I had no problems, the installation runs via Calamaris and is a little easier than Debian KDE. It's a little more preconfigured, you don't have to do as much as with Debian, but it's still pure Debian, which I like.The KDE is still 5.27 like Debian, but you can work well with it too, I don't always have to have the latest software. Everyone as they wish. That's why stability is in the foreground, which is important to me, the computer has to run, I don't have time to tinker with it in case something doesn't work again.
Version: 8.1 Rating: 9 Date: 2024-05-21 Votes: 26
I've been running various flavors of Linux for years but I am new to Neptune. I wanted to try something new and I loaded it on my spare system.
Install was problematic the first time I tried. The installer crashed at the end with an error message and a failed installation that would not boot correctly. Trying again immediately, the install was smooth and painless. I suspect it was an issue with my USB thumb drive but I am not so sure. A third attempt at installation was also clean and painless.
Once installed, the system has been stable and responsive. It's nothing fancy, but it also isn't cluttered and bogged down with a tone of stuff right out of the gate either. I have been able to install additional packages without issue and so far the repositories have had everything I want.
I was pleasantly surprised to see SELinux as an option in the repositories and I set it up. I had to dig online a bit to figure out what I needed to do, and once I did all of that it has been working fine. It would be nice if the installer gave the option to set this up automatically up front instead of having to set it up explicitly after installation is complete.
So far I am pleased with Neptune though I am still getting familiar. Once I am content that it's solid and what I need, I will load it up on some of my other systems.
Neptune version 8.1 "Juna" surprised me!
It is an excellent GNU/Linux distribution, aimed at desktop users, which provides ease of installation and use, stability (stable Debian base) and a very pleasant appearance (its own theme).
In addition to having software such as: Chromium, VLC, LibreOffice in their latest stable versions, I really liked the scripts:
remove-orphans.sh Removes remains of applications that once were installed (needs root rights)
tutorial A small and simple tutorial for dealing with the bash commandline
ram-usage.sh List memory usage of applications (reverse order).
...
I recommend it, 10/10!
I've been distro-hopping trying to find the right system for my 14 year old laptop. I've tried Ubuntu, Siduction, Gecko, Manjaro, MX, and many others who's names I have forgotten, having thrown their burned DVD's in the trash. The last distro I installed was Neptune, and that's where I found perfection. Installing was easy and so far, after several months there have been no issues, and no problems. My laptop runs like it did over a decade ago. I don't know what more I can say because I can't image Neptune being any better than what it is. I hope they keep up the good work.
Version: 8.0 Rating: 8 Date: 2023-12-25 Votes: 6
I have been using Linux for many years now.. having tried many different flavors and deciding on my preference towards a Debian type version of Linux.. and recently installing Neptune Linux. So to be honest I really like Neptune Linux 8 with one complaint. For whatever reason the install of anything on the system seems painfully slow! I downloaded a program called Pico-8 which allows you to run games or whatever written in Lua. On other systems it takes but a second to run them but with Neptune it's like Neptune is scanning for viruses and takes longer to load and run them, but it shouldn't. Same thing with anything from the store. Takes a while and when I first started I thought the system crashed but it was just getting ready I guess... Now for the most part it works better than a lot of Linux versions. Enough so that I use it on my main computer! My complaint aside would I recommend Neptune.. yes! From the store.. to Steam to the way it handles things I really like Neptune! In the end though it's up to the user and their preference. For me however it works well for my needs! Hopefully this helps anyone looking for a new system to try.
Version: 8.0 Rating: 1 Date: 2023-10-18 Votes: 1
Much as I liked previous editions of Neptune, the latest release has been a bittier disappointment.
It failed to install first time out, then after installing the second time refused the carefully selected password. Third time around it installed and let me in but the problems just multiplied. No firewall on offer out of the box so i had to wait until after all updates were done with no firewall enabled before I installed GUFW from the command line (not option I could find to install from discover).
Other issues included problems with Dolphin which I simply could not remedy and can only describe as an unusable mess. Installing other software was slow with repeated second attempts needed more times than I would like.
I can but give this a 1 rating, a truly awful experience that's night and day compared to the pleasant experience the last release offered.
Not so long ago, I was using Voyageur (gnome) based on Debian and Ubuntu until the DNS management was broken! Ubuntu-style network management is a gas factory...
I've never managed to repair my machine, even with my own knowledge. So I tried Neptune v8.0. The KDE desktop is superb. The only thing that didn't work was the bluetooth...
After a visit to their forum, I took note of a friendly user who gave the solution:
sudo apt install libspa-0.2-bluetooth
After a reboot, EVERYTHING is OK. To be continued...
Very satisfied for the moment...
I use Alpinelinux for my server!
Greetings from France
Didier
Version: 8.0 Rating: 1 Date: 2023-08-09 Votes: 0
Just installed the system and the installation went well. I like the default theming and the set of apps it comes with. But immediately I ran in the the issue: it cannot update. Discover gets stuck fetching updates. I tried logging out and in, and once it was able to build the list of updates, but it still wouldn't download anything. I had the same problem with it on version 7, and now on 8 it remains. This is completely unusable. I mean sudo apt upgrade does work, but if I wanted to use terminal, I wouldn't install a distro with one of the most advanced desktop environments.
