Netrunner Linux Still Goes Its Own Way at 'Twenty'

"Twenty" is a birthday release offering that makes what was good even better.

Developers released Netrunner 20.01 on Feb. 23 with the latest stable Debian 10.3 "Buster" base and the KDE Plasma desktop. This release marks the distro's 20th birthday in a way.

Code-named "Twenty," the 20.01 release is the 20th upgrade of the Netrunner project over its 10-year history. It is packed with the latest KDE desktop packages, new theme tweaks, and a collection of GTK and Qt/KDE programs.

Netrunner's customized KDE desktop has extra applications, multimedia codecs and Flash and Java plugins. This makes Netrunner KDE a more inviting option than the Plasma desktop other distros offer.

It has a unique default look and feel that is very user-flexible in terms of personal customizations. You will not find significant changes from earlier Netrunner versions, but the Netrunner 20's approach to KDE Plasma will not disappoint.

Even if the KDE desktop is not your preferred computing environment, you will find it simple to use and very flexible to set up your way. The modifications enhance the user-friendliness of the desktop environment and preserve the freedom to tweak, which is a staple of this distro.

Netrunner 'Twenty' has an uncluttered look out of the box with unique features neatly tucked away that provide lots of functionality.

Long Road to Get Here

The Netrunner distro comes with a bit of a troubled history. Its developer team, heavily sponsored by the Germany-based Blue Systems IT company, released a separate "Rolling" edition based on Manjaro/Arch Linux in 2014. It was discontinued, relaunched in 2017 and discontinued again in 2019.

Last year's decision to drop the Netrunner Rolling edition was an attempt to eliminate a redundant development cycle. Netrunner's popular Manjaro Linux-based offering was on a rolling update schedule. That is typical for Arch-based distros like Manjaro. However, Netrunner's Debian-based distro instead relies on two major releases per year in addition to necessary security updates.

After Netrunner's developers announced a collaboration with the Manjaro community in October, it made sense not to continue with Netrunner Rolling. However, the team will offer continued support for existing Rolling users through its forums, based directly on Manjaro.

Netrunner Debian, Core and ARM versions are unaffected by the loss of the Netrunner Manjaro edition. The Debian version ships with a full set of preinstalled software for everyday use. The Core edition is a slimmed down version that lets you build your own system or run it on low-spec hardware.