elementary OS Freya is Released!

Posted on 11 Apr 2015

Today is the day to get the latest version of elementary OS and it’s a release I’m proud to say I was a part of. So, congrats on all the good, hard work, everyone. 😄

elementary OS Freya Screenshot

For those who weren’t aware: I joined the elementary team sometime ago, during the development of Freya and I, unsurprisingly, help design it. You can see my work in some of the new user interface & experience updates in the OS and (since Daniel Fore let me 😉) I got to refresh some of the elementary icons, including extending elementary’s symbolic icon theme.

Here are a few of the major new things we brought you in Freya:

It’s a Privacy Mode, Watson

A dedicated and clear “Privacy Mode” came to elementary OS. It’s just a new face for many features that already exist within elementary and the desktop, but all controlled by one simple switch that you can flick to make your system private, if you so desired it to be.

elementary OS Privacy Settings

Notifications for all

Freya saw major improvement to notifications, which are now interactive and dismissible. Plus the inclusion of a notifications pane in the system settings to control all the various notifications from applications that support it and a system-wide “Do Not Disturb” mode

elementary OS Notifications Settings

Workspaces

Freya brought a workspaces design, focused on application multitasking.

elementary OS workspaces

Buttery Animations

Animations throughout the system have been improved dramatically, such as those of the window manager, making them a heck of a lot smoother.

Not to mention all the other improvements:

  • Many of the default applications were updated and improved
  • The addition of new apps: Calculator, Camera, and Videos
  • The theme was refined and brought up to support the latest GTK
  • New wallpapers
  • Redesigned settings panes
  • Unified lock and login screen design
  • And much more..

Go read the release notes for more information:

Freya Release Notes

Now go install or try it!

You can get elementary over on the site (paying whatever you want for it) for both 32 and 64 bit machines.

Download elementary

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