Neptune 5.0 Neptune is a Debian-based Linux distribution which is built upon Debian's Stable branch. The Neptune team then provides a more up to date desktop environment and applications through their own software repositories. The latest release of Neptune, version 5.0, runs the KDE Plasma 5.12 LTS desktop and LibreOffice 6. The project's release announcement says that most of its desktop software will remain at fixed versions for the life span of the distribution since cutting edge desktop applications can typically be installed using Snap or Flatpak portable packages. Another change includes the way third-party drivers are handled: zevenoshardwaremanager. You can however install them on your own if you need or like....



For Live System users we still provide our tools remaster-kit. Newly included is grub-customizer a tool which allows you to set the design and options of your GRUB boot loader. With Neptune 5.0 we stopped officially supporting proprietary graphics card drivers. We removed the support for easy installing them from our. You can however install them on your own if you need or like....For Live System users we still provide our tools Persistent-Creator as well as Snapshot Manager. If you want to remaster our ISO or any other Debian Live or Ubuntu Casper based ISO you can do so with our tool. Newly included isa tool which allows you to set the design and options of your GRUB boot loader. Live desktop



Neptune is available in just one edition for 64-bit computers and the live disc image we download is 2GB in size. Booting from the ISO displays a boot menu giving us the option of starting the system using English or German as a preferred language. The system then boots to a live KDE Plasma desktop featuring grey wallpaper with the project's branding. Large icons on the desktop launch the project's system installer, a file manager and the Discover software manager. A panel is displayed across the bottom of the screen and holds the application menu, task switcher and system tray. After playing with the desktop for a few minutes and not running into any problems, I launched the project's installer.



Installing



Neptune uses the Calamares system installer which provides users with a friendly, streamlined graphical interface. Calamares quickly walks us through selecting our preferred language, selecting a time zone and confirming the keyboard layout. In my case the system incorrectly guessed which keyboard I was using, but that was easily rectified. When it comes to disk partitioning we have two key options: automatic or manual. I went with the manual option and found the partitioning controls to be straight forward and easy to navigate. Neptune supports working with Btrfs, XFS and ext2/3/4 file systems. Then we set up a username and password for ourselves and the installer works its magic. A short time later, I could reboot the system and start playing with my brand new copy of Neptune.



Early impressions



Neptune boots to a graphical login screen. Here we find there are five different session options listed. These include two entries for the Plasma desktop and three variations of the Enlightenment (E16) desktop. The Enlightenment session does not look like it was meant to be used and may be included as a rescue option in case Plasma stops working. When we sign in we see a mostly empty panel at the bottom of the screen and an empty window that can be resized in the bottom-left corner. We can click on an empty part of the desktop to bring up an application & logout menu. As the session has few features, includes no wallpaper, the visible elements lack contrast and there are three separate E16 sessions listed it makes me wonder if these were planned to be included in the release or maybe got tossed in just so a second login option would be available in case Plasma went off-line.





Neptune 5.0 -- Running LibreOffice

(full image size: 182kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)



I spent almost all my time with Neptune logged into the Plasma 5.12 desktop. The desktop uses a fairly dark theme with touches of blue, which I found easy to look at. I especially like the way the theme looks in the Dolphin file manager. I also found Neptune's virtual terminal's use of soft green and white text on a solid, black background pleasant. Distributions often try to dress up the terminal with transparency or a blinking cursor and I find those too busy and hard to read. Neptune's terminal may not be flashy, but it's very easy on my eyes.



One of the few visual effects Neptune uses is whichever window has focus has a thick shadow around it. This gives the active application the illusion of depth. It's a subtle enough effect that I liked it and, while it didn't add anything to my experience, it did not annoy or distract me the way most desktop effects do.



Shortly after signing in for the first time, I checked the desktop's notification area, which (among other bits of information) told me the software on my system was up to date. This seemed unlikely given Neptune 5.0 was over a week old and so I launched the Discover software centre from its desktop icon. Discover also reported there were no updates available and, the first time I ran Discover, there was no button present to force the software manager to check again. I then turned to a second package manager, Muon, which looks like Debian's Synaptic, but with buttons and a layout which look more naturally a part of the Plasma desktop. Muon has a button to check for software updates and it quickly told me there were 30 new packages available, totalling 67MB in size. These were downloaded without incident. I'll come back to these two graphical software managers again later.



