Feren OS - So Much More Than Another Ubuntu/Mint Respin

The latest version of Feren OS was released in January 2020. It's based on Ubuntu Bionic and also draws on the Linux Mint repositories.
For the first time it uses the Plasma desktop rather than cinnamon, and the developer has heavily customised it's look and feel.
From the simple install, through to the clean look and the snappy performance I was very impressed.
It's not a distro that I've looked at before but I would have no hesitation recommending it to new and/or experienced users.
It's also great to see a British distro out there in the Linux ecosystem - not something we see that often.
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[@jeffjordan3806]

Why aren't you more popular? You are fantastic. I've been using Linux since 1995, have viewed a LOT of videos and none compare to the completeness of this video. Great job!

[@OldTechBloke]

Many thanks Jeff. To be fair I've only been around 10 months and generally only get the chance to do one video a week in normal times. But the channel is growing fast I'm pleased to say. Glad to have you on board

[@sirsuse]

I don't know what the developer has done with this distro but the battery life on my laptop is way better than with any other distro I've tried over the past couple of years. Feren OS is beautiful and functional. I've grown to really love kde because of it.

[@RobG001]

Thorough, clear and concise. Been wanting a distro to run on one of my mid-2012 Macbook Pro, Hopefully, this will do nicely. Subscribed.

[@OldTechBloke]

Cheers

[@nemowei5553]

Just switched from Win10 to Feren OS. Amazing...

[@aurimasc5333]

Amazing OS, Installed it on very old laptop with dual core cpu and 4gb ram. Works like a charm. Recommending.!

[@prayan72]

In the search of choosing a Linux distro to install on my nephew's new computer, I stumbled across your review of Feren OS. I fell in love with your style and with Feren OS as well! So, I'm sending you a big thank you and I immediately subcribed to your channel, really excellent! Best regards from Italy!

[@OldTechBloke]

Welcome aboard!

[@jeffreyplum5259]

I have Feren OS on a main desktop. I tried KDE Neon briefly, but I prefer Feren's more traditional tools. I will be adding an SSD for it, then it will really fly. I have stayed with XFCE, but KDE has slimmed down nicely. Thanks for the boost OTB

[@riseabove3082]

I tried Feren OS when they went to this new Plasma QT look and I have to say it is hands down the most polished Plasma build I have ever seen. I used it for a few months and enjoyed it very much but I sadly had to go with a different distro (back to Gnome) due to some small niggles with it. One thing that I hope they put in Feren is disk encryption during the install process. This is sorely missing and was one major aspect of having to turn away from it. If you have to ask why disk encryption is important then you never went thru ID Theft before. In all, Feren OS is very top notch and very unique in any distro I have ever seen.

[@deputy899]

Have just installed this following your video OTB. I've got to say after 1st day of use it is absolutely brilliant. I have tried many distros over the years but I think this will take some beating. I am running it in a multiboot environment. Once I have figured out what Pseudo Rolling Release means I might use it as my only Linux. The Installer is fantastic. Thanks OTG.

[@homelessrobot]

Pseudo rolling release means that its applies 'rolling patches' to a non-rolling release distro's stable branch. For instance, Ubuntu's package manager isn't rolling release, and this is based on that, but it patches over top of it with modifications to allow newer software releases to work with the majority of (older) software in ubuntu's stable branch.

[@Uniblab8]

I switched from MX to Feren. MX is an excellent OS but Feren had easier access to software repositories. It's an excellent OS and it even works smoothly on my Atomic Pi (s). I'm a big Plasma fan so this is perfect. The video was very informative. Thanks.

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks for sharing

[@ThatLinuxDude]

By the way, there's a new Snapshot out for Feren OS.

[@LinuxQuest]

Hello OTB, I really enjoyed this video & thanks for bringing the latest Feren OS to light. It has been way too long since I gave it a look. Cheers!

