren OS.

Feren OS 2023.04 celebrated the original era of Feren OS, Feren OS Classic, with various wallpapers including never before released wallpapers, alongside some final additions to Feren OS Classic itself, however for 2023.04 itself, that was where its era, too, concluded. After 2023.04, 2025.03 released, after years of delays, with a new Ubuntu 22.04 base, and months later, we’re now here.

An era that was nearly something more, but a definitive era nonetheless

No matter what happens from here and onwards, this will be an era to look back upon and… smile. Sure, it didn’t realise its full intention, but this era has heavily shaped Feren OS, as it is now, regardless and will continue to do so for more decades to come.

As we look ahead to the 10th Anniversary of Feren OS, and finer pastures beyond the upcoming anniversary, there is one thing left to say: Rest in Peace, you legendary set of releases — your job here is finally done. 🫡

Feren OS November 2020 Snapshot — 2023.04 have reached End of Life was originally published in Feren OS on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is the last forewarning post on the Feren OS news area to inform users that the following releases of Feren OS will be reaching end-of-life in 26 days from the time of writing this post:

• Feren OS November 2020 Snapshot
• Feren OS January 2021 Snapshot
• Feren OS April 2021 Snapshot
• Feren OS July 2021 Snapshot
• Feren OS 2021.10
• Feren OS 2022.03
• Feren OS 2022.04
• Feren OS 2022.07
• Feren OS 2022.10
• Feren OS 2023.01
• Feren OS 2023.04

May 31th 2025 will mark the end of an important era of Feren OS, whom many important events ultimately occurred which culminated in the current, purely Ubuntu-based, era of Feren OS.

What does this mean for users running these Feren OS releases still?

This is bad news for those still running the above versions of Feren OS. Unless you update to the 22.04-based Feren OS at the very least (supported until 2027):

• You will stop receiving software updates
• You will stop receiving security fixes
• Software will gradually stop supporting your Feren OS version
• Packages in Store’s “Customisation” page may start to fail to install
• You will stop receiving improvements to Feren OS

Updating your system to a supported version of Feren OS

Updating your system to a supported version of Feren OS is as simple as going into Update Manager, installing all the updates available on your system, and then pressing OK on the warning banner about the looming end of updates for Feren OS 2023.04, followed by going through the Feren OS Major Updater’s pages until you reach the option to start the update to a newer, supported, Feren OS version.

Feren OS November 2020 Snapshot — 2023.04 will reach end-of-life on May 31st was originally published in Feren OS on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This announcement’s date, meanwhile, reflects the release of the Feren OS 2025.03 ISO as the ISO needed some additional work after 2025.03’s finalisation. Basically, 2025.03 is technically a very late March release.

Today, it is time I announce the release of Feren OS 2025.03, a notable rebase update for Feren OS that takes the existing, delayed, work on what was originally meant to be 2023.07 but was delayed due to requiring work on a new Store to conclude, and packages what is currently complete from it into a new stable release of Feren OS, while also porting 2023.04’s missing applications, to fill in the gaps the new Store will soon fill, for the time being.

I would say these releases are a regular occurrence that usually occur every 4 months, but… I think you can see that hasn’t been the case for 2 years now (yikes). Anyway, this release provides the latest updates to Feren OS at the time of the ISO’s release right from the get-go, and serves as a new (hopefully, THIS TIME) final ‘calm before the storm’ release due to being an emergency release for reasons that will be stated at the bottom of this article.

Essentially, what was Feren OS “Upcoming” has been split into 2 releases, and this is the first of the two, as a mandatory Plan B.

Despite being half of the upcoming release, this release is nothing to scoff at in terms of changes — this release is still the culmination of a lot of hard work and represents 2–3 years of development.

Updating to Feren OS 2025.03

Chances are, as an existing Feren OS user, you’ve likely already updated to Feren OS 2025.03 as, as alluded to above, was released days earlier as a Major Update.

Still, in the case you have not yet updated to Feren OS 2025.03, updating is as simple as going into Update Manager, installing all the updates available on your system, and then pressing OK on the warning banner about the looming end of updates for Feren OS 2023.04, followed by going through the Feren OS Major Updater’s pages until you reach the option to start the update to Feren OS 2025.03.

Changes

Feren OS is now based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Feren OS finally uses an Ubuntu 22.04 LTS base in this release, bringing with it a whole slew of improvements and software updates, making the Feren OS experience even better than before. Previous versions of Feren OS were based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and with this rebase comes support until the end of April 2027.

NOTE: This release started development in 2022, so the Ubuntu 22.04 base was the newest available base at the time.

The Feren OS you know and love, refined from the ground up and more stable than ever

With the aforementioned rebase was the opportunity to make drastic changes to Feren OS that normal releases simply cannot allow, and with key developments to certain projects that power Feren OS, that opportunity was finally taken.