Version: 8.0 Rating: 1 Date: 2023-08-08 Votes: 1
I always install Waterfox and Firefox, both of which were only available as Flatpaks. I usually don't mind Flatpaks for most apps, but not for these two. In particular, the Waterfox Flatpak has an issue launching external links. So I did what I usually do and went to the hawkeye repository on GitHub, which has never failed me. But when trying to install it here, I run into dependency problems and broken held packages issue. Dependency problems are always hell that I try to avoid at any cost, because they can be a rabbit hole that sucks hours, if not days of your life. This is a freshly-installed system and already I am running into such problems. I'm gonna have to give it the lowest rating.
I have a computer with an Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7500 @ 2.93GHz processor with a SAMSUNG HD501LJ hard disk, for the past few months Windows 10 kept crashing on the computer because my dad had the stupid idea to put Windows 10 on a computer that was almost 20 years old, even though I explained that Windows was no longer suitable anymore
Me in alert mode I had days searching for a distro that was really good and that didn't weigh much on the computer, that's when I found Neptune, it took little time to install and I can say that the lightest distro I've ever seen in my life despite taking a long time to start I can say that to open the folders it takes less than 5 seconds, in other distros and even in Windows it took almost 10 seconds to open and sometimes crashed, one thing I also appreciate about Neptune is the fact that I can use 4 work areas at the same time and that the interface is very easy to use, if you are looking for a light distro then Neptune is the solution especially this version 8.0
Version: 8.0 Rating: 10 Date: 2023-07-27 Votes: 5
Hardware: Dell Optiplex 9020; Speed:3.6 GHz; RAM: 8 GB; HDD: Primarily externally connected 2 TB Seagate Barracuda
with 15 Linux distros, Internal 119 GB SSD with 1Linux OS; externally connected 119 GB SSD with Windows 10 Pro.
This desktop went through good times with strictly Linux installations. I acquired it refurbished and it is currently giving very good service. Neptune I have used since Version 6.x. It has always had the polish I appreciate in a heavily used OS. I find the current
selection of included software mostly to my liking, especially the preinstalled choices of internet browsers. I won't have to add my usual selections because they are already included.Nice touch to have Librewolf and the Epiphany Nightly release. I will replace the Libreoffice with the Powerful Gnome tandem of Gnumeric and Abiword. Foliate Ebook reader gets heavy use in my Linux Cave
and is also included out of the box. If you are coming from Windows to Linux give this a try, specially if you want to limit your testing to a handful or less distributions. I am running this smoothly and happily in Gnome-boxes, hosted by another KDE Plasma desktop
distro. It has finished installing itself to a USB stick in Mintstick, my all-time favorite USB installer, and will be a hard drive
installation on a pre-determined partition early on the next day. It will go on an additional Hitachi 2 TB External drive that houses about 720 GB of data and Linux images. I'm using the "Application Menu from the KDE selections but will eventually change to the EQ 3
(Application Launcher grid). It is a recent creation of KDE org, similar to a designer Dashboard menu, with categories sweeping up the relevant applications. Another nicety found only in Linux. The default menu is also not bad, and the grub artwork is the best.
I have been distro hopping for a few weeks in search of a permanent home, after my last distro corrupted itself [again] during an update. I found myself looking at Neptune, and I decided to give it a shot. I'm glad I did, it is what I have been looking for.
Target hardware:
HP Omen 17" Gaming Laptop
Intel i7-8750H Hexacore processor (2.2GHz)
NVidia GTX 1050 with 4GB
32 GB system RAM (DDR4)
1 TB SSD
The target is slightly older but is still a fine machine, and other distros I have tried have had varying issues with it - wouldn't enable the HDMI port so external monitor would not work, refused to update properly, firewall service failed to start (or worse, could not install a firewall service at all in one case), etc. In Neptune's case, everything just works - it sees all of my hardware and everything comes up smoothly. The boot time is noticeably longer than other distros I have tried, but it's still not bad at all - system is ready in less than 10 seconds.
I like the KDE Plasma interface as it is very familiar and I have had no issues with usability. I have been able to find everything, and so far everything is running very smoothly.
Hopefully this is the last stop on the distro hopping train for me. So far, so good.
Version: 7.5 Rating: 8 Date: 2023-04-23 Votes: 2
Good :
-Nice windows like desktop running KDE
-good basic apps to cover a range of needs.
Bad:
There web site Neptuneos.com shows features that do not exist in the 7.4 version. Example is the snapshot manager. It is not installed in the default Netptune OS, this feature woul of been interesting to test as it appears to allow the OS to be placed on a USB for booting.
-No suport for secure boot
Neptune uses systemD but has a good set of system information apps for the typical user from music to graphics. However the fact there web site listed a special feature like snapshot manager but there is no application in the installed version is concerning. They should not list apps that are not preinstalled.
Version: 7.5 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-04-21 Votes: 4
Neptune came as a pleasant surprise. I was having a few problems with Debian on an old laptop and quite by chance, came across Neptune. As a Debian derivative it looked like it could make for a decent alternative and it certainly is.
Pros: Fast and resource light.
Stable.
Sensible range of default applications included, out of the box.
User friendly. I use the command line a lot but for those who don't, this is an accessible option.
Easy, guided, GUI install.