Hardware



I played with Neptune in two test environments and, in both situations, the distribution performed well in most aspects. My desktop computer's hardware was detected and used properly. Neptune was able to integrate automatically with my VirtualBox environment and use my host system's full screen resolution. The distribution was relatively light on resources, using around 420MB of RAM when logged into Plasma. A fresh install used about 6.5GB of disk space.



My only hardware-related concern while using Neptune was that, while Plasma was responsive, the way it drew on the screen was choppy. This is an unusual experience for me. Usually I find desktops are either quick or slow, but typically consistent either way. Neptune's Plasma was different. If I clicked on a menu, for instance, the menu would react right away (lighting up or showing a button being depressed). But then the menu would draw slowly, sometimes leaving gaps in the middle for a second. Other times I might close a dialog window and the window would immediately begin to fade, but then the animation would pause and I'd be left with a half-faded window for a moment. Then, instead of continuing to fade, the window would simply vanish and be replaced by the application behind it.



I played with different display options to see if I could fix this, but the default settings seemed to offer the best experience, the alternatives tended to be, if anything, worse. The jerky drawing was not always noticeable, but when it did happen it gave the impression of a video buffering.



Applications



Neptune ships with a fairly standard set of open source applications, though there is a slight preference for KDE/Qt software on display. The distribution ships with such popular items as the Chromium web browser, the Thunderbird e-mail client and LibreOffice. The GNU Image Manipulation Program and Inkscape are included for working with images and Okular is present for reading PDFs. There are a few text editors, including KWrite and ReText. The Konversation messaging software is included along with the Konqueror web browser and the Kamoso webcam manager.



The distribution features some multimedia applications, including the Amarok audio player and the VLC media player. For people who want to edit their sound and video files, the Audacity and Kdenlive editors are available. Neptune includes a full range of media codecs, allowing us to edit and play most multimedia files.



Rounding out the offerings, we find the Latte application dock, the Back In Time backup utility and the zuluCrypt application which makes it easy to work with encrypted files and volumes. Network Manager is available to help us get on-line. Neptune uses systemd as the distribution's init software and runs on version 4.14 of the Linux kernel.



The software included in Neptune generally worked well for me. The included programs made it pretty easy for me to get my work done and operated smoothly. I was pleasantly surprised with how the Amarok music player has come along. In the KDE4 days, I tended to find Amarok slow and full of pop-ups and almost always replaced the application. This time around I found Amarok loaded and ran quickly and did not cause any headaches.



The Back In Time application may be overwhelming for new users. It is a highly flexible backup tool, with a lot of options. This gives the user a lot of choices when it comes to selecting files to archive and where to store backups. However, the Back In Time interface is cluttered and is probably intended for more advanced users. Less experienced users may wish to install another backup tool such as Deja Dup.





Neptune 5.0 -- Setting up a backup job

(full image size: 311kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)



In a similar vein, zuluCrypt is a powerful encryption tool which can deal with files and secure volumes. While zuluCrypt is also very flexible and offers lots of options, most users will probably prefer the Plasma Vaults software, which is built into the desktop and offers a more streamlined experience.



Software management



Earlier I briefly mentioned Neptune's two graphical package managers, Discover and Muon. Muon provides easy access to low level packages and can be useful for people who want to hunt down one specific library or command line tool.



Discover, which is easily accessed from its desktop icon, is designed to make it easy to browse categories of software. We can locate items by name or by browsing through categories of desktop applications. Applications in a given search or category will be displayed with a brief description and an Install/Remove button. Clicking on an entry brings up a page with a more complete description of the software and screen shots.





Neptune 5.0 -- The Discover software manager

(full image size: 482kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)



When I first started using Neptune, the Discover software manager would not show me available updates. But later in the week new packages would be listed and I could click a single button to install all waiting updates. My only other complaint was that once, while searching for new packages, Discover crashed and I had to relaunch the software manager.



In the distribution's release announcement Flatpak and Snap are mentioned as possible methods for users to stay up to date with the latest desktop software. Neptune does not include support for either of these portable package formats by default, but the Snap and Flatpak frameworks can be installed from Neptune's repositories.