A problem starting to rear its head until Feren OS 2023.04 was a gradual loss of control of what Feren OS pre-installed, as software in Feren OS started recommending more software than ever before, and dependencies were forged that were simply not required.

Fortunately, with the release of 2025.03, Feren OS’s entire underlying structure was revisited — gone are the use of any upstream metapackages, made to forge their platforms, gone are an abundance of unnecessary software ‘recommendations’ by software Feren OS pre-installs, and gone are the aforementioned unnecessary dependencies.

As a result of this work, Feren OS 2025.03 provides a lighter (and faster than a Feren OS 2025.03 without this change) platform that only includes the essentials to form the Feren OS experience you know, while not compromising on its pre-installed software nor features, and that is better future-proofed for years to come.

While revisiting Feren OS’s underlying structure, another problem was addressed: In 2025.03 onwards, Feren OS will no longer permit removal of underlying system components* that Feren OS requires to function.

This change also allows Feren OS to more stable and reliable than it has ever been, while protecting you from operations that can break Feren OS such as an application you install attempting to uninstall the Feren OS Desktop Experience.

*Nearly all applications pre-installed in Feren OS can be freely uninstalled as they are not affected by this change and are not required by Feren OS

KDE Plasma 5.27 — the final release of KDE Plasma 5 is now used

Feren OS now uses KDE Plasma 5.27, which coincidentally marks the end of the KDE Plasma 5 family, providing tons of new features and important bug fixes.

Some things have been changed for Feren OS, such as restoring the old behaviour for Adaptive Panel transparency, and reintroducing patches such as the drain bar design in notifications and additional accent colour options in Colours, however in Feren OS 2025.03 an important change has also been made regarding patches:

In Feren OS 2025.03, significantly less of KDE Plasma is now patched, instead offloaded to various other means of maintaining the intended Feren OS experience such as updated Desktop Layouts. This has the benefit of making KDE Plasma faster to prepare for Feren OS, as well as making Breeze’s Desktop Layout more authentic to vanilla KDE Plasma than it has ever been in Feren OS.

Finally, Latte Dock has been completely removed from Feren OS’s default suite of programs, with the Human and Mac and Cheese layouts now using carefully pre-configured panels instead to substitute the functionality Latte Dock was once required for — this also means Human will no longer suffer from random panel overlap for users who apply its Desktop Layout in Feren OS 2025.03 onwards.

Pipewire

Feren OS now uses and pre-configures Pipewire as its sound server. Enjoy improved sound, as well as improved long-term integration of screen recording and more, with Pipewire.

Fun fact: This change was made all the way in April 2022 — it’s been that long in the making, and if not for the delays we would’ve therefore beat even our upstream to the punch (they’ve since switched in 22.10).

OEM Config has been rewritten

OEM Config, the software that facilitates Feren OS Setup after installation of Feren OS concludes, has been completely rewritten in this release to adopt a new strategy inspired by Vanilla OS.

Unlike Feren OS 2023.04’s OEM Config, which launched an X11 session during the boot process to run Feren OS Setup and a restricted KDE Plasma Workspace, the new OEM Config now automatically logs into a restricted KDE Plasma session, after Feren OS finishes booting, to start Feren OS Setup inside as expected.

Because of this new strategy, OEM Config’s restricted KDE Plasma Workspace was able to receive major improvements: While in Feren OS Setup, you can now connect to the internet before completing Setup to save time getting additional packages for your chosen language and keyboard layout installed after Setup finishes, as well as being able to better see your battery life if a battery is present, control screen brightness, and more without any issues.

This also ensures future-proofing for OEM Config, as a switch to KDE Plasma on Wayland, in a future release, can now be done seamlessly without requiring any code changes in OEM Config.

Introducing DesktopSwop

DesktopSwop is a newly debuting feature in Feren OS 2025.03 — it comes pre-installed and to use it, you need to install and switch to another Desktop Environment.

With DesktopSwop, any configurations you make in Plasma to GTK applications will no longer be transferred to other Desktop Environments — in fact, each desktop environment now has its own unique set of GTK configurations, meaning you can segregate your ‘rices’ between desktop environments, with the following being segregated:

• GTK 3 and GTK 4 gtk.css
• GTK 3 and GTK 4 settings.ini
• GTK settings in dconf that Plasma modifies

This means that for example, if you install and log into GNOME, you’ll now be rocking GNOME’s default theme instead of Feren OS’s appearance for GTK3 applications, and if you make changes to your theme in GNOME and then switch back to KDE Plasma you will find your settings reverted back to how they were in KDE Plasma, and so on.

This feature is more-so aimed at Feren OS’s advanced userbase, and works via a simple man-in-the-middle script that runs every time you log in and checks what Desktop Environment you’re running, but it is made in the hopes of finally resolving a big problem with configuring the appearance of GTK applications in multi-desktop-environment installations and then some more with the added gtk.css file segregation.

If you know what I mean — I hope you’ll appreciate this addition.