Cons: Not overly taken with the default "look" but that can be changed, through settings.
Will they last? I hope so,as this is a really decent Debian based distro and it deserves a lot of praise.
Great for beginners like me, You don't have to even use a cd or usb to get the whole thing downloaded! (Shrink Windows and get about 4GB or more of storage and then format those 4GB in Fat32. Then get 7zip then just copy the stuff into that
Pros:
Fast
Debian 11 base
Beginner Friendly (More then ubuntu if you ask me)
Very Similar to Migrating Windows Users
Has an even lighter desktop environment available
4 Desktops
Many apps to choose from in discover
Cons:
Desktop environment may not be for migrating macos users.
Otherwise I would recommend this for migrating Windows users over ubuntu and I am currently using it right now at the time of this review
Nice Distro that is simple yet gets the job done, while most of my systems are windows only sadly I will be keeping this around for personal use and probably as an emergency OS incase windows falls down.
Pros:
Simplistic, Stable, and Fast
Cons: Some people may want more than just this, or perhaps more backgrounds or something, otherwise good!
Good for light-browsing I will say.
I wonder now how this would run on a raspbery pi or a lower end PC.
Anyway that is all of my review, give this one a try.
Version: 7.5 Rating: 9 Date: 2022-12-03 Votes: 78
Best debian based distro i've used till now. It works great. Very stable, fast and consuming only 700mb ram. The only problem is current nvidia-dkms breaks with 6.0 linux kernel for the moment. Well, i just need to wait for update. I hope developer team makes its own tools like mx-tools as this distro gets more recognation in future
Neptune OS is also great for beginners. Installation is very easy and everything daily desktop users may needs is pre-installed. Coming with modern looking KDE Plasma
I am pretty sure someday this will reach top 10 ranking in distrowatch. Give it a try
It's KDE on a Debian 11 with few smart tweaks to run faster. For example it uses the older lockscreen, which might not be as pretty as the new one but it is faster to load certainly, it ships with zswap installed too which is good if you run it on older hardware.
OpenSUSE is also great but tends to run slower on my hardware, it boots slower too, KDE Neon is great but also unstable even in its user edition with lots of unresolved bugs because they just take things from Canonical, and all Ubuntu distros (except Mint) they prefer Snap over .deb. It's a choice and i respect the direction but i can't say snap is better as of now.
Pros:
- Debian 11 base is very good
- Excalibur Menu is the best KDE launcher: doesn't chug as the new kickoff and it has slightly more than the classic menu.
- it opened every media file i had out of the box.
Cons:
- old KDE version (not a deal breaker but you have to accept to give up on the newest little features like color accents or the new overview)
- I had some difficulty setting up my printer despite HPLIP was installed by default.
Version: 7.5 Rating: 8 Date: 2022-09-09 Votes: 3
First time ever trying neptune and I must say I do like it, Its a great distro forked from debian, the OS its self its configured really nicely very smooth, It also doesn't take up much ram or storage
(Pros) - Has alot of easy already configured apps that come downloaded with, Its windows user friendly so if you just came from windows and wanna learn linux this wouldn't be a bad option, very easy and fast install this distro was probably one of the fastest distro's to download of its size and what comes on the system.
(cons) - Everyone has their own cons to everything.
Version: 7.5 Rating: 10 Date: 2022-09-08 Votes: 4
I had never even heard of Neptune Linux before I downloaded a copy and cannot understand why not?
It is one of the best distros I have have ever used, so much so that I now have it as my main daily OS on my desktop PC. Perfect on my 2013 ThinkLenovo 92Z all in one.
It is a great looking OS built on Debian so it has all of the Debian benefits and it is stable. Not bloated like some distros appear to be. I especially like the KDE desktop Neptune utilises, fast and precise.
Everything I needed to install works as expected and with ease.
Version: 7.5 Rating: 10 Date: 2022-09-01 Votes: 8
I've been running installations of MX_KDE, SolydK, and Q4 for a while now, at least since MX published their KDE version a year or two ago. Recently, I added into the mix Sparky and Neptune, and they're all tweaked to my liking, as finely tuned as I can get each of them.
I can't pinpoint why precisely, but Neptune is becoming my favorite. I'm not a "technical" user, so maybe that's a clue. Neptune seems more polished, complete, and final like a commercially released operating system would be, and more comforting to an average home computer user.
I'm certainly not criticizing the others, but when I sit down and decide which drive to boot, it's almost always Neptune now.
I have liked Neptune since their previous release, 6.5, and considering that according to their website, they're running on a 2-person team of developers for this OS, I'm pretty darn impressed with how far they've went with their Neptune 7 release.
It's a really slick, customizable, fast, and well-polished KDE OS, and it's good for almost any modern system (I'm running this on a small form factor PC with Intel Celeron J4125 @ 2-2.7GHz, 8GB ram, 500GB SSD on UEFI, no problems at all). I want to note the amount of preinstalled multimedia software on Neptune by default, and understandably, this is a good thing for some, especially those who are digital media hobbyists and I respect that, you've got several video players/editors, audio editors and image viewers/editors... but for the vast majority of typical day-to-day users, I feel like the amount of media software included is a little much and you'd probably only need 1, maybe 2 video players, an image viewer or editor, and that should cover it. You can always remove what you don't need through Plasma Discover, just what I did.
