Feren OS User Guide

Welcome to the Feren OS User Guide. From here you can get help on installing Feren OS, using Feren OS and more to help get you started on Feren OS.

When you’re ready to start, click one of the items below or on the left to begin.

Getting the correct Feren OS for your machine

Checking your system architecture to find the correct Feren OS

Different machines have different ‘architectures’ in it. These architectures decide a lot about what can run on your machine(s) and what cannot. Therefore, the same applies for what version of Feren OS can run on your machine.

Different Operating Systems have different ways to tell you what architecture your system is using. As a general rule of thumb most modern hardware is 64-Bit, however it is best to be certain before you potentially waste an ISO download downloading the 64-Bit version of Feren OS only for your machine to be incompatible.

Finding out the architecture in Microsoft Windows XP and older

Unless you are using the 64-Bit Edition of Windows XP, you are running on a 32-Bit Operating System.

Therefore, you should download Feren OS Classic 32-Bit for your machine.

Finding out the architecture in Microsoft Windows Vista - 8.1

To find out the architecture of your system, go into Control Panel ‣ System & Security ‣ System. From there look for a label saying “System type”.

If the label says “64-bit Operating System”, you should download either Feren OS or Feren OS Classic 64-Bit for your machine.

If the label says “32-Bit Operating System”, you should download Feren OS Classic 32-Bit for your machine.

Finding out the architecture in Microsoft Windows 10

To find out the architecture of your system, go into Settings ‣ System. From there look for a label saying “System type”.

If the label says “64-bit Operating System”, you should download either Feren OS or Feren OS Classic 64-Bit for your machine.

If the label says “32-Bit Operating System”, you should download Feren OS Classic 32-Bit for your machine.

Finding out the architecture in Apple macOS

A general rule of thumb is that the modern macOS releases are 64-Bit only. Especially if you are running Catalina or newer, you’re very likely on 64-Bit hardware meaning that you should download either Feren OS or Feren OS Classic 64-Bit for your machine.

To be sure, open a Terminal window and run ‘uname -a’ in there. An x86_64 string in the output of that command means you’re on 64-Bit macOS. Similarly, an i686 string in the output of that command means you’re on 32-Bit macOS, meaning that you should download Feren OS Classic 32-Bit for your machine.

Finding out the architecture in Linux

To check the architecture in Linux, open up a Terminal and run ‘uname -i’ in there.

If the output says ‘x86_64’ then you should download either Feren OS or Feren OS Classic 64-Bit for your machine. However if the output says ‘i686’ then you should download Feren OS Classic 32-Bit for your machine.

What version of Feren OS is right for me?

The correct version of Feren OS for you depends on your system and your preferences.

If you have a 32-Bit system, then Feren OS Classic is the best option for you. However, if you have a 64-Bit system, it all depends on preference between the following:

• Feren OS is the leaner, more polished version of Feren OS. It’s the defacto Feren OS meaning that it is guaranteed to get the most maintenance done to it and that it is guaranteed to be maintained longer than Classic will, with an indefinite maintenance time until a possible desktop environment switch some time in the future.
• Feren OS Classic is the original Feren OS experience with the Cinnamon Desktop. It is heavier than Feren OS on resources by default however it has seen more development time overall and is more stagnant with updates than Feren OS due to its maturity.

I’d recommend Feren OS for newcomers to Feren OS because of its defacto status and its overall higher levels of polish, however the choice is always yours in the end.

Getting the Feren OS ISO

Going to the Feren OS Download Page

Before you can download Feren OS, you obviously need to go to the page where you can download Feren OS. The page can be accessed by clicking on the ‘Get Feren OS’ link at the top of the website.

Downloading Feren OS

Now you’re on the download page, you’ll want to pick the version of Feren OS you want to download. You can choose between Feren OS and Feren OS Classic, depending on your preference and your hardware.

Once you’ve made your pick, click the Download Feren OS button for Feren OS or either Download 64-Bit or Download 32-Bit for Feren OS Classic to proceed to the ISO download page.