Known Issues

There are some prominent known issues in Feren OS 2025.03 that you will need to know:

DNS Resolver may break on the rare occasion

Feren OS 2025.03 inherits an upstream issue in systemd, tracked at https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/21123, that causes the DNS Resolver to, on the rare occasion, suddenly stop working.

If you start seeing DNS errors in your web browser, or ‘resolving’ errors in software like Store and Update Manager, simply disconnect from then reconnect to your current internet connection to fix the issue.

This bug is upstream and its status is tracked at https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/21123 — if you can help debug the issue, help is welcome there.

Removals

The following features are no longer available in, and have therefore been removed from, this release of Feren OS, and onwards:

PPAs and custom repositories cannot be manually added by default

Outside of the repositories available in Software Sources, PPAs and custom repositories can no longer be added by default.

Support for adding these is something Feren OS has been wanting to move on from, and with the introduction of the new Software Sources (soon to be new Store), and a new base, now is the perfect time to make this change.

Custom repositories and PPAs present a variety of security risks, mainly due to their ability to serve users packages, and system updates, that both run scripts automatically, with full system-level privileges, when installed, giving them the ability to do anything the people in control of said custom repositories and PPAs want them to do, including malicious uses.

Additionally, custom repositories and PPAs present a variety of compatibility issues, which will at worst break Feren OS, as they are almost always not designed for Feren OS, or could be designed for a specific package base that Feren OS does not have.

The available Software Sources have been proven with time to be reliable, and are from their official publishers, therefore reducing those risks. However, if you need to add repositories that aren’t in Software Sources’s predefined list of sources to enable or disable, you can still install the software-properties-qt package to manage software sources.

Misc. technical changes

The Feren OS December 2019 Snapshot has returned in OEM Config

The splash screen seen in Feren OS December 2019 Snapshot has made its temporary return as a new splash screen used exclusively by OEM Config while its KDE Plasma session is loading.

firefox now installs the official Mozilla Firefox Flatpak

A change that has been promised for a while now, and a change nonetheless, the firefox package will now install Mozilla Firefox from Flathub instead of our upstream’s move to Mozilla Firefox from Snap Store.

Even though Mozilla had Canonical make Firefox a Snap in Ubuntu, as per their distribution agreement, the decision to install Mozilla Firefox from Flathub instead was made for numerous reasons:

• Mozilla Firefox on Flathub is also an official version of Mozilla Firefox (being recommended before the Snap on Mozilla’s helpguide)
• Mozilla Firefox on Flathub, so far in years long testing, has kept the ‘InstallID’ (which needs to be a specific value in order for Mozilla Firefox to even use your existing ‘profile’) the exact same throughout
• Flatpak’s cross-platform nature should make your Mozilla Firefox ‘profiles’ a no-thrills experience to transfer over to other Operating Systems using it from Flathub, because of the consistent ‘InstallID’
• Transitioning existing Mozilla Firefox users over to the Firefox Flatpak is a breeze, because of the consistent ‘InstallID’ it has
• Flatpak allows Feren OS to leverage important per-application-workarounds, that would otherwise be significantly more complex and hacky to implement, which makes working around Firefox issues, such as feren-theme#3, easier and consistent
• Mozilla Firefox from Flathub was already the main focus for optional content, as well as Solstice’s browser compatibility
• Users who have updated from Feren OS July 2020 Snapshot, who installed Firefox beforehand, are already using Mozilla Firefox from Flathub
• Users who have installed Mozilla Firefox from Web Browser Manager are already using Mozilla Firefox from Flathub

These factors all aligned with proceeding with this change, especially compared to the other options which would only re-expose issues that are worked around using the Firefox Flatpak, and/or be incompatible with Feren OS’s own integration for the browser.

epiphany-browser now installs the official GNOME Web Flatpak

A change nearly everyone voted for in a poll on Twitter, Mastodon, and Discord — epiphany-browser, as a package, will now install GNOME Web from Flathub instead of our upstream’s version of GNOME Web.

This change was considered as:

• The Ubuntu version becomes considerably old quite fast, making it a massively subpar experience compared to the experience you can get from Flathub
• Epiphany from Flathub is the official version of itself, linked by its own developers (see https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web) — by moving people to its Flathub equivalent, updates will be controlled by its developers, just like most popular browsers are
• Epiphany from Flathub is the latest version of itself, containing major Quality of Life improvements not seen in Ubuntu’s version, such as its upcoming complete Extensions support, compatibility with more websites, and more

As it already stood, installing GNOME Web from Web Browser Manager in past Feren OS releases, both this year and last year, installed GNOME Web from Flathub, so for most users of GNOME Web in Feren OS this change won’t have any effect anyway.

See the poll results, for making this change, yourself at Twitter, Mastodon, and Discord.

Nevertheless, this change already brought with it a ton more user experience enhancements, as shown in this teaser for 44.