Flawlessly does everything you need it to do.
Version: 7.0 Rating: 10 Date: 2022-04-05 Votes: 2
Date 2022-04-05 Installed on Acer ES1-512 500gig HD.2014
Tried Legacy live mode first. Mouse pad would not work.
Installed in secure boot and restarted and imported efi key into bios.
Now all the hardware works perfect.
At last I am rid of that useless Windows 10 that takes ages to boot up and hours to update.
I have another Acer 11 inch touchscreen same Celeron laptop witch Broadcom wireless card BCM43142 and Bluetooth works OK with USB Dongle but no Bluetooth
This distro does not work with my Broadcom wireless card BCM43142.
IF anyone can find a way to install in Secure boot please post here.
Version: 7.0 Rating: 10 Date: 2022-02-15 Votes: 5
Does what it is supposed to do: no bloat, fast, stable, huge Debian repo, nice desktop layout. What else could you ask for?
Version: 7.0 Rating: 10 Date: 2022-02-06 Votes: 8
I came across Neptune 7 while testing various Debian and Ubuntu-based distros using KDE Plasma. Surely Neptune is seriously underrated! Very stable, and kudos to the developers for creating a beautifully themed desktop experience. The Excalibur menu for KDE is a very welcome discovery that I had not known about previously; I will now be using this for all my Plasma-based distros.
The only thing missing to make it perfect was Firefox, but of course that is easily remedied. By all means give Neptune a try if you haven't already.
Version: 7.0 Rating: 9 Date: 2022-01-30 Votes: 1
Debian + kde out of the box + stability so far .Its good as daily driver. meets my requirement just snapstore was needed for certain applications.
Version: 7.0 Rating: 9 Date: 2022-01-19 Votes: 1
I was looking for a Debian Stable based distro w/ KDE for my 12yr old Laptop, HP Elitebook 2560p. Saw Neptune 7 here in Distrowatch, installed it. All is amazing so far.
vielen Dank Neptune Developers
raymondcc666
Philippines
Version: 7.0 Rating: 10 Date: 2022-01-15 Votes: 3
I've tried them all from the very first Linux distros and after installing this latest version I cannot fault it as a replacement for Win 11. Everything just seems to work as required and can install packages to suit any tasks.
Installed:- Wine (with two Win programs that I always use), Synaptic (cleaned up a couple of leftovers), Firefox, Feem for internal file transfers between home computers.
Neptune is installed on Dell e7270 with 16gb ram, touch screen and external monitor when at desk.
Everything installed quickly and cleanly and it was only when I switched to Firefox that I used Synaptic to cleanup Chromium.
Compared to some other distros with a larger following I would give Neptune 'twelve out of ten'
Version: 7.0 Rating: 9 Date: 2022-01-05 Votes: 1
Version 7 is good, wifi works on my XPS 9710, sound did not work, but that is easy to fix. I like the approach the team has taken by making the desktop simple and yet the Debian backbone is in desperate need of update. The kernel delivered is 5.10 which is one of the reasons the wifi actually works, but the sound is not working. Updating to the 5.15 kernel actually made everything work. The upgrade, in place, was without errors, which is something. The desktop environment of Neptune Faye has no issues and the new functions all work. "Sehr gut gemacht." I will be testing it over the next days on metal, I am not running it in a virtual machine any more, which I did at first to take a look at the working. Nice desktop, fast and not a lot of bloat.
Version: 6.5 Rating: 10 Date: 2021-12-08 Votes: 1
Thanks for this excellent review. I have used Neptune since version 6.0 and find
the aesthetics to be about as good as they can be on a graphical OS interface.
I particularly like the "Grau" theme on the Neptune Grub presentation. Blocking off the text in red boxes is very appealing in my opinion. I have what most would consider a huge array of Linux distributions on my three-disk configuration, and
always enjoyed returning to use the Neptune 6.5 with the Plasma 5 desktop. I
primarily use the Simple Menu, which is not always present as a default menu
"Alternative" with a right click on the menu button. I actually swap out a fourth drive sometimes wit a SATA to USB cable adaptor cable and sometimes I need to switch out drives in order to enjoy a favorite Distribution. Neptune has been reliable but somewhat slow in booting, but I do look forward to a future Neptune release,
hopefully based on Debian Bullseye. I would do a fresh install to ensure I enjoy the experience of a fully branded OS. Upgrading is always a possibility but of
course could result in the loss of some of the beautiful aesthetics. I'm using a Dell
Optiplex 9020 with four cores, 3700 Mhz top processing speed, and an Intel
Xeon E3-1200 graphics card. This Distro I would recommend to intermediate-level Linux users as either a stand-alone OS or part of a multiboot system. It is fun to use.
Version: 6.5 Rating: 10 Date: 2021-05-12 Votes: 3
I checked this out having stumbled upon it and having been on an Arch system for a while was actually surprised how good it was. I used to run Debian back in 2005 and loved it so having a slick no nonsense OS based on it with back ports enabled as standard I was impressed. I'm running on an old Mac book 4.1 from 2010 with an Intel dual core processor clocking at 2.4ghz and 2gb ram. All in all its nice to have debian back. Kde desktop is awesome too. Huge fan so never go down the other desktop trap offering 20 desktops as this will take away from the stability and focus of the existing desktop.