Hint

If your ISO is downloading slow, try clicking the Problems Downloading? button on the page you’re taken to to download the ISO of your choice from in order to change the mirror you’re downloading the ISO from.

Verifying your Feren OS ISO

Why would you verify a Feren OS ISO?

There are multiple reasons for wanting to verify your ISO. These reasons include:

• Making sure that the ISO you’ve downloaded is legitimate
• Making sure that the ISO has not been compromised in any sort of way
• Making sure that the ISO has not been corrupted in any way

If the ISO verification methods below reproduce different values to the ones on the website for these ISOs, please scrap that current ISO and redownload it to save yourself potential hassle in the future.

Techniques used to verify a Feren OS ISO

There are two checksums that are used to verify each Feren OS ISO: An MD5SUM and a SHA256SUM checksum. These checksums are unique for every ISO and every single version of the ISOs. Even small updates and snapshot updates to the ISOs result in a new MD5SUM and SHA256SUM.

Where can I get the MD5SUM and SHA256SUM?

Getting the MD5SUM and SHA256SUM checksum of your Feren OS ISO is simple. Go to the Feren OS download page that you obtained your ISO from and look on the right and under the ‘Download’ button of your chosen Feren OS version. You’ll see the MD5SUM and SHA256SUM below the button for your ISO. You can then proceed to check if your ISO’s checksums match with the ones stated on the website.

Feren OS Classic users will also want to be sure that the one they are checking is of the correct architecture.

Below is an example of the Get Feren OS page to demonstrate where you can get the data for verifying an ISO:

As you can see, there are three pieces of data: The MD5SUM of the ISO(s), the SHA256SUM of the ISO(s) and the date the ISO(s) was last updated. These are cruicial for the verification process.

How do I obtain the MD5SUM and SHA256SUM of the ISO?

Obtaining the MD5SUM and SHA256SUM of the ISO you’ve downloaded is easy.

For Linux and Feren OS you can just open up Terminal and type the following command, a space and then drag and drop the downloaded ISO into the Terminal window: md5sum

The process may take a while, however once it is done the MD5SUM of the ISO you’ve downloaded will be outputted.

The same applies for a SHA256SUM, with the command being sha256sum instead for getting the SHA256SUM of the ISO file.

For other platforms such as Windows or macOS you can use an MD5SUM generator on the internet and a SHA256SUM generator on the internet to check these checksums. There are plenty of these available around the internet, so take your pick.

MD5SUM Generator Example: https://emn178.github.io/online-tools/md5_checksum.html SHA256SUM Generator Example: https://emn178.github.io/online-tools/sha256_checksum.html

How do I verify the Feren OS ISOs using these checksums?

Once you’ve got the checksums, simply just check if they are the exact same as the one on the website for your ISO. If they are the exact same, the ISO verification process was a success, otherwise the ISO verification process was a failure.

Writing the ISO to a USB Stick

Getting the necessary tools

Before you can flash your newly downloaded Feren OS ISO file to a USB Stick, you’ll need a program called balenaEtcher to flash your Feren OS ISO file to a USB of your choosing.

You can get balenaEtcher for your machine at https://www.balena.io/etcher/

Hint

If you are unsure about which version of balenaEtcher should be downloaded between a 64-bit download and a 32-bit download, refer to Getting the correct Feren OS for your machine to find out which architecture your machine uses and therefore which balenaEtcher to download.

Once you have downloaded balenaEtcher for your platform, set it up so that you see a window similar to the one shown in the image above.

Hint

For Linux (and Feren OS) you will want to make the .AppImage file that you downloaded executable in its properties (right-click the balenaEtcher .AppImage file ‣ Properties ‣ Permissions) so that you can open the file normally. For Windows you will need to install balenaEtcher first unless you have downloaded the portable version instead.

Flashing your Feren OS ISO file to your USB

Now for the part where you get Feren OS flashed. To flash Feren OS to a USB:

Warning

If you have data on the USB drive you want to flash Feren OS onto, back it up elsewhere or else it will be permanently lost when you flash your Feren OS ISO file onto it.

