A New Update is now available for Feren OS Next, bringing some big changes

A new update is here for the Feren OS Next x64 ISO, bringing all the latest changes to Next so far, and improving the overall experience, bringing a freshly re-done base, and overall improving on the roadmap for Feren OS Next and Feren OS and how they'll be upon Next's completion.
Known Bugs (Changes Below):
- Plenty of System Settings items are currently missing
- A newly re-done base means that some things may be missing
- This is in no way a complete product yet, there's plenty to be potentially changed here...
- 'gtk2' Application Style is still a little bit crash-causing when trying to set it in System Settings
- More bugs were potentially introduced with this freshly re-done re-base
- Some Open With defaults are completely wrong, such as Text Files opening in Okular rather than Kate by default, these will be ironed out near the end of development, most likely
- Hitting 'Install Now' in Welcome Screen STILL does nothing whatsoever
- Updating packages that provide pages in System Settings will cause you to lose the custom layout, to fix this run this command in Terminal: sudo /var/lib/dpkg/info/feren-kde-settings.postinst (Sudo Password = Your Password)
- Welcome Screen is still made for the Cinnamon-using Stock Feren OS
- There is not yet a package for managing additions to Feren OS package-wise (this means you'll have to manually install new Feren OS Packages, for now, as they come to the Feren OS Next Builds)
- OOBE is not implemented yet
- Latte may crash randomly during long periods of being hidden
- The OS isn't yet being optimised too much so expect a bigger than normal installation size, never-mind ISO Size (that thing got compressed... A LOT.)
- The Live Session mostly identifies as 'Lubuntu'. Remember, the work done here is mainly just in the experience past the LiveCD Boot Menu...
- Timeshift is not yet installed by default
- If your Target HDD/SSD is too small for Feren OS but big enough for Lubuntu 18.10 (especially 18.10 Final Beta) then Feren OS will still let you begin installation nonetheless - I have not yet measured the disk space used by a fresh install of Feren OS in order to make an estimated Disk Space requirement for the installer to make sure is satisfied...
- Potentially even more unlisted issues

Things to know:
- Vivaldi may not come with its extra codecs for playing video and audio, to fix this install chromium-codecs-ffmpeg and chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra from the Store or another method
- If you're going from 18.10-based Feren OS to this new ISO (no matter the version of Feren OS before (Next/Stock/Lite/Other OS)) and migrate your whole /home to the new install, you may need to delete the ffmpeg file in HOME/.local/share/vivaldi to make Vivaldi work again.

Changes:
A lot has changed in the backend side with this update, and some changes have also happened on the front-end:
Front-end Changes
- Smaller ISO Size (1.9GB)
- System Settings has a custom layout that is (in my opinion) better designed for people coming from Feren OS Stock and also newbies and users alike (inspiration was taken from both Netrunner Linux (the 'Other' and 'About System' options) and one of the Feren OS concepts (the overall layout))
- Calamares now has an actual installation slideshow to look through when installing the OS
- Ark has now replaced File Roller as being the Archive Manager, and an accompanying Nemo Extension has been made and is also included in this update
Back-end Changes
- The 'KDE Neon' Repository (User Edition) was added, meaning that you will now always have the latest Plasma and KApps versions at all times on supported versions of the Ubuntu base
- Another Feren OS Repository (temporary) folder called 'neon-required' has been added to provide fixed versions of packages such as 'qt5-style-plugins' and related packages for the version of Qt provided by KDE Neon's Repository
- Plasma is now at version 5.15
- 'feren-safeguards' is now in Feren OS Next, meaning your system is now slightly safer from attempts to run a certain destruction command (as well as doing it humorously)
- Most importantly: The Ubuntu Base was downgraded to 18.04

Download Feren OS Next (WIP):

You can download Feren OS Next from the button below:

Download Feren OS Next (x64, 1.9GB)

I'm on Feren OS Next on 18.10, what do I do?

For the best experience, it's probably for the best if you reinstall using this new ISO so you can benefit from all the changes on this ISO Update and be back to an 18.04-base. However, if you don't want to do so, then here is the plan which, assuming everything goes smoothly, will come into place regarding 18.04-based and Non-LTS Feren OS in relation to the usage of the KDE Neon Repository:

LTS
- All Feren OS Users will receive a new (optional) command to enable the KDE Neon Repositories on their machine once qt5-style-plugin-gtk2 is fixed, which will allow them to enable the repositories instantly on the knowledge that only the default set of packages that Feren OS includes has been verified to update successfully so far with the KDE Neon Repository enabled (this command will be really risky otherwise until more tests are done and more solutions to resulting conflicts identified, so Timeshift will be a must before using this upcoming command).
- LTS Users, after a transition phase, will always have the KDE Neon PPA at all times

Non-LTS
- LTS users going to Non-LTS will lose the KDE Neon PPA during the upgrade process, assuming that there are no conflicts with packages during the upgrade process as a consequence of doing so
- Non-LTS users will not have the KDE Neon PPA due to Non-LTS releases not being officially supported by KDE Neon's Repositories

Right now, the plan is to check that Feren OS Next can be upgraded from this ISO to a Non-LTS base with the KDE Neon Repository being disabled, and to then go from there...

Near-future plans outside of Next:

Outside of those plans, I'm also planning on making an update to Feren OS January 2019 Snapshot for a second time to fix some issues with Feren OS in GNOME Boxes (e.g.: Indefinite Cinnamon crashes from the get-go), but before that issues need to still be resolved, such as the installer not appearing to install codecs whatsoever during installation, first before I update the ISOs with the new versions of the Feren OS Stock ISOs.

Roadmap Status:

Now, the roadmap for Feren OS and Feren OS Next. It's fairly obvious by now that Feren OS Next is destined to become Feren OS some point in the future once it is completed and is proved to be suitable for taking over the role of being the main Feren OS version on offer, however, there's also other minor changes coming because of this - here's the plan so far:
1. Complete Feren OS Next
2. Transition Feren OS into 'Feren OS Classic'
3. Transition Feren OS Next into 'Feren OS (Stock)'
4. Resume development on Feren OS Lite and side-project Phoenix Linux
5. Work mainly on Feren OS Stock, Lite and Phoenix until Lite and Phoenix are completed and maintain Classic when changes need to be made
6. Work mainly on Feren OS Stock and Lite, and maintain Phoenix and Classic when needed / a new base is released

For now, however, be sure to have fun with the newest Feren OS Next and don't forget to make use of the 'Send Feedback' application to help squash all the bugs for when Feren OS Next is completed​!

The Feren OS Developer