[@gerrybvr]

Decided to try it after seeing this review. If this IS a 1 man job then VERY impressive. A few niggles, Photos completely locks up the system needing hard reboot. Nemo doesn't scale to 4k so toolbar is merely dots. Latte seems to be pointless duplication. Agree there is a lot of other fluff cosmetic tweak menus that would only confuse a noob. But very lightweight and fast. Well done Feren.

[@gerrybvr]

Still using it after 2Wks says something :)

[@the_answeris6694]

It's okay to have a lot of distros because that's the free market in action. As time passes, some will go on and some will fail. Works for me.

[@eznix]

Q4OS has had the virtual machine auto-detection and installation of extensions for a couple years at least.

[@emjaycee]

Just a couple of comments. Feren, I believe, is a young developer who I personally think is also very innovative. I know English Bob razzes him up a bit anyway :) Personally, I wouldn't recommend KDE for a novice newbie, I think the Cinnamon desktop option would be a much better option. I installed and set up the KDE March (?) ISO yesterday. It is the first time I have managed to get it set up to completion the way I like to set up. An issue, which worked me round a bit lol, was that I had 28 broken packages after I had installed it. I couldn't do an update or anything until those broken packages were fixed. There may well be a terminal fix but I wouldn't know it, but thankfully it does have Synaptic and broken packages can be fixed through that. Once that was fixed, I could update and I could also install the Wine duo... I would say this is what held me back last time with Wine. Living in Oz, I also needed to change repos and for some reason the Evowise repo wouldn't set up for me and I had to choose something else. But, well done Feren, it is certainly getting better and better with every new iteration. You're doing a great job, please keep going :)

[@Alexandros_Alpha]

I liked your presentation of Feren OS. I m thinking of giving it a try. Nice work with the videos. Is there any chance of making a video for Reborn OS and Endless OS ?

[@OldTechBloke]

Both of those are on the list so yes I'll be taking a look :-)

[@gwolfe333]

I like this distro a lot. My main issue is that it uses Nemo instead of Dolphin, but that's an easy fix.

[@andermetalbrasil]

I like Nemo. I didn't install Dolphin yet.

[@gwolfe333]

@@andermetalbrasil Nemo is deff my fav Gtk file manager, so it's not bad that it's there at all.

[@joesalyers]

The best part of Feren OS even the plasma edition is that Nemo is the default file manager and not the awful Dolphin. Nemo is the most comprehensive GUI file manager I have ever seen and when compared to the other default file managers Caja, Thunar, PCMANFM, Nautilus, & the Deepin File Manager, Nemo always is better in its stock default state. Nemo is almost as good as MacOS's Finder which is saying something when it comes to GUI file managers.

[@neffscape6353]

I'm looking at this video, right after having switched to Plasma after many years of GNOME / MATE. What I realized after my switch is how underrated plasma is, and I think it's because of two reasons: its history and its defaults. KDE has always been reknown for its extreme customizability and its powerful functions: this resulted in a very "baroque" and bloated GUI. In addition, KDE wasn't exactly beloved for being leightweight on on RAM usage. It also came with insane defaults: single click for navigating in the menus, a familiar yet boring Windows style layout and... not the most exciting default theme. It also had problems integrating with GTK based application. The whole experience was in fact a little bit disappointing for us GNOME users, so I never spent more than a day with Plasma as a Desktop. Last time I tried it, however, I was surprised to discover that Plasma is now very lighweight: it is as light as XFCE and way more powerful. It is also far more polished than it once was. Defaults are still not my piece of cake, but they are much better than they were some years ago. I spent almost an hour customizing my desktop to my likings, and in fact there are so many options that you can spend a months trying out every possibile configuration. On one hand this is awesome, on the other hand this is a grave for productivity. Feren OS solves many of these problems by giving you more default layouts to choose and this is going to dramatically decrease the time needed to actually make KDE usable for most of average users. I'm really interested in FerenOS approach, and I think I'm going try it the future. Thanks for your review and for your work on this channel.