Version: 6.5 Rating: 10 Date: 2021-02-10 Votes: 4
It just works and looks excellent. No problems during or after the installation process. Localization is perfect. Be sure to apply all updates. System settings are extensive, so you can tailor your system as you like. The most useful apps come preinstalled. No cons sofar. This might be the distribution you are looking for.
Version: 6.5 Rating: 10 Date: 2021-01-05 Votes: 5
I've tried a lot of distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Manjaro, Fedora, EndeavourOS, Solus) and somehow found this one. I liked the name, its being Debian-based and related to Cowboy Bebop. I am an idea person so I've decided to try this distro. The installation was simple, but after install when clicking "Finish" it went to everlasting loading.. I forced my laptop to turn off and turned it on. Once I entered the distro I felt it fresh and light. Neptune turned out to be an excellent distro. It works. No questions. It just works and it works perfectly. Feels very polished and light. I installed all the programms I need and it works absolutely stable without any errors. Everyone should pay attention to this distro and try it! It is stable, light and fresh.
I had no problems, the installation runs via Calamaris and is a little easier than Debian KDE. It's a little more preconfigured, you don't have to do as much as with Debian, but it's still pure Debian, which I like.The KDE is still 5.27 like Debian, but you can work well with it too, I don't always have to have the latest software. Everyone as they wish. That's why stability is in the foreground, which is important to me, the computer has to run, I don't have time to tinker with it in case something doesn't work again.
I've been running various flavors of Linux for years but I am new to Neptune. I wanted to try something new and I loaded it on my spare system.
Install was problematic the first time I tried. The installer crashed at the end with an error message and a failed installation that would not boot correctly. Trying again immediately, the install was smooth and painless. I suspect it was an issue with my USB thumb drive but I am not so sure. A third attempt at installation was also clean and painless.
Once installed, the system has been stable and responsive. It's nothing fancy, but it also isn't cluttered and bogged down with a tone of stuff right out of the gate either. I have been able to install additional packages without issue and so far the repositories have had everything I want.
I was pleasantly surprised to see SELinux as an option in the repositories and I set it up. I had to dig online a bit to figure out what I needed to do, and once I did all of that it has been working fine. It would be nice if the installer gave the option to set this up automatically up front instead of having to set it up explicitly after installation is complete.
So far I am pleased with Neptune though I am still getting familiar. Once I am content that it's solid and what I need, I will load it up on some of my other systems.
Neptune version 8.1 "Juna" surprised me!
It is an excellent GNU/Linux distribution, aimed at desktop users, which provides ease of installation and use, stability (stable Debian base) and a very pleasant appearance (its own theme).
In addition to having software such as: Chromium, VLC, LibreOffice in their latest stable versions, I really liked the scripts:
remove-orphans.sh Removes remains of applications that once were installed (needs root rights)
tutorial A small and simple tutorial for dealing with the bash commandline
ram-usage.sh List memory usage of applications (reverse order).
...
I recommend it, 10/10!
I've been distro-hopping trying to find the right system for my 14 year old laptop. I've tried Ubuntu, Siduction, Gecko, Manjaro, MX, and many others who's names I have forgotten, having thrown their burned DVD's in the trash. The last distro I installed was Neptune, and that's where I found perfection. Installing was easy and so far, after several months there have been no issues, and no problems. My laptop runs like it did over a decade ago. I don't know what more I can say because I can't image Neptune being any better than what it is. I hope they keep up the good work.
I have been using Linux for many years now.. having tried many different flavors and deciding on my preference towards a Debian type version of Linux.. and recently installing Neptune Linux. So to be honest I really like Neptune Linux 8 with one complaint. For whatever reason the install of anything on the system seems painfully slow! I downloaded a program called Pico-8 which allows you to run games or whatever written in Lua. On other systems it takes but a second to run them but with Neptune it's like Neptune is scanning for viruses and takes longer to load and run them, but it shouldn't. Same thing with anything from the store. Takes a while and when I first started I thought the system crashed but it was just getting ready I guess... Now for the most part it works better than a lot of Linux versions. Enough so that I use it on my main computer! My complaint aside would I recommend Neptune.. yes! From the store.. to Steam to the way it handles things I really like Neptune! In the end though it's up to the user and their preference. For me however it works well for my needs! Hopefully this helps anyone looking for a new system to try.
Much as I liked previous editions of Neptune, the latest release has been a bittier disappointment.
It failed to install first time out, then after installing the second time refused the carefully selected password. Third time around it installed and let me in but the problems just multiplied. No firewall on offer out of the box so i had to wait until after all updates were done with no firewall enabled before I installed GUFW from the command line (not option I could find to install from discover).
Other issues included problems with Dolphin which I simply could not remedy and can only describe as an unusable mess. Installing other software was slow with repeated second attempts needed more times than I would like.
I can but give this a 1 rating, a truly awful experience that's night and day compared to the pleasant experience the last release offered.
Not so long ago, I was using Voyageur (gnome) based on Debian and Ubuntu until the DNS management was broken! Ubuntu-style network management is a gas factory...