Coming in a future update

As this is the first of 2 half-releases of the upcoming Feren OS experience, it’s time to mention what is planned to release in a future update.

The new Store

The new Feren OS Store, originally planned for this release, will be finally making its inevitable debut in a future Feren OS release. With it, there will finally be the promised storm of a Feren OS release and, due to this release’s change of plans, update.

A wider selection of browsers to install

With the new Store will come a tailored category for browsers to install, replacing the Web Browser Manager and providing significantly more browser options than Web Browser Manager has ever provided in its Feren OS, and Zorin OS (the utility did originate from Zorin OS), history.

Website Applications will broaden your application selection

Alongside this, Solstice will make its proper Feren OS debut via a new Websites page of the Store.

Technically, Solstice is already ready and newly pre-installed in Feren OS 2025.03, but it currently can only be used if you manually generate shortcuts until the arrival of the Store occurs.

More

The Store update as a whole is planned to finish what was started in Feren OS 2025.03 (this release), and complete the overhaul of Feren OS’s base and overall user experience, making the OS easier to use, fixing plenty of longstanding issues waiting for the Store’s arrival, and being followed by necessary updates to the User Guide, the Feren OS website, and much more.

Testing the future update

Due to the new nature of the future update, you will be able to test the update as it becomes available for testing in the near-future by going into Software Sources -> Advanced and ticking “Enable Feren OS Earlybird”. That way, when testing builds of the update releases, you will be able to get them directly from Update Manager.

Coming soon: 10th Anniversary Release

In July, Feren OS will be celebrating its 10th Anniversary! Besides still being crazy to think about for me, there will be a release in the works for the 10th Anniversary that will be fitting for the 10th Anniversary of Feren OS and will include:

• A rebase on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
• KDE Plasma 6
• A new Inspire icon set and theme, as initially announced in 2020
• The same Feren OS you know and love, with a sparkly new lick of paint

I can’t wait to show you all what is in store for the 10th Anniversary of Feren OS nearer to the date!

Conclusion

Well, this is done, now to continue on this adventure to catch up to where I wanted Feren OS to be this entire time again.

I don’t really have anything else to say here, other than please, go download Feren OS already if you haven’t, to check the changes so far out: https://ferenos.weebly.com/

Q&A for this release

This release has some serious changes that would warrant this, it’s probably best to answer some possible questions users may have here:

Some applications use Adwaita

From now onward, Feren OS will, excluding very light patches such as giving Vivaldi titlebar buttons to match Feren OS, no longer theme applications itself, instead taking an opt-in approach where developers choose to use the user’s current theme and not the other way around.

This new approach has been inspired by how our competitors have historically handled themes, the large quantity of theme-respecting applications available for Feren OS, and reflecting on the damage the prior approach has caused to various applications.

Because of this new approach, Feren OS’s GTK stylesheet has not been, and will not be, ported to GTK4 or higher, as it is up to those applications to follow the user’s theme and not the other way around. Therefore, those applications will now instead use their intended stylesheet by default.

However, the Feren OS GTK stylesheet for GTK3 will remain in use for now because it has existed since day one of Feren OS’s life, therefore predating this decision, and Feren OS still, for now, relies on some GTK3 applications by default. This stylesheet, and the ability to set GTK themes by default, will ultimately be phased out in the future once GTK3 reaches end of life.

For the users who prefer applications follow your applied theme, the new Store will also now let users know of applications that do not follow their currently set theme when it releases, via opt-out information banners, so they can make a better informed choice of what applications they install from the Store once the time finally arrives.

How do applications using LibAdwaita look?

See their screenshots in Store, Flathub, etc.? That is how they look in Feren OS.

What about the new Store, etc.?

As said before, they’ve been delayed into the future second half-release.

What about the promised Snap and Flatpak blockade feature you announced would come in the next release?

They’ve been delayed into the release that will add the new Store. Once introduced, you’ll be able to turn them on and off from the Sources tab of Store’s settings.

Feren OS 2023.04 will reach end-of-life in May

And now to the reason why this half-release has been made — too much time has passed and now Ubuntu 20.04 is months away from its end of life. Therefore, this release is a must in order for users to keep getting important system and security updates.

A proper announcement will be posted in the near future, however, simply put, get the Major Update done and you should be good to go.

Edit 10/4/2025: When this announcement was originally rewritten, 2025.03’s Plan B was a minor change, but given the debut of the new Software Sources application occurred I’ve reflected and realised this release is more than just a minor rebase and adjusted the wording used accordingly.

Feren OS 2025.03 — Rebase update for Feren OS was originally published in Feren OS on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

DISCLAIMER: Ubuntu 24.04 powered Feren OS is later this year for Feren OS’s 10th Anniversary.

This RC represents somewhat incomplete software — while everything is finalised, some details may still change — do not use this as a daily driver, but please do test it as a candidate for a daily driver that is not relied on.