[@OldTechBloke]

Cheers Marco, Feren is certainly a distro to watch

[@ThatLinuxDude]

7:46 That's Calamares, and the language picked initially is actually dependant on the locale used in the Live Session, which is controlled by both the language selection screen you get when pressing a key on the initial Feren OS logo on BIOS Boot (UEFI boot forces you to pick a language before booting), and any change to the language made in MintLocale (before logging out and logging in again) in the Live Session. Now, why doesn't it therefore select English US by default? Feren OS has the overall locale to English UK by default in the Live Session when constructing the Feren OS ISO.

[@mariozenarju6461]

Thank you! So many people are not aware that all the preset installation options have nothing to do with the actual location you're in, but the boot options

[@OldTechBloke]

Overall I was really impressed. Not really sure how this one got past me up to now 😁

[@metafile001]

Feren; I am gobsmacked by this video, and the collective comments. Starting to be a click bait channel - just about to unsubscribe...

[@ThatLinuxDude]

@@metafile001 ???

[@xXPyrophorusXx]

A plus for having the Toronto skyline (sort of) background.

[@DanCalloway]

OTB, I use FerenOS Jan 2020 Snapshot as my daily driver on the Main PC which is an Intel Core i3 7th gen 3.90 GHz quad-core CPU and 16GB of RAM with a 1TB SSD. I love Feren. I realize you can't cover all the bases but noticed you skipped over the Kvantum Theme Manager, which I quite like, and TimeShift, which I could not do without. My system is backed up daily using TimeShift which gets backed up to my 5TB NAS. You also didn't touch on the different menu options unfortunately or you would have noticed that there are at least four different options. The one I use is the Tiled Menu which unbelievably gives you an almost duplicate of the Windows 10 experience with tiles and Start Menu. Great review though. Thanks much. Cheers.

[@OldTechBloke]

Yes unfortunately I always have to think about time as well. As soon as I go above 40 minutes you would be surprised at just how many people don’t bother watching. So always a trade off. Appreciate your comments

[@fishmanloveslinux7978]

I am a new subscriber to your channel. Here is a definition of what you asked about the logo. Search Results Featured snippet from the web Feren. ... Feren or Færen is a lake in the municipality of Meråker in Trøndelag county, Norway. A small part in the northwestern corner of the lake extends into the municipalities of Stjørdal, Levanger, and Verdal at the outlet into the river Forra. I loved the video and am using feren OS on my Lenovo Thinkpad R61 laptop. So far it works fabulously.

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks for the info and feedback :-)

[@mukkaspec3333]

Looks a bit different now since I tried a couple of years ago. Looks like a lot of work has gone into it.

[@virajm3304]

Great content & voice you have sir. Thank you

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks and welcome

[@torspedia]

Might have to take another look at Feren as it has been a good few weeks since I've last done so. Vivaldi is Chromium based!

[@aleksandar_techtattoo6337]

Slimjet all the way ;) cut off chromium , a little bit fugly but fast as hell

[@RandyMony]

Another thing that sets it apart from other Ubuntu-based Distros is that it's "Pseudu" Rolling Release (not sure exactly what that means)! I sure like the look and feel of FerenOS tho 👍

[@uzefulvideos3440]

I think it just handles upgrades like updates. Don't know if that's a good thing.

[@bandit6048]

I think the lower left icon (feren) is a stylized peregrine falcon.

[@skycrew867]

Great review.....just downloaded it......will give it a try for sure!

[@dermottconnolly9309]

Your welcome in Dublin any time

[@OldTechBloke]

Cheers Dermott, I've never been. I worked in Belfast for 3 months and loved it but never been further South

[@FrasSmith]

There's something about Plasma. I love it, I love it until I realise I don't love it.

[@TroyKC]

BTW Vivaldi browser is a fork of the Opera browser.

[@ToranK]

Vivaldi is the greatest browser. The only competition is Firefox, due to it's add-ons.

[@mukeshrajak4579]

Anyone know how to switch internal mic to Bluetooth headset mic? And is there any possible to change absolute volume in Ubuntu base distro?

