Pinguy OS 13.04 (Final, Yet Beta) Released With GNOME 3.8

Pinguy OS 13.04 (based on Ubuntu 13.04) beta has been released recently, this being basically the final 13.04 version because Pinguy has decided to keep the 6 month releases as betas and only the LTS will be considered stable.

The non-LTS releases will be using bleeding edge software, like XBMC 13.0 alpha or GNOME 3.8 / GNOME Shell 3.8 that's included in Pinguy OS 13.04, which isn't included by default in Ubuntu 13.04 and so, it isn't considered fully stable in Ubuntu. According to a recent Pinguy OS blog post, the 6 month releases are usable, but they might not include features that will be available in the LTS:

"The 6 month Pinguy OS releases will be missing features that will be in the final LTS, but the release will be very usable. It just won’t be at a stage where I am happy to call it stable due to missing features or things not quite working as they should. The goal of the 6 month releases is to help give users insight and influence on where Pinguy OS is heading and help shape the LTS release"

Pinguy OS

For those not familiar with Pinguy OS, this is an Ubuntu remaster with lots of applications installed by default as well as tweaks that you won't find in any other distro, at least by default.

Pinguy OS 13.04 beta uses GNOME Shell 3.8 by default and the first things you'll notice when you log in are a Docky instance displayed at the bottom, used as a taskbar / app launcher, and a simple but stylish Conky setup displayed at the top, under the GNOME Shell panel. There's another Docky instance on the left, used for quickly accessing various folders, but it uses autohide so you may not notice it at first.

For the GTK theme, Pinguy OS uses a modified elementary theme and for the icons, it uses the beautiful Faience Azur icon theme, but more GTK / icon themes are available by default so you can easily change them if you don't like the defaults.

As usual, Pinguy OS comes with many little things that make your life easier as well as under-the-hood optimizations and tweaks such as ZRam and Preload installed by default, aimed at providing a better default experience.

GNOME 3.8

GNOME Control Center 3.8

Even though Ubuntu 13.04 has GNOME 3.6, Pinguy OS uses GNOME 3.8 with GNOME Shell by default, customized with quite a few extensions as usual. For 13.04, Pinguy uses Gno-menu extension by default instead of Cardapio (which is no longer being developed and is looking for new maintainers), but you can also use Slingshot App Launcher or the GNOME appmenu extensions instead, both being installed (but not used) by default.

Gno-menu extension

Messaging Menu extension

Besides Gno-menu, Pinguy OS 13.04 includes quite a few GNOME Shell 3.8 extensions by default, such as:

• Activities Configurator: lets you configure the Activities button (text, padding, hide text or icon, hot corner sensivity, etc.);
• Alternatetab: ALT-Tab replacement that allows you to cycle between windows and doesn't group by application;
• Alternative status menu: replaces the GNOME Shell Status menu with one that displays Suspend / Hibernate and Power Off as separate items;
• AppIndicator Support: the extension we wrote about a while back that adds Ubuntu AppIndicator support to GNOME Shell, though you need to set the indicators placement in panel from its settings (via GNOME Tweak Tool) for it to work;
• Default minimize and maximize: displays minimize and maximize buttons on windows, which isn't available by default in GNOME Shell;
• Frippery move clock: the clock is moved to the right;
• Media player indicator: Ubuntu Unity-like sound indicator;
• Messaging Menu: Unity-like messaging menu;
• Move-free Message Tray: Returns the Message Tray to pre-3.6 behavior where your whole screen doesn't move;
• more.

Just like in the previous releases, because it uses a custom menu, the Activities button isn't available by default but you can enable it if you want, by using GNOME Tweak Tool, which is included by default in Pinguy OS (or simply use the Super key to access the Activities Overview).

Default applications

Besides some new GNOME Shell extensions, Pinguy OS 13.04 beta comes with Netflix Desktop by default, along with its usual default packages such as XBMC, codecs, Adobe Flash, G-talk plugin and so on.

Also, the Spotify and Google Chrome repositories are added by default so it's very simple to install either of these applications.

Pinguy OS 13.04 beta ships with the following default packages: Firefox 21, Nautilus 3.8.1, LibreOffice 4.0.2, Empathy 3.8.2, GNOME Control Center 3.8.2, Deluge 3.6, Docky 2.2.1, Friends 0.1.3daily13.04.17.1, Skype 4.1.0 (but an update to 4.2 is already available through the Update Manager), TeamViewer 7, Thunderbird 17.0.6, Pinta 1.4, Shotwell 0.14.1, Rapid Photo Downloader 0.4.5, Xchat 2.8.8, Arista Transcoder 0.9.7, Cheese 3.8.1, Clementine 1.1.1, GNOME Mplayer 1.0.8, OpenShot Video Editor 1.4.3, DeVeDe 3.23, VLC 2.0.6, XBMC Media Center 2.13.0 alpha, Gloobus Preview 0.4.5, Boot Repair 3.199, Gedit 3.8.2, Gparted 0.16.1, Ubuntu One, GNOME Tweak Tool 3.8.0+git, Wine 1.5.30, PlayOnLinux 4.1.1, Synaptic 0.80, Y PPA Manager 0.0.9.8, Shutter 0.90, Ubuntu Software Center 5.6.0 and more, all on top of GNOME 3.8.

Like Ubuntu 13.04, Pinguy OS 13.04 beta uses the 3.8.0 Ubuntu Linux kernel, based on the upstream 3.8.8 Linux kernel, comes with MTP support by default and so on.

Download Pinguy OS 13.04 beta

Download Pinguy OS 13.04 beta

For support, visit the Pinguy OS forums.