Feren OS: Changes from Feren OS 2025.03 Beta 2

OEM Setup now properly uses the language set during installation

In Beta 2, OEM Setup would always be in English regardless of the language chosen during Feren OS’s installation. This stems from an issue with how Calamares sets the values of /etc/default/locale without the Region & Time page being present in the installer, although through a new workaround introduced in the Release Candidate this is no longer the case.

Now, the workaround will automatically correct the value of /etc/default/locale so that OEM Setup uses the language you selected during installation as expected.

New Software Sources window

To bide the time between now and the future Store update, a new makeshift Software Sources application has been created for the 2025.03 Release Candidate, modelled after the equivalent way you’ll be able to manage Software Sources in the future Feren OS Store, to allow easy enabling and disabling of additional sources included in Feren OS.

This makeshift application, however, marks the debut of toggleable Snap Store from the sources window in Feren OS, beating the new Store to being the way this new option debuts. Given this, the “Install” button from the legacy Welcome Screen has been removed as it is now redundant.

Other changes

• The metapackage for codecs, that Tour installs if you press the button to do so, has been fixed and can now actually be installed instead of always failing to install due to dependency issues
• Update Manager will now count updates to the Legacy Feren OS Store, and aforementioned Software Sources application, as Update Manager updates ahead of the Store update that will encompass Update Manager’s duty
• With this, all tasks to be done, besides finishing the Major Updater and adding finalised artwork, have been completed

Feren OS: Known issues you need to know

OEM Setup on English UK sets the wrong locale

If you install this Feren OS build in English (United Kingdom), and potentially other languages, Calamares will have the wrong language set (although it will be in English, at least) and will need to be manually corrected either in OEM Setup or via Languages after setup-completion.

Software Sources does not launch prior to updating the system

Due to a missing dependency corrected after this build was compiled, Software Sources will not launch in this build until either the dependency is manually installed or the system updated to a fixed version of Software Sources.

Installable themes, icon sets, and backgrounds from prior releases

You currently cannot install these, via the usual means, as they have not yet been brought over to this release’s repositories. Bringing them over is a low-priority task on the todo list after the final release, so expect them to arrive shortly after 2025.03 releases.

Other bugs in this build

While there are currently no reported bugs remaining, if bugs are reported in this build you will be able to find them here:

Issues · feren-OS/Testing-Builds-Bug-Reporting

Feren OS Major Updater Release Candidate

In case you missed it — the Feren OS Major Updater for Feren OS 2023.04 -> 2025.03 was released as a beta during the release of Feren OS 2025.03 Beta 1. In the meantime, more issues have since been fixed in the beta Major Updater, making it also a Release Candidate.

To install this Major Updater, go into Software Sources and turn on Unstable, followed by refreshing Update Manager and installing available updates — if successful, you’ll get a banner about a Major Update being available.

Please note: This Major Updater is not fully complete yet, will update you to Feren OS 2025.03 RC, and has the following issues left:

Cliqz profiles won’t yet be transitioned to the selected replacement browser if the selected replacement browser already has profiles

Currently, if you have Cliqz installed, you are given the choice of a replacement browser to transition your profiles to — however, transferring Cliqz profiles to a browser that already has profiles is not yet implemented, so this will only currently work if the selected replacement browser currently has no profiles created.

Parts of your theme may be set to Breeze after the update

Currently, due to a bug in configurations migration for each user causing configurations not to be migrated yet, your theme, if using the default Feren OS themes for any theme parts, will be reset to Breeze Light after the update as the name for Feren OS’s theme has been changed in 2025.03 to “Inspire” to match the remaining theme parts that were already called Inspire prior to 2025.03.

Failure to prepare Major Updates will uninstall the Major Updater

If preparation for the Major Updater fails, the Major Updater will get downgraded back to its dummy version during the failure recovery process, essentially uninstalling it, as the recovery process disables the Unstable repository due to being designed with being finalised in mind instead of being an Unstable package.

If preparation fails, re-open Update Manager, go into Software Sources, enable Unstable again, refresh Update Manager and re-install available updates before hitting Retry, otherwise the Major Updater will become softlocked.

For more bugs with the Major Updater Release Candidate, check the project for what’s left to be done: https://github.com/orgs/feren-OS/projects/27/views/1

Otherwise, try out the Major Updater at your own risk.

Onwards

That’s it for the changes in the release candidate of Feren OS 2025.03. Next up: Stable.

You can check out what’s still pending for Feren OS 2025.03 before it can be considered stable over here: https://github.com/orgs/feren-OS/projects/11

Otherwise, you can download Feren OS 2025.03 Release Candidate at https://ferenos.weebly.com/test-feren-os-202503.html. Make sure to report any bugs you find in these releases, and until the final release drops, enjoy!

Feren OS 2025.03 Release Candidate, and Major Updater RC, are now available for testing was originally published in Feren OS on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

DISCLAIMER: Ubuntu 24.04 powered Feren OS is later this year for Feren OS’s 10th Anniversary.

