After releasing the Mini ISO about 2 weeks ago, +Antoni has released PinguyOS 14.04 (full) recently, an Ubuntu (14.04) remaster that ships with many popular applications and tweaks.
Pinguy OS is an Ubuntu remaster that uses GNOME Shell (3.10) by default, customized with extensions such as Gno-Menu, Media Player Indicator, Top Icons and more. It comes with many useful applications and tweaks by default, making Pinguy OS a great alternative for those who don't like to tweak or install applications but want everything to work out of the box.
Changes in Pinguy OS 14.04 LTS
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| Netflix works out of the box in Pinguy OS 14.04 |
Pinguy OS 14.04 ships with some new tweaks by default:
- Neflix works out of the box thanks to Pipelight;
- Peerflix is installed by default and so are the Firefox scripts which we've covered recently, which allow opening torrent files in Firefox and playing them directly with VLC;
- TRIM is enabled for SSDs;
- Liquid Prompt is used by default by the GNOME Terminal;
- The Filebot scripts which we covered recently are included;
- A data recovery script that uses TestDisk is included with Pinguy OS 14.04.
These are the new tweaks included with Pinguy OS 14.04 but there are many other tweaks / apps that improve the user experience available by default such as TLP (a tool that applies various tweaks to your laptop to save battery power), zram-config, preload (a daemon that stores the frequently used files in memory for faster startup times) and Profile Sync Daemon.
Pinguy OS 14.04 also ships with some new default applications: GNOME Do, Filebot (an application that allows you to back rename movie and TV show files) and Plex (with various customizations such as the UnsupportedAppstore), which has replaced XBMC:
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| Plex Home Theater |
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| Plex Home Theater - UnsupportedAppStore |
GNOME Shell customizations
The latest Pinguy OS 14.04 ships with GNOME 3.10 by default but it was tweaked so you can easily upgrade to GNOME 3.12 - according to Antoni Norman, to make it work with GNOME 3.12, he had to add Restore-Extensions to startup which forces the extensions to start and "if you want to add extra Extensions and have them start you will need to remove Restore-Extensions from startup".
Pinguy OS 14.04 continues to use Docky, like in the previous releases: a bottom dock used as a taskbar / app launcher and a second dock at the left with auto-hide enabled by default, which lets you quickly access the folders in your home directory.
For the menu, Pinguy OS 14.04 uses Gno-menu, a traditional styled GNOME Shell menu "that aims to offer all the essentials in a simple uncluttered intuitive interface". The Activities hot corner is disabled by default but you can enable it from the Gno-menu preferences or you can access the Activities Overview by using the Super (Windows) key:
This Pinguy OS release ships with 5 new extensions:
- Panel OSD GNOME Shell extension (lets you configure where to display the notifications);
- Audio Output Switcher GNOME Shell extension (adds a switch for selecting the audio output to the system menu);
- Better volume indicator (displays the volume level while scrolling the indicator and allows you to toggle mute using the scroll/middle button)
- Insensitive message tray (renders the bottom message tray insensitive so that it doesn't show up automatically when the mouse pointer is placed at the bottom edge of the screen.);
- An extension that makes GNOME Shell ignore requests to hide the titlebar for maximized windows.
Besides the extensions mentioned above, Pinguy OS 14.04 uses the following GNOME Shell extensions by default:
- AppIndicator support: use AppIndicators in GNOME Shell;
- Coverflow alt-tab;
- Frippery move clock: moves the clock to the left of the status menu button;
- Gno-menu;
- Media player indicator;
- TopIcons (displays legacy tray icons in the top bar);
- User themes.
For the GTK theme, Pinguy OS 14.04 uses Zukitwo, with Faience window borders and Zukitwo-Light as the default GNOME Shell theme. The default icon theme is the beautiful Faience Azur, but more are available, like elementary, all the Faience and Faenza icon themes and more.
Default applications
Applications included by default with Pinguy OS 14.04: Nemo file manager (the patched version I maintain, without Cinnamon dependencies), Firefox 29, Thunderbird 24.5, LibreOffice 4.2.3, Clementine 1.2.3, Steam, Skype 4.2.0.11, VLC 2.1.5, Empathy 3.10.3, Deluge 1.3.6, Calibre 1.36.0, Plex Mediaserver 0.9.9.7.429 and Plex Home Theater 1.0.13.222, Spotify 0.9.4.183, GNOME Tweak Tool 3.10.1 and Ubuntu Software Center 13.10, among others, on top of GTK 3.10.8 and GNOME Shell 3.10.4.
And of course, codecs, Java (icedtea and OpenJRE), G-talk plugin and so on are all installed by default.
Like Ubuntu 14.04, the latest PinguyOS includes the 3.13 Ubuntu Linux Kernel, Xorg server 1.15.1 and Mesa 10.1.0.
Download Pinguy OS 14.04 LTS (full)
For support visit the Pinguy OS Forums.
Pinguy OS Mini ISO: Pinguy OS 14.04 Mini Available For Download