I've never managed to repair my machine, even with my own knowledge. So I tried Neptune v8.0. The KDE desktop is superb. The only thing that didn't work was the bluetooth...
After a visit to their forum, I took note of a friendly user who gave the solution:
sudo apt install libspa-0.2-bluetooth
After a reboot, EVERYTHING is OK. To be continued...
Very satisfied for the moment...
I use Alpinelinux for my server!
Just installed the system and the installation went well. I like the default theming and the set of apps it comes with. But immediately I ran in the the issue: it cannot update. Discover gets stuck fetching updates. I tried logging out and in, and once it was able to build the list of updates, but it still wouldn't download anything. I had the same problem with it on version 7, and now on 8 it remains. This is completely unusable. I mean sudo apt upgrade does work, but if I wanted to use terminal, I wouldn't install a distro with one of the most advanced desktop environments.
I always install Waterfox and Firefox, both of which were only available as Flatpaks. I usually don't mind Flatpaks for most apps, but not for these two. In particular, the Waterfox Flatpak has an issue launching external links. So I did what I usually do and went to the hawkeye repository on GitHub, which has never failed me. But when trying to install it here, I run into dependency problems and broken held packages issue. Dependency problems are always hell that I try to avoid at any cost, because they can be a rabbit hole that sucks hours, if not days of your life. This is a freshly-installed system and already I am running into such problems. I'm gonna have to give it the lowest rating.
I have a computer with an Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7500 @ 2.93GHz processor with a SAMSUNG HD501LJ hard disk, for the past few months Windows 10 kept crashing on the computer because my dad had the stupid idea to put Windows 10 on a computer that was almost 20 years old, even though I explained that Windows was no longer suitable anymore
Me in alert mode I had days searching for a distro that was really good and that didn't weigh much on the computer, that's when I found Neptune, it took little time to install and I can say that the lightest distro I've ever seen in my life despite taking a long time to start I can say that to open the folders it takes less than 5 seconds, in other distros and even in Windows it took almost 10 seconds to open and sometimes crashed, one thing I also appreciate about Neptune is the fact that I can use 4 work areas at the same time and that the interface is very easy to use, if you are looking for a light distro then Neptune is the solution especially this version 8.0
I have been distro hopping for a few weeks in search of a permanent home, after my last distro corrupted itself [again] during an update. I found myself looking at Neptune, and I decided to give it a shot. I'm glad I did, it is what I have been looking for.
Target hardware:
HP Omen 17" Gaming Laptop
Intel i7-8750H Hexacore processor (2.2GHz)
NVidia GTX 1050 with 4GB
32 GB system RAM (DDR4)
1 TB SSD
The target is slightly older but is still a fine machine, and other distros I have tried have had varying issues with it - wouldn't enable the HDMI port so external monitor would not work, refused to update properly, firewall service failed to start (or worse, could not install a firewall service at all in one case), etc. In Neptune's case, everything just works - it sees all of my hardware and everything comes up smoothly. The boot time is noticeably longer than other distros I have tried, but it's still not bad at all - system is ready in less than 10 seconds.
I like the KDE Plasma interface as it is very familiar and I have had no issues with usability. I have been able to find everything, and so far everything is running very smoothly.
Hopefully this is the last stop on the distro hopping train for me. So far, so good.
Hardware: Dell Optiplex 9020; Speed:3.6 GHz; RAM: 8 GB; HDD: Primarily externally connected 2 TB Seagate Barracuda
with 15 Linux distros, Internal 119 GB SSD with 1Linux OS; externally connected 119 GB SSD with Windows 10 Pro.
This desktop went through good times with strictly Linux installations. I acquired it refurbished and it is currently giving very good service. Neptune I have used since Version 6.x. It has always had the polish I appreciate in a heavily used OS. I find the current
selection of included software mostly to my liking, especially the preinstalled choices of internet browsers. I won't have to add my usual selections because they are already included.Nice touch to have Librewolf and the Epiphany Nightly release. I will replace the Libreoffice with the Powerful Gnome tandem of Gnumeric and Abiword. Foliate Ebook reader gets heavy use in my Linux Cave
and is also included out of the box. If you are coming from Windows to Linux give this a try, specially if you want to limit your testing to a handful or less distributions. I am running this smoothly and happily in Gnome-boxes, hosted by another KDE Plasma desktop
distro. It has finished installing itself to a USB stick in Mintstick, my all-time favorite USB installer, and will be a hard drive
installation on a pre-determined partition early on the next day. It will go on an additional Hitachi 2 TB External drive that houses about 720 GB of data and Linux images. I'm using the "Application Menu from the KDE selections but will eventually change to the EQ 3
(Application Launcher grid). It is a recent creation of KDE org, similar to a designer Dashboard menu, with categories sweeping up the relevant applications. Another nicety found only in Linux. The default menu is also not bad, and the grub artwork is the best.
-Nice windows like desktop running KDE
-good basic apps to cover a range of needs.
Bad:
There web site Neptuneos.com shows features that do not exist in the 7.4 version. Example is the snapshot manager. It is not installed in the default Netptune OS, this feature woul of been interesting to test as it appears to allow the OS to be placed on a USB for booting.
-No suport for secure boot
Neptune uses systemD but has a good set of system information apps for the typical user from music to graphics. However the fact there web site listed a special feature like snapshot manager but there is no application in the installed version is concerning. They should not list apps that are not preinstalled.