This beta represents mostly incomplete software — programs are still missing, and some programs could change out of nowhere — do not use this as a daily driver, but please do test it as a candidate for a daily driver that is not relied on.

Feren OS: Changes from Feren OS 2025.03 Beta 1

The boot screen theme is back

The bootscreen, as seen in Feren OS 2023.04, has made its return to Feren OS 2025.03 in this beta, meaning the tribar theme is no longer always used for the bootscreen by default.

Tour and System Maintenance are back

Additionally, the Tour and System Maintenance applications from Feren OS 2023.04 have also been brought to Feren OS 2025.03 in Beta 2.

The Feren OS logo is now shown again instead of the Debian logo

The reintroduction of gdebi in Beta 1 caused the Feren OS logo, seen in grey to reflect the fact 2025.03 is currently a prerelease, to be replaced by a low-quality version of the Debian logo — fortunately, in Beta 2 some adjustments were made to fix this issue and reinstate the Feren OS logo.

Language and keyboard layout selection has been fixed

The entirety of language and keyboard layout selection respectively has been fixed in Beta 2, restoring its functionality as seen in Feren OS 2023.04 instead of leaving the live session, and installed Feren OS 2025.03, in English. Furthermore, the language selection GRUB on hardware with UEFI is now styled again and renders language names correctly once again fixing the broken rendering seen in Beta 1 and earlier builds of 2025.03.

Other changes

• Store’s “Software Sources” shortcut was removed since it’s a dead shortcut
• wine-dialog-feren has been ported and reintroduced from Feren OS 2023.04
• Removed the experimental GeTTY hotkey removal from previous builds
• Calamares Installer and OEM Setup both now use automirror to automatically select an appropriate mirror for package repositories if connected to the internet in both situations
• casper was patched to remove the additional file check that caused boottime language select to be broken in all Ubuntu 22.04-powered builds of Feren OS until this beta
• Fixed a bug in Login Window where changing the background would replace the default background’s file
• Calamares’s sidebar is no longer visually broken in Beta 2

Feren OS: Known bugs you need to know

OEM Setup is in English

This was already fixed after the release of Beta 2, so will be addressed in the Feren OS 2025.03 Release Candidate, but in Beta 2 regardless of the language you choose during installation OEM Setup will be in English (excluding the OEM Setup window).

Installable themes, icon sets, and backgrounds from prior releases

You currently cannot install these, via the usual means, as they have not yet been brought over to this release’s repositories. Bringing them over is a low-priority task on the todo list before the final release, so expect them to arrive between 2025.03 release candidate releases.

Other bugs in this build

While there are currently no reported bugs remaining, if bugs are reported in this build you will be able to find them here:

Issues · feren-OS/Testing-Builds-Bug-Reporting

Feren OS Major Updater Beta

In case you missed it — the Feren OS Major Updater for Feren OS 2023.04 -> 2025.03 was released as a beta during the release of Feren OS 2025.03 Beta 1. In the meantime, a bunch of issues have since been fixed in the beta Major Updater.

To install this Major Updater, go into Software Sources and turn on Unstable, followed by refreshing Update Manager and installing available updates — if successful, you’ll get a banner about a Major Update being available.

Please note: This Major Updater is incomplete, and will update you to Feren OS 2025.03 Beta 2, complete with the second beta’s issues, however it also has its fair share of issues too:

Prerequisites listed in the Major Updater are not yet accurate

For some mysterious reason, some prerequisites in the Major Updater appear even when your installation of Feren OS is not eligible for them — if not eligible, nothing will be done to ‘address’ them when the update begins.

Input Methods are not yet transitioned to their new packages if they were changed in 2025.03

Keyboard layouts such as Japanese have had a package switch in 2025.03 — however, if you have eligible keyboard or language combinations prior to the update then they currently will not be transitioned to their 2025.03 counterparts automatically, causing issues after the update until manually configured.

Cliqz profiles won’t yet be transitioned to the selected replacement browser if the selected replacement browser already has profiles

Currently, if you have Cliqz installed, you are given the choice of a replacement browser to transition your profiles to — however, transferring Cliqz profiles to a browser that already has profiles is not yet implemented, so this will only currently work if the selected replacement browser currently has no profiles created.

Parts of your theme may be set to Breeze after the update

Currently, due to a bug in configurations migration for each user causing configurations not to be migrated yet, your theme, if using the default Feren OS themes for any theme parts, will be reset to Breeze Light after the update as the name for Feren OS’s theme has been changed in 2025.03 to “Inspire” to match the remaining theme parts that were already called Inspire prior to 2025.03.

Failure to prepare Major Updates will uninstall the Major Updater

If preparation for the Major Updater fails, the Major Updater will get downgraded back to its dummy version during the failure recovery process, essentially uninstalling it, as the recovery process disables the Unstable repository due to being designed with being finalised in mind instead of being an Unstable package.

