So, if you haven't heard yet, Linux Mint 19.1 has had a BETA released for it which includes Cinnamon 4.0, and all the other latest additions and such for it, and here's how things are right now with getting Feren OS ready for Cinnamon 4.0:

There are now new updates to the Feren OS ISOs available, which bring with them urgent fixes for potential installation failure vectors, as well as updating everything possible to the latest versions.

Here's the changelogs for each ISO:

So, after the poll on the Google+ over the desired choice of Desktop Environment for the 'Emergency Desktop Environment', sparked by the potential desire of Linux Mint Team to kill off Metacity support in Cinnamon (Metacity is the Window Dressings around windows, which includes the Close, Maximise, Minimise and Menu buttons, and the borders around windows), the word from the community of Feren OS Users who participated made their call, with the options being either KDE Plasma or GNOME. Due to a more than overwhelming response in support of using the Plasma Desktop Environment as the next DE, and due to a number of other reasons as well, Feren OS is about to change, for the better.

Every day I'm always trying to make improvements and features and improve existing features in order to make the Feren OS Experience as great as possible... this can also mean that issues may arise and so I want to try and make sure that the issues are as lacking and rare as possible, but quite recently that has slipped a bit, and some noticeable cracks have shown in the updates Feren OS has had in recent time, before eventually being fixed, within Feren OS and Feren OS's packages alone. Here's an apology for the inconvenience those issues might've then caused, as well as me explaining what I've put in place since that has happened.

Changelog for 2/11/2018 Update:
- Fix 'Failed to start lightdm.service' on Feren OS KDE Experimental installations
- Plasma 5.14
- Removed gtk3-nocsd due to issues with injection of certain applications breaking them completely until removed
- Removed Ubiquity (was a temporary installer anyway) now the issue with Calamares appears to be fixed according to sufferers of the issue in previous ISO versions.

So, I got hold of Issue 241 of Linux Format from a local store after hearing that there was a review of Feren OS in it, meaning it'd be good for me to check it out, on top of the fact that I usually get Linux Format anyway, to then find out that they NOT ONLY did a review of the OS, BUT ALSO a full-fledged article on Feren OS, namely getting started with the OS! Cheers for that, by the way, if you're reading this, you people that made those the review and the article, but I thought I might spend a blog post clarifying some things up that seem to have been confused regarding Feren OS in 2018.

So, for all those who want to translate Feren OS to other languages, you can now obtain the POT files for the strings in Feren OS Programs and Additions to other applications (for bits that'd otherwise be in English no matter what locale's chosen), from this GitLab Repository:

Some notes:
- Please follow the instructions on the Repository Description in order to contribute translations
- It'd be preferred if you DO add po and mo files in the specified locale's folder, based on the main POT File, you can use programs such as 'poedit' to create the 'po' file, and then you can make the 'mo' file with commands such as 'msgfmt -v namehere.po -o namehere.mo'.
- The repo, at the time of writing this, is currently sparce. The repo will gain more and more POT files as the OS gets more and more packages updated in order to add translate-ability to them, as so far only Layout Manager has translate-ability in-code. (2018.07.0.0.1)

So, a little bit of a short blog post, but, there's two things I'd like to highlight:
1. The upgrade path for Feren OS on 16.04 users
    - The upgrade path, as promised, for Feren OS on 16.04 users to update to an 18.04 base, has now been unblocked once more, because of a promise I made that upon the release of Ubuntu 18.04.1 the path would be unblocked once more, as well as the fact that, obviously, Ubuntu 18.04.1 got released officially. With the latest updates to the Major Updater, future Major Updaters also now have better protection against errors that could be caused from issues such as not being able to access the Feren OS Repositories, etc, now too, with a package check for a package on the Feren OS Repositories failing then causing the program to stop Major Updating before the process gets to the point where things aren't easily undone, as an extra pre-Update check.

2. Contributions for Translating
    - So, about Translations: I know a lot of you have been sending me emails about wanting to contribute translations to Feren OS, and for that, I'll say right now: Sorry for not replying, and I'll, once done with a big change that I'm working on for Feren OS Live, for the standard OS usage path (More Details Soon), I'll work on adding in translation support for Feren OS Additions, as well as add a repository on my GitLab with all the English Strings, and then have all the locales I know of separated in there as branches, with all the strings, in files, so that translators can then fork, translate, and pull request the translations for different locales, so that I can then attempt to add in translations for non-English languages in Feren OS.

Applies to: 2018 July Snapshot (Codename: Silver)

An important update has released for feren-os-majorupdate. If you haven't updated to version 2018.07.0.0.1 or above, and haven't Major Updated yet, you should upgrade that package now, as well as make sure that 'feren-ppas' is up to date too.
Well, you've all waited patiently for this moment, and now I'm happy to announce that I have dropped all the packages required for upgrading Feren OS to an Ubuntu 18.04/Mint 19-based Feren OS.