Neptune came as a pleasant surprise. I was having a few problems with Debian on an old laptop and quite by chance, came across Neptune. As a Debian derivative it looked like it could make for a decent alternative and it certainly is.
Pros: Fast and resource light.
Stable.
Sensible range of default applications included, out of the box.
User friendly. I use the command line a lot but for those who don't, this is an accessible option.
Easy, guided, GUI install.
Cons: Not overly taken with the default "look" but that can be changed, through settings.
Will they last? I hope so,as this is a really decent Debian based distro and it deserves a lot of praise.
Great for beginners like me, You don't have to even use a cd or usb to get the whole thing downloaded! (Shrink Windows and get about 4GB or more of storage and then format those 4GB in Fat32. Then get 7zip then just copy the stuff into that
Pros:
Fast
Debian 11 base
Beginner Friendly (More then ubuntu if you ask me)
Very Similar to Migrating Windows Users
Has an even lighter desktop environment available
4 Desktops
Many apps to choose from in discover
Cons:
Desktop environment may not be for migrating macos users.
Otherwise I would recommend this for migrating Windows users over ubuntu and I am currently using it right now at the time of this review
Nice Distro that is simple yet gets the job done, while most of my systems are windows only sadly I will be keeping this around for personal use and probably as an emergency OS incase windows falls down.
Pros:
Simplistic, Stable, and Fast
Cons: Some people may want more than just this, or perhaps more backgrounds or something, otherwise good!
Good for light-browsing I will say.
I wonder now how this would run on a raspbery pi or a lower end PC.
Anyway that is all of my review, give this one a try.
Best debian based distro i've used till now. It works great. Very stable, fast and consuming only 700mb ram. The only problem is current nvidia-dkms breaks with 6.0 linux kernel for the moment. Well, i just need to wait for update. I hope developer team makes its own tools like mx-tools as this distro gets more recognation in future
Neptune OS is also great for beginners. Installation is very easy and everything daily desktop users may needs is pre-installed. Coming with modern looking KDE Plasma
I am pretty sure someday this will reach top 10 ranking in distrowatch. Give it a try
It's KDE on a Debian 11 with few smart tweaks to run faster. For example it uses the older lockscreen, which might not be as pretty as the new one but it is faster to load certainly, it ships with zswap installed too which is good if you run it on older hardware.
OpenSUSE is also great but tends to run slower on my hardware, it boots slower too, KDE Neon is great but also unstable even in its user edition with lots of unresolved bugs because they just take things from Canonical, and all Ubuntu distros (except Mint) they prefer Snap over .deb. It's a choice and i respect the direction but i can't say snap is better as of now.
Pros:
- Debian 11 base is very good
- Excalibur Menu is the best KDE launcher: doesn't chug as the new kickoff and it has slightly more than the classic menu.
- it opened every media file i had out of the box.
Cons:
- old KDE version (not a deal breaker but you have to accept to give up on the newest little features like color accents or the new overview)
- I had some difficulty setting up my printer despite HPLIP was installed by default.
First time ever trying neptune and I must say I do like it, Its a great distro forked from debian, the OS its self its configured really nicely very smooth, It also doesn't take up much ram or storage
(Pros) - Has alot of easy already configured apps that come downloaded with, Its windows user friendly so if you just came from windows and wanna learn linux this wouldn't be a bad option, very easy and fast install this distro was probably one of the fastest distro's to download of its size and what comes on the system.
(cons) - Everyone has their own cons to everything.
I had never even heard of Neptune Linux before I downloaded a copy and cannot understand why not?
It is one of the best distros I have have ever used, so much so that I now have it as my main daily OS on my desktop PC. Perfect on my 2013 ThinkLenovo 92Z all in one.
It is a great looking OS built on Debian so it has all of the Debian benefits and it is stable. Not bloated like some distros appear to be. I especially like the KDE desktop Neptune utilises, fast and precise.
Everything I needed to install works as expected and with ease.
I've been running installations of MX_KDE, SolydK, and Q4 for a while now, at least since MX published their KDE version a year or two ago. Recently, I added into the mix Sparky and Neptune, and they're all tweaked to my liking, as finely tuned as I can get each of them.
I can't pinpoint why precisely, but Neptune is becoming my favorite. I'm not a "technical" user, so maybe that's a clue. Neptune seems more polished, complete, and final like a commercially released operating system would be, and more comforting to an average home computer user.
I'm certainly not criticizing the others, but when I sit down and decide which drive to boot, it's almost always Neptune now.
I have liked Neptune since their previous release, 6.5, and considering that according to their website, they're running on a 2-person team of developers for this OS, I'm pretty darn impressed with how far they've went with their Neptune 7 release.
It's a really slick, customizable, fast, and well-polished KDE OS, and it's good for almost any modern system (I'm running this on a small form factor PC with Intel Celeron J4125 @ 2-2.7GHz, 8GB ram, 500GB SSD on UEFI, no problems at all). I want to note the amount of preinstalled multimedia software on Neptune by default, and understandably, this is a good thing for some, especially those who are digital media hobbyists and I respect that, you've got several video players/editors, audio editors and image viewers/editors... but for the vast majority of typical day-to-day users, I feel like the amount of media software included is a little much and you'd probably only need 1, maybe 2 video players, an image viewer or editor, and that should cover it. You can always remove what you don't need through Plasma Discover, just what I did.