[@OldTechBloke]

Should be able to do it from the pulse audio controls

[@Kevin-mx1vi]

Thanks for the review. I'll definitely be giving Feren a try. ☺ I kinda wish I'd seen this a while back as I've had to choose a Linux distro suitable for a non tech savvy friend who wants to move away from Windows, so I chose Mint because it's friendly and I'm familiar with it and can act as"tech support", but this looks like it would also be very suitable. Addendum: I just tried to download it but it's another that comes from SourceForge so it will take hours at dialup speeds. :(

[@ThatLinuxDude]

You can change the mirror on SourceForge to speed downloads up through the "Problems Downloading?" button on the countdown page

[@donporter8432]

Nicely done, Bloke. Thanks

[@unforgivinger]

greetings and well done on your review. i am currently on the market for a distro thats pretty much what feren os is.I would like to install it on a macbook white 2008 4,1 with ssd and 4gb of ram as main os. usage will be just browsing and some documents/pdf. will it do good? i have read many opinions saying that is not the best option due to updates,wifi drivers etc all i care is if it stable enough for my parents to use daily,they still use a snow leopard macbook. could you please give a bit more info? thank you in advance.

[@OldTechBloke]

There's lots of distros that are great for newcomers, but this one has a solid base and I thought it was really well configured and simple to use

[@P5YcHoKiLLa]

Gonna try this, good luck downloading it though since it's coming from SourceForge and the download trickles down in fits and spurts. I'd suggest going to a US mirror which was way faster than any EU source for me.

[@aravindd6886]

one of the best review bro, can you please tell me that, feren os can run smoothly on the i3 processor laptop.

[@OldTechBloke]

should be fine

[@rohanleander]

cant wait for you to take a look at pop os .

[@OldTechBloke]

I just wish it wasn’t gnome

[@rohanleander]

@@OldTechBloke ohh

[@florin604]

I will have a look

[@salparadise1220]

According to distrowatch Feren is American. As far as I know, the only UK distro is KDE Neon. Shame there isn't a British Arch based distro. That would be about perfect.

[@metafile001]

???

[@salparadise1220]

@@metafile001 Er, right back at ya? Which bit of that are you questioning?

[@ThatLinuxDude]

DistroWatch still has incorrect information, I see. :v

[@salparadise1220]

@@ThatLinuxDude So you are in the UK then?

[@ThatLinuxDude]

@@salparadise1220 yeah

[@denizkendirci]

the most ubuntu based distros are better than ubuntu itself lately.

[@tiitulitii]

Everybody can have 10 different distros installed. So, there can be 70 billion distros.

[@zamSEG]

seems like promising os.

[@thisisanevilcorp992]

What is important is if it's systemd already have a browser and office suite integrated.

[@rossgebert9422]

Thanks OTB, gonna try it.

[@SerjStar]

I don't know why but this locks up alot and crashes on my laptop for some reason and I love this cuz it has many costumes

[@NavinBetamax]

...but uses the same underwear every day !!!

[@lauwe54]

thanks so much looks real good

[@OldTechBloke]

It was!

[@spenceeb]

I don't understand how your VM automatically booted into the correct resolution. I can't get mine to do full screen at 1920x1080...

[@salparadise1220]

Feren was a one man project. I don't know if it that's changed.

[@benji272]

I'm 99% sure he's still working on it by himself

[@syamsuriemfuad7994]

Playing this video on 1.25x speed makes the normal speed a slow mo.

[@meee2335]

thank you hhhhh

[@markpaterson6024]

As a fairly new person to Linux I liken choosing a distro to looking at a huge flock of seagulls and choosing one you like! LoL 😅 If it wasn't for people like you OTB we would be trapped down the rabbit hole indefinitely. 👍🏽

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks Mark, I agree that the choice of distro is a bit of a minefield

[@ToranK]

KDE5 is the best desktop. Only, I was not impresed by the stability (or better lack...) of KDENeon.