Here's what you need to do:
1. Go into Update Manager
2. Hit 'Refresh'
3. Once the updates list has been refreshed, select 'feren-os-majorupdate' to be updated, and hit 'Install Updates'
4. Restart the system when you want to begin the long update process, and confirm that you'd like to update there and then the next time Feren OS boots.

If you can't find an update for 'feren-os-majorupdate', here's what you need to do:
1. Go into Software/Software Manager
2. Search for 'feren-os-majorupdate'
3. Go to 'feren-os-majorupdate' (Package) and install it
4. Restart the system when you want to begin the long update process, and confirm that you'd like to update there and then the next time Feren OS boots.

NOTE: If you still have 'feren-system-packages' installed, then that package should pull down the 'feren-os-majorupdate' package for you onto the system, assuming it's up to date.

For businesses, you can still schedule the Major Update if you haven't already done so, by checking this blog post.

Again, thank you everyone for waiting patiently for this update path to be added in, and a huge thanks to those who helped test the Major Updater, as well, thanks to all the hard work, the general users should now be able to comfortably update over to 18.04-based Feren OS.
PS: If you do catch wind of an error relating to the package 'acpid', don't worry about it. I know about that issue, and so implemented a next-boot script that then fixes that issue automatically for you the next time Feren OS boots after the Major Update, before then clearing out the remains of the Major Updater, now it's then not needed, for now, so that you can get right back to managing installed applications, packages, etc.
Oh, and regarding the ISO: That's coming a little bit later, I was mainly focusing on the upgrade path for now, and so haven't yet started on the next snapshot's ISO (based on Mint 19.0 Cinnamon).

So, here's good news, and also a mandatory "please help me test stuff" message, regarding the Feren OS Major Update Utility, which is coming (hopefully) very soon to facilitate the upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04/Mint 19 for current Feren OS Users.

So, the good news is that throughout all my testing, I can confirm that the utility can now successfully be booted directly into in its own graphical step of the boot process, to make sure that the least amount of damage can be done to Feren OS during the base update, as well as successfully update to 18.04 while keeping all the Feren OS and Mint goodness in the OS, on the following hardware:
- Virtual Machine (Tested in VirtualBox)
- Intel (HP Pavilion dv6 Tested)
- AMD (Lenovo Yoga 510 Tested)

However, here comes the mandatory "please help me test stuff" message: NVIDIA. You might have already noticed that there's a mention of all the common hardwares that Feren OS is known to install on, BUT NVIDIA. This is because of unfortunately I have, as of right now, got NO machines to test which have NVIDIA Hardware on them, and so can't test the Major Updater / Update Process on NVIDIA Hardware, which is where you people come in.

So, as I promised, now that the GCSEs are (hopefully) over for me, Feren OS development shall resume as it was very soon.

Short post, I know, but most of what I would mention here's already in the Post GCSE Agenda Post, so... check there.

Hello people, 

This will be a relatively quick blog post, but since I've got a week to spare in-between GCSEs, I might as well do some more preparation work for Feren OS, in order to hopefully make the wait worthwhile, so... here's my agenda on what I want to do for Feren OS:

• Check what applications are running in a Live Session of Feren OS, and try to see why the OS is so laggy in VMs, and whether it's not just Cinnamon making the OS slow AF in a VM, and then remove any unneeded bits where found.
• Figure out how to get the Upgrader, to Ubuntu 18.04, to consistently show across all Feren OS Devices, during boot time or shutdown time, as intended.
• Finish the Update to Ubuntu 18.04 script, and push it to Feren OS Users on Stable, from Earlybird.
• New Feren Theme Style
  
• New Inspire Icon Theme Style
• De-bloat where possible
• Bug fixes as no product is ever perfect
• Some tweaks to Feren OS stuff, to make the OS more safe, and better
• Switch to Ubuntu base from Mint base

If you're seeing this, then Feren OS is about to or has already entered a development suspension. This development suspension will be in effect during the 14th of May, to 15th of June, once that period of time is over, Feren OS will resume development once more, with more exciting updates in the works for Feren OS, outside of the 18.04 Upgrade. This also affects Phoenix Linux development, as this time will be taken to revise and tackle the British GCSEs. Good Luck, Year 11s.

You're seeing this right, you can now upgrade early to Ubuntu 18.04 on Feren OS, with the WIP Upgrade Script. Since this is a WIP, however, a lot of theming and some software and so on will not be available and/or will be broken.
Please do not do this on your daily driver, unless you know how to recover from the loss of the Cinnamon Desktop Environment, as this script is still WIP, and has only been tested by me on AMD and Intel Hardware, and so I do not know if the OS or Cinnamon will break on other hardware. If it does, try to comment down below the contents of your HOME FOLDER/.xsession-errors on that system (the file is hidden), so that I can try and find the cause and the solution to it.

As The Feren OS Dev, I always strive to find ways to improve the core design and usability of Feren OS to make it one of the best, and one of the ways I've conveniently found of recent days is exploring methods to push the Feren Brand, and that is why, today, I'm proud to announce Feren OS Blue, the newest addition to the Feren OS Family.