In a world where Linux distributions are in their hundreds, you’d be hard pressed to take a peek into the pithole of distros every once in a while to see what’s new no matter how satisfied you are with the one you’re running.
And so did I today and unsurprisingly, there’s something new, a distro outside the ordinary – one that is seeking to make a difference but highly patient about it.
Luca Di Martino is a developer from Italy and the sole architect of eMod OS. I first spotted eMod sometime last year after covering an article on the top distributions to look forward to in 2016.
Martino started development on eMod OS way back in April 2014 and has since then matured from its Kronos 1.0 version to Afrodite 2.0, then Omega 3.0 – none of which have seen a public release or final build yet.
The reason being, Luca wants to iron the distro to perfection and his target crowd is Windows 10 users. While we can argue that there are already enough distros to fill in that void, eMod OS wants to be your go-to distro and it plans on achieving this by excelling where others have failed and also provide the simplicity Windows 10 users enjoy.
eMod Kronos 1.0 and Afrodite 2.0 used Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as its base while eMod Omega 3.0 was switched to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS; however, the latest release which is Omega 3.1 uses 16.04 LTS under the hood with its Omega shell crossed together with Hewith’s Paper theme for aesthetics.
eMod also aims to make the installation of Win32 applications a breeze (something that many distros haven’t perfected till date).
From the gallery above, you’ll find a screenshot of Photoshop running in eMod and Luca also intends to make Microsoft Office installable by the time it’s official.
The distro in its current state is powered the long-term Linux Kernel 4.4 and it’s most likely that we’ll see a release this year.
Other niceties visible in the Omega shell includes custom coloration of icons, an alternative app launcher (reminiscent of Gnome’s), ability to launch common web services as apps including Google Plus, Facebook, Feedly, and Google Maps as demonstrated in the video below.
Something like this is already possible with Chrome but not as intuitive as it looks in eMod. Should we learn anything new about the development of eMod, we’ll be sure to update you.
In the meantime, (if you find the project interesting), you can head on their Google Plus page to find out more.