Date 2022-04-05 Installed on Acer ES1-512 500gig HD.2014
Tried Legacy live mode first. Mouse pad would not work.
Installed in secure boot and restarted and imported efi key into bios.
Now all the hardware works perfect.
At last I am rid of that useless Windows 10 that takes ages to boot up and hours to update.
I have another Acer 11 inch touchscreen same Celeron laptop witch Broadcom wireless card BCM43142 and Bluetooth works OK with USB Dongle but no Bluetooth
This distro does not work with my Broadcom wireless card BCM43142.
IF anyone can find a way to install in Secure boot please post here.
I came across Neptune 7 while testing various Debian and Ubuntu-based distros using KDE Plasma. Surely Neptune is seriously underrated! Very stable, and kudos to the developers for creating a beautifully themed desktop experience. The Excalibur menu for KDE is a very welcome discovery that I had not known about previously; I will now be using this for all my Plasma-based distros.
The only thing missing to make it perfect was Firefox, but of course that is easily remedied. By all means give Neptune a try if you haven't already.
I was looking for a Debian Stable based distro w/ KDE for my 12yr old Laptop, HP Elitebook 2560p. Saw Neptune 7 here in Distrowatch, installed it. All is amazing so far.
I've tried them all from the very first Linux distros and after installing this latest version I cannot fault it as a replacement for Win 11. Everything just seems to work as required and can install packages to suit any tasks.
Installed:- Wine (with two Win programs that I always use), Synaptic (cleaned up a couple of leftovers), Firefox, Feem for internal file transfers between home computers.
Neptune is installed on Dell e7270 with 16gb ram, touch screen and external monitor when at desk.
Everything installed quickly and cleanly and it was only when I switched to Firefox that I used Synaptic to cleanup Chromium.
Compared to some other distros with a larger following I would give Neptune 'twelve out of ten'
Version 7 is good, wifi works on my XPS 9710, sound did not work, but that is easy to fix. I like the approach the team has taken by making the desktop simple and yet the Debian backbone is in desperate need of update. The kernel delivered is 5.10 which is one of the reasons the wifi actually works, but the sound is not working. Updating to the 5.15 kernel actually made everything work. The upgrade, in place, was without errors, which is something. The desktop environment of Neptune Faye has no issues and the new functions all work. "Sehr gut gemacht." I will be testing it over the next days on metal, I am not running it in a virtual machine any more, which I did at first to take a look at the working. Nice desktop, fast and not a lot of bloat.
Thanks for this excellent review. I have used Neptune since version 6.0 and find
the aesthetics to be about as good as they can be on a graphical OS interface.
I particularly like the "Grau" theme on the Neptune Grub presentation. Blocking off the text in red boxes is very appealing in my opinion. I have what most would consider a huge array of Linux distributions on my three-disk configuration, and
always enjoyed returning to use the Neptune 6.5 with the Plasma 5 desktop. I
primarily use the Simple Menu, which is not always present as a default menu
"Alternative" with a right click on the menu button. I actually swap out a fourth drive sometimes wit a SATA to USB cable adaptor cable and sometimes I need to switch out drives in order to enjoy a favorite Distribution. Neptune has been reliable but somewhat slow in booting, but I do look forward to a future Neptune release,
hopefully based on Debian Bullseye. I would do a fresh install to ensure I enjoy the experience of a fully branded OS. Upgrading is always a possibility but of
course could result in the loss of some of the beautiful aesthetics. I'm using a Dell
Optiplex 9020 with four cores, 3700 Mhz top processing speed, and an Intel
Xeon E3-1200 graphics card. This Distro I would recommend to intermediate-level Linux users as either a stand-alone OS or part of a multiboot system. It is fun to use.
I checked this out having stumbled upon it and having been on an Arch system for a while was actually surprised how good it was. I used to run Debian back in 2005 and loved it so having a slick no nonsense OS based on it with back ports enabled as standard I was impressed. I'm running on an old Mac book 4.1 from 2010 with an Intel dual core processor clocking at 2.4ghz and 2gb ram. All in all its nice to have debian back. Kde desktop is awesome too. Huge fan so never go down the other desktop trap offering 20 desktops as this will take away from the stability and focus of the existing desktop.
It just works and looks excellent. No problems during or after the installation process. Localization is perfect. Be sure to apply all updates. System settings are extensive, so you can tailor your system as you like. The most useful apps come preinstalled. No cons sofar. This might be the distribution you are looking for.
I've tried a lot of distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Manjaro, Fedora, EndeavourOS, Solus) and somehow found this one. I liked the name, its being Debian-based and related to Cowboy Bebop. I am an idea person so I've decided to try this distro. The installation was simple, but after install when clicking "Finish" it went to everlasting loading.. I forced my laptop to turn off and turned it on. Once I entered the distro I felt it fresh and light. Neptune turned out to be an excellent distro. It works. No questions. It just works and it works perfectly. Feels very polished and light. I installed all the programms I need and it works absolutely stable without any errors. Everyone should pay attention to this distro and try it! It is stable, light and fresh.
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