[@rantaviiva5218]

Well, back in the deep dark days we who had kept a hands-on to linux distros to an extended level. We most often got accustomed to Gnome desktop w/Debian, Suse and RHEL plus the early KDE desktop option in distro (as added component) at the time. This video has demonstrated, how light this KDE had become in the development. That really has added confidence to start adopting the use of FerenOS deployed to 10 yr-old laptop w/processor achitecture of i7 but w/o all that much of memory installed.

[@saidbakr]

You did not notice something important, FerenOS has Nemo file browser instead of Disocver! However, if you follow its account on Twitter, you may feel that there is only one person develop it, all the tweets full of "I ..."

[@atemoc]

Instead of Dolphin* :3

[@saidbakr]

@@atemoc Yes it is Dolphin!

[@atemoc]

@Minister Mozy Does it? Maybe on Ubuntu, but on Arch for example, if you install nemo, it won't install all of that at all And I personnaly used both, until I found an easy way to be able to run dolphin as root with a simple right-click Since then I use Dolphin only when I use KDE Plasma

[@atemoc]

@Minister Mozy Yeah, so really not much at all to install, and especially not all the Gnome applications like you said before, I would even say that it's missing a dependency : cinnamon-translations, so that nemo (and others cinnamon apps) can be in other languages

[@ThatLinuxDude]

@Minister Mozy Nah, all it installs is a minor Cinnamon Desktop Data package, or something, and not any other bit of Cinnamon that actually gives you the Cinnamon Desktop Environment. Now, for Arch however, you'd probably want to prod Nemo's package maintainer in Arch about those dependencies.

[@Doryopaint]

Can you take a look at void linux?

[@OldTechBloke]

I promise I will, it's on my list

[@metafile001]

Still VERY amazed at your viewing and subscription levels? It's not that the channel is not good, but I just don't get it? Best wishes and stay safe in these precarious times...

[@OldTechBloke]

Hi Jim, It still blows me away. All I can say is that I work hard on my tags and keyword searches and use TubeBuddy. Seems to work for me. In fact I've just taken a look at your last couple oif videos and they don't have any tags. Tough for people to find them without those mate

[@metafile001]

@@OldTechBloke tags? No idea what you mean, but if that is the trickery..!!!...:-) Once again, best wishes, and stay safe in these precarious times...

[@OldTechBloke]

@@metafile001 Hi Jim, when you upload a video there's a place to add tags - you get 500 characters. That's what brings you up in searches when people search for topics on youtube. Without those you really would struggle, and I noticed a big difference when I started to pay attention to them. You stay well too mate :-)

[@n3bakarma771]

Distro hoping-OS is a distro too..

[@ronwilliams4184]

re-spin is more understandable.

[@christiaantheron9080]

Can you please review where to get reasonably priced Linux compatible laptops in the UK?

[@OldTechBloke]

I’m not aware of any specific sources but what I do is just use eBay. I look for thinkpads T420, T430, x230, x220, or any of the newer ones. All compatible with Linux and you can pick up some good deals, under £200 for a decent one

[@christiaantheron9080]

Thank you

[@edjett2631]

Dell has some of their laptops that you can get with Linux already installed.

[@christiaantheron9080]

Thanks

[@danielbradfield9387]

There is a UK company called StarLabs, whose products have been getting positive reviews: starlabs.systems

[@alexanderknowles9057]

Could use some help please. I'm using Feren OS on my laptop and it comes with VLC Player 3.0.8 that won't play my avi files on my network. I read online that version 3.0.7.1 plays avi files over a network without issue. I downloaded the folder with 3.0.7.1. to my desktop so I just want to know how do I install it please. Would really love your input since you are Linux professionals. Thanks in advance.

[@j.s.radhakrishnan2006]

Open the file in the file manager, right click, open terminal here, then enter "sudo apt install . Or something else. Try it without apt install.

[@yearofthecat4730]

Thanks for the info It's a bit mind boggling to me but trying to get familiar - The link to facebook did not work for me - I would like to join

[@OldTechBloke]

Try again

[@yearofthecat4730]

@@OldTechBloke Still same = says this content is not avail etc

[@yearofthecat4730]

Maybe it's a 'private' group? i.e not public?