If preparation fails, re-open Update Manager, go into Software Sources, enable Unstable again, refresh Update Manager and re-install available updates before hitting Retry, otherwise the Major Updater will become softlocked.

The Major Updater as a whole is incomplete, and you’ll have the issues mentioned in the Feren OS 2025.03 Beta 2 section of this post after the update

Finally, it’s worth reminding people that this Major Updater is not only incomplete but also will update you to a prerelease Feren OS version that, itself, is currently incomplete.

For more bugs with the Major Updater Beta, check the project for what’s left to be done: https://github.com/orgs/feren-OS/projects/27/views/1

Otherwise, try out the Major Updater at your own risk.

Onwards

That’s it for the changes in the second beta of Feren OS 2025.03. Next up: Feren OS 2025.03 Release Candidate.

You can check out what’s still pending for Feren OS 2025.03 before it can be considered stable over here: https://github.com/orgs/feren-OS/projects/11

Otherwise, you can download Feren OS 2025.03 Beta 2 at https://ferenos.weebly.com/test-feren-os-202503.html. Make sure to report any bugs you find in these releases, and until the next Beta release, enjoy!

Feren OS 2025.03 Beta 2, and Major Updater Beta 2, are now available for testing was originally published in Feren OS on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

DISCLAIMER: Ubuntu 24.04 powered Feren OS is later this year for Feren OS’s 10th Anniversary.

This beta represents mostly incomplete software — programs are still missing, and some programs could change out of nowhere — do not use this as a daily driver, but please do test it as a candidate for a daily driver that is not relied on.

Feren OS: Changes from Feren OS 2023.07 Alpha 2

More system components were added

This Beta of Feren OS 2025.03 introduces most of the remaining additional system components that were not present in Alpha 2, including support for more printers, drives, archive types, and devices. Per Plan B, this includes Update Manager, Driver Manager, and more too.

Newly rebased (legacy) Store

The legacy Store application has, per Plan B from the prior article, also been reintroduced, now with an updated base granting it all of the optimisations and improvements made to its upstream, MintInstall, since the last time it was rebased. Because of this, you can expect better Flatpak support, faster load times, and other refinements.

Alternative Global Themes make their return

The alternative Global Themes Doors, Classical, Human and Mac ’n’ Cheese have all made their grand return in this beta, all sporting tweaks, or in the case of Human and Mac ’n’ Cheese entire overhauls, to their Desktop Layouts.

Per Desktop Environment GTK Configurations

This is a more technical feature, so if you are unfamiliar with what a “Desktop Environment” is, feel free to skip this one.

For those in the know, for a long time KDE Plasma, the software that powers Feren OS’s Desktop Experience currently, has had a reputation of causing ‘configuration issues’ when migrating to, or using alongside, other Desktop Environments. These issues would lead to a subset of applications looking strange or being visually bugged with no clear fix.

I am proud to debut an all-new feature that has never been seen before: In Feren OS 2025.03 and onwards, GTK configurations are now unique to each Desktop Environment.

With this feature, out are the visual bugs, and potential design mismatches that this problem could lead to, and in is more flexibility with applications styling, as now you are no longer restricted by the following configurations being shared across Desktop Environments:

• GTK theme, icon set, cursors, fonts, etc. preferences
• Custom GTK stylesheet hacks, such as Libadwaita palette recolouring
• Single/double-click policy, etc.

When you log into a different desktop environment, your configs for the prior one are automatically moved to their own folder, before any configs you have for the new desktop environment are moved back to where they need to be, ready to be used immediately.

While not the cleanest way to integrate such functionality, this feature is consistently reliable, and is retro-proofed for all affected applications from all sources.

Other changes

• TLP is now pre-enabled in isos of Beta 1 and onwards
• KDE Plasma 5.27.10 is now present, and is now patched once again
• .themes and .local/share/themes have been swapped for new users, meaning .themes is now a symlink to the latter
• .icons and .local/share/icons have been swapped for new users, meaning .icons is now a symlink to the latter
• The above two changes now mean Flatpaks of GTK applications can now use your downloaded GTK themes as expected
• New users will now be added to the group ‘dlp’ instead of ‘dialout’
• Added a workaround for a systemd issue where there is a semi-rare chance that the DNS resolver will break, when booting Feren OS, until you restart Feren OS (NetworkManager will now automatically restart if the bug is detected, immediately fixing the issue until next boot)
• Solstice has been future-proofed to ensure functionality won’t break once it receives localisations
• You can now add a CSS modification to Solstice applications powered by either Mozilla Firefox/LibreWolf/Floorp or Vivaldi
• Solstice now supports Floorp
• Fixed an issue where Desktop Icons are 1 size smaller than they should be on the first login only
• The default Feren OS panel no longer overwrites the files for KDE Plasma’s own default panel
• Panels will no longer go opaque if a window touches them, instead only doing so when a window is currently maximised, just like in 2023.04
• Added a temporary fix for accent colourisation on Plasma Styles not automatically reloading when the accent colour has been changed

Feren OS: Known bugs you need to know

Language and keyboard select for the Live Session do not work

The language and keyboard selection, when booting into the Live Session, is currently broken and, regardless of what combination you select, will always drop you into an English live session in this build. I plan on addressing this in Beta 2.