Settings



Neptune ships with Plasma's new System Settings panel, which I discussed previously in my review of Plasma 5.12. The settings panel is fairly easy to navigate, but I think the new two-pane layout is not a great choice for the multiple layers of settings modules. A problem I faced this week is that I'm accustomed to how older versions of the settings panel would prompt before discarding changes. Typically when exiting a module a message would be displayed asking if we would like to apply or discard the adjustments we had made. The latest version of the panel does not prompt us to save changes and, after a few minutes, I realized all my desktop adjustments had been lost and must be redone.



One aspect of Neptune I did appreciate was the screen does not lock or launch the screensaver after five minutes. I've noticed that several desktop distributions, particularly those running GNOME, will lock the screen very quickly. It seems like every time I turn around I need to unlock the screen again, until I change the setting. Neptune doesn't do this. The screen will go into low power or sleep mode after 30 minutes, but will not lock unless we ask it to, or change the default settings.





Neptune 5.0 -- The System Settings panel

(full image size: 269kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)



Also on the topic of settings, I like that searches performed in the application menu will display settings modules as well as applications. This meant I did not need to open the application menu, search for settings, open the settings panel and then type "lock screen" to find the lock timer. Instead, I could just search for "lock screen" from the application menu and open the appropriate settings module with one click. It's a little feature, but a nice time saver.



Earlier I mentioned Neptune offers two Plasma login sessions. These appear to be identical, except one session is identified as being for Plasma 5.10 and the other for 5.12, but we can use them interchangeably and both launch Plasma 5.12. By default the distribution does not provide a Wayland session, but we can install the Wayland Plasma session option. I tried this, but found Wayland was effectively unusable. The screen resolution was lower, visual artifacts appeared all over the page and bringing up any menu caused the screen to go blank for a few seconds. Based on my limited trial, I recommend sticking with Neptune's default X session.



One frustration I ran into with Plasma came about when using one of my favourite new features. In my recent review of Plasma 5.12 I mentioned that I could use the Meta + number key combination to quickly access open windows rather than tabbing through them. Neptune offers this feature, with one catch: the quick-launch icons on the panel count as numbered items. This meant tapping Meta + 1 didn't switch to my first open window, it launched the Chromium browser. To access my first open application I had to type Meta + 3. I understand why this happens, the two launch icons are numbered objects and this gives us a fast way to open them. But it was frustrating when I accidentally hit the 2 instead of 3 and had to wait while Thunderbird opened. And remembering to press 5 instead of 3 when I wanted the third window was not exactly intuitive. This can be worked around by removing the quick-launch buttons.



Conclusions



For the most part, I was happy with Neptune. I like the style of the Plasma desktop which is generally presented without frills or distractions. I like the somewhat muted colours and the default settings, such as the lack of a trigger-happy screen lock. Mostly, I was happy to see how some applications I hadn't used in a while were coming along. Amarok and Discover both have made strong progress recently and I'm finding them to be capable tools when, in the past, I wasn't a fan of either.



The default programs generally worked well for me and Plasma's performance was generally good. I did notice some stuttering on the desktop, and I could probably fix that by tweaking the performance or compositing, or by switching to a third-party driver. But with the default settings, the stuttering was probably my biggest complaint.





Neptune 5.0 -- The Amarok music player

(full image size: 530kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)



What I tended to find with Neptune was if I stuck with the default settings and used applications in the normal or most straight forward fashion, then things went smoothly. But when I stepped off the straight and narrow path, things tended to unravel. Trying Enlightenment or Wayland sessions, for example, did not work well, but things went smoothly while using Plasma's X session. Checking for updates as soon as I logged in resulted in no packages being found, but if I waited for things to settle in the background and gave the operating system a few minutes, I'd eventually be told updates were available and could install them with a few clicks.



There are a few rough edges here and there, but on the whole Neptune worked well. The stable Debian base combined with the latest version of Plasma, Chromium and LibreOffice were a good mixture. It gives us a solid base with lots of new features and I think that's a good combination, especially for me. There are some edge cases where I ran into minor problems and I didn't like that the settings panel didn't warn me before discarding changes, but otherwise I had a good week with Neptune. I think it's a good fit for relative newcomers to Linux and people looking for a balance between reliability and fresh desktop software. * * * * * Hardware used in this review



My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications: Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU

Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive

Memory: 6GB of RAM

Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card

Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card * * * * * Visitor supplied rating



Neptune has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.2/10 from 43 review(s).

Have you used Neptune? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.