[@wongken7875]

OK.... Feren OS based on Linux Mint, Mint based on Ubuntu, Ubuntu based on Debian... Let's look forward to next OS is based on Feren OS.

[@ThatLinuxDude]

medium.com/feren-os/correcting-a-common-mistake-with-feren-os-reviews-bd44ae28297e

[@tabavlog-longnguyen5160]

Feren OS is nice and many apps available after installation. What I can do to run it from USB?

[@OldTechBloke]

Just use dd in Linux or rufus in windows

[@tabavlog-longnguyen5160]

@@OldTechBloke Thank you. I am quite sure that I can use rufus!

[@joegravel2488]

thank OTB i was going to instal mangaro but now hummm dont kno any more

[@OldTechBloke]

So many good distros out there :-)

[@geoffreydean3656]

I'm just waiting for a Linux that doesn't idle 10 degrees C hotter than Windows.

[@MGXandao]

Desktop Cinnamon?

[@OldTechBloke]

No plasma

[@johanb.7869]

It's a one man distro. Wich can be a risk because if something happens or he should say I'm stopping with Feren OS who will maintaine it? Look at Peppermint for example. I prefer Breeze dark instead off the Feren dark.

[@OldTechBloke]

Just change the theme then Johan

[@johanb.7869]

@@OldTechBloke That's always one of the first things I do and that's one of the reasons and I like Peppermint so much. It has a default dark theme.

[@joshuadavid7199]

What about installing with an Nvidia 1070 8gb gpu

[@OldTechBloke]

I don't have one I'm afraid

[@SwapnilGusani]

Just use the driver manager.

[@arunskurup2479]

The installation menu is same as manjaro is in it

[@uzefulvideos3440]

Yes, both use the Calamares installer.

[@valdemarcaballero5298]

the installer does not work :(

[@davidmackie8552]

It just promised to take 5 hours downloading.

[@gregzeng]

Tried 3x to install on real hardware. Needs to specify the boot esp partition. Refuses to install otherwise. Gave up.

[@florin604]

Did you make one and didn't work? How big was it?

[@ThatLinuxDude]

If you don't know how to partition the OS properly, just erase the disk, replace the / partition of your previous Linux install with it, or make some free space on the partition list and then use the Replace a Partition option to replace the Free Space with Feren OS. Just make sure any partitions are unmounted first on that hard disk as those options only become available in the installer if all the hard drive partitions are unmounted.

[@NavinBetamax]

Hope you do something to avoid POP in your audio........( use a wind screen in front of your microphone ) !!! You are breathing heavy on the Mic.....for the kind o acoustic treated room you are in ....you can re-position the Mic a little bit away from your face....

[@OldTechBloke]

Yes I was too close. I have the basic foam pop filter and there’s meant to be a pop filter built into the procaster, but perhaps a separate one as well

[@NavinBetamax]

Besides......The Mic covers a better part of your Beard too. !!! Lol !

[@riseabove3082]

@@OldTechBloke You're audio came in very good to me, I didn't notice any pops not saying there wasn't any.

[@sc0or]

Dialog boxes with old buttons but without margins is a really bad taste. So, I don't trust them at all. Linux window managers are sick because of 320x240 legacy. They are hopeless. And nobody is brave enough to say f..k that coffee machines, we are going to build a Linux for a desktop finally without ugly, fat, blurred, gray borders, but with multi layering, shadows, transparency, crispness, and other mature things. That yellow thing is a duck, not a penguin -)

[@MsWarpedone]

Thousands of distros competing for attention ... what a fail. How about trying to be better than iOS or WinX, already gave up on that and just trying to be better than some other sad distro? What a waste of brain and time....

[@patrickfitzpatrick7245]

Too many distros. If there was a way to unite around a handful and perfect them, it would show the power of Linux =) .. But what do I know .. just speculating..

[@RoadkingTom]

Not suitable for 32-Bit machines, Ithink it would've been nice if you mention this in your video.

[@OldTechBloke]

Sorry Tom, and oversight