Ever heard of Nova OS?
Nope, me neither. But a brief click about the interwebs tells me that it’s an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution developed in Cuba by students at the University of Informatic Sciences (UCI)
The open-source OS aims to replace Microsoft Windows on computers within the country as, says Hector Rodriguez, Director of UCI, “[t]he free software movement is closer to the ideology of the Cuban people”.
I’m not here to talk politics though. I’m here to talk prettiness.
ICU Student Manuel Alejandro tweeted us some screenshots of Nova OS 6.0, the first major update to the OS since 2015 — and it looks really good.
Doesn’t look like a bog standard Ubuntu respin, does it?
Sadly, stylish looks aside, we know as much about the update as you do at this point. No other details about what is exactly on show in the screenshots sent our way have been shared — but it’s got us intrigued!
It looks like a desktop running GNOME Shell, albeit with a custom menu of some kind (a menu that can be made full-screen, too) and a custom theme (the panel styling is really rather attractive).
There are certainly enough GNOME-related apps on show in the screenshot:
Curiously, Distrowatch states that Nova OS is discontinued, and the official project page only contains information and links to Nova OS 5.0.
But if these screenshots really are of the next release, what a release to come back with.