System Maintenance

The future of System Maintenance is currently under consideration (keep it, split it into multiple system tools?), meaning it currently is not in this beta release to save wasting effort getting it pre-installed again.

It will appear in Beta 2, either graphically overhauled or split into multiple other tools.

Tour

Tour needs a few fixes before it can work again, which will be handled in Beta 2.

Bootscreen

Like with the Feren OS on 20.04 Alpha builds, the bootscreen… broke (again)… so it is not here in this Beta. Instead, enjoy scrolling text when turning on, restarting, or shutting down your Feren OS device, while using this beta.

The bootscreen will be fixed and re-added via both an update for existing users and in the release of Beta 2.

Installable themes, icon sets, and backgrounds from prior releases

You currently cannot install these, via the usual means, as they have not yet been brought over to this release’s repositories. Bringing them over is a low-priority task on the todo list before the final release, so expect them to arrive between 2025.03 release candidate releases.

Other bugs in this build

There are a bunch of other bugs already documented and pending fixes in this beta build, which you can find here:

Issues · feren-OS/Testing-Builds-Bug-Reporting

Feren OS Major Updater Beta

But that’s not all — the Feren OS Major Updater for Feren OS 2023.04 -> 2025.03 has been released as a beta too!

To install this Major Updater, go into Software Sources and turn on Unstable, followed by refreshing Update Manager and installing available updates — if successful, you’ll get a banner about a Major Update being available.

Please note: This Major Updater is incomplete, and will update you to Feren OS 2025.03 Beta, complete with the beta’s issues, however it also has its fair share of issues too:

Prerequisites listed in the Major Updater are not yet accurate

For some mysterious reason, some prerequisites in the Major Updater appear even when your installation of Feren OS is not eligible for them — if not eligible, nothing will be done to ‘address’ them when the update begins.

Input Methods are not yet transitioned to their new packages if they were changed in 2025.03

Keyboard layouts such as Japanese have had a package switch in 2025.03 — however, if you have eligible keyboard or language combinations prior to the update then they currently will not be transitioned to their 2025.03 counterparts automatically, causing issues after the update until manually configured.

Cliqz profiles won’t yet be transitioned to the selected replacement browser if the selected replacement browser already has profiles

Currently, if you have Cliqz installed, you are given the choice of a replacement browser to transition your profiles to — however, transferring Cliqz profiles to a browser that already has profiles is not yet implemented, so this will only currently work if the selected replacement browser currently has no profiles created.

Parts of your theme may be set to Breeze after the update

Currently, due to a bug in configurations migration for each user causing configurations not to be migrated yet, your theme, if using the default Feren OS themes for any theme parts, will be reset to Breeze Light after the update as the name for Feren OS’s theme has been changed in 2025.03 to “Inspire” to match the remaining theme parts that were already called Inspire prior to 2025.03.

Failure to prepare Major Updates will uninstall the Major Updater

If preparation for the Major Updater fails, the Major Updater will get downgraded back to its dummy version during the failure recovery process, essentially uninstalling it, as the recovery process disables the Unstable repository due to being designed with being finalised in mind instead of being an Unstable package.

If preparation fails, re-open Update Manager, go into Software Sources, enable Unstable again, refresh Update Manager and re-install available updates before hitting Retry, otherwise the Major Updater will become softlocked.

The Major Updater as a whole is incomplete, and you’ll have the issues mentioned in the Feren OS 2025.03 Beta section of this post after the update

Finally, it’s worth reminding people that this Major Updater is not only incomplete but also will update you to a prerelease Feren OS version that, itself, is currently incomplete.

For more bugs with the Major Updater Beta, check the project for what’s left to be done: https://github.com/orgs/feren-OS/projects/27/views/1

Otherwise, try out the Major Updater at your own risk.

Conclusion

That’s it for the changes in the first beta of Feren OS 2025.03. The plan going forward is to release a series of Betas, and then Release Candidates, of Feren OS 2025.03 as it reaches specific points in its development, all the way to the release of Feren OS 2025.03.

You can check out what’s still pending for Feren OS 2025.03 before it can be considered stable over here: https://github.com/orgs/feren-OS/projects/11

Otherwise, you can download Feren OS 2025.03 Beta 1 at https://ferenos.weebly.com/test-feren-os-202503.html. Make sure to report any bugs you find in these releases, and until the next Beta release, enjoy!

Feren OS 2025.03 Beta 1, and Major Updater Beta, are now available for testing was originally published in Feren OS on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.