1. Plug in your USB
2. Open balenaEtcher
3. Click Select image and select the Feren OS ISO file you downloaded
4. Click Select target and select your USB and then hit Continue
5. Click Flash! and authenticate if required

This process may take a while, but once you are done you can move on to the next step:

• Making preparations in Windows
• Making preparations in macOS
• Making preparations in Linux

Writing the ISO to a DVD

This section of the User Guide details the process for burning your Feren OS ISO to a DVD. Click on an item to continue.

Writing the ISO to a DVD in Windows

Windows 7, 8.X and 10 instructions

The modern versions of Windows simplify the process of writing an ISO file to a DVD by having a burner out of the box.

That being said, here’s what you want to do to burn your Feren OS ISO to a DVD:

1. Insert the empty DVD Disc in your computer’s DVD Drive
2. Right-click on your Feren OS ISO file in File Explorer
3. Click Burn disc image
4. Select your DVD Disc in the ‘Disc burner’ dropdown on the window that appears
5. Click Burn and let Windows burn your Feren OS ISO file onto that DVD Disc.

Windows 9X, ME, 2000, XP and Vista instructions

The older versions of Windows, unlike the newer ones, unfortunately do not have a disc burner by default. That being said, you can easily get a disc burner on these versions of Windows anyway.

We’d suggest using InfraRecorder and the rest of this section will cover the use of InfraRecorder to burn your Feren OS ISO to a DVD Disc. You can get InfraRecorder at http://infrarecorder.org/?page_id=5.

Once you have InfraRecorder set up and running, here’s what you need to do to burn your Feren OS ISO to a DVD Disc:

1. Insert the empty DVD Disc in your computer’s DVD Drive
2. In InfraRecorder go to Actions -> Burn Image…
3. Select your downloaded Feren OS ISO file in the dialog that appears
4. Click ‘OK’ in the next dialog that appears.
5. Let InfraRecorder burn your Feren OS ISO file onto that DVD Disc.

Next Steps

This process may take a while, but once you are done you can move on to the next step:

• Making preparations in Windows

Writing the ISO to a DVD in macOS

macOS instructions

Burning your Feren OS ISO file to a DVD using macOS is very easy as the utilities needed are already integrated into macOS. Here’s what you want to do to burn your Feren OS ISO to a DVD Disc:

1. Insert the empty DVD Disc in your computer’s DVD Drive
2. Right-click on your Feren OS ISO file in Finder
3. Click Burn Disk Image “(the ISO file name goes here).iso” to Disc…
4. Select your DVD in the ‘Burn Disc In:’ dropdown if it is not already selected on the dialog that appears
5. Click Burn on that dialog and let macOS burn your Feren OS ISO file onto that DVD Disc.

Warning

If you have a macOS version older than 10.5 you won’t have this option. You should use Disk Utility or Disk Copy instead to burn your Feren OS ISO file to a DVD on older macOS versions than macOS 10.5.

Next Steps

This process may take a while, but once you are done you can move on to the next step:

• Making preparations in macOS

Writing the ISO to a DVD in Linux

Linux (and Feren OS) instructions

Burning your Feren OS ISO file to a DVD using Linux or Feren OS depends on the Operating System. In Ubuntu and Feren OS’s cases there is no disc burner installed, so you’ll need to install it first.

You can get some great disc burners from the Store in Feren OS or Software in other Linux-based Operating Systems. This tutorial will make use of Brasero, however other disc burners include K3b and Xfburn.

Once you have a disc burner installed, the instructions for flashing your Feren OS ISO to your DVD Disc using Brasero are as follows (other burning software should have a similar burning process):

1. Insert the empty DVD Disc in your computer’s DVD Drive
2. Open Brasero
3. On the left of Brasero, click Burn image
4. On the dialog that appears click on Select disc image to write and open up your Feren OS ISO file in the next dialog
5. Select the DVD you want to burn the ISO file to if it is not already selecting the correct DVD Disc.
6. Click Burn on that dialog and let Brasero burn your Feren OS ISO file onto that DVD Disc.

Next Steps

This process may take a while, but once you are done you can move on to the next step:

• Making preparations in Linux

Making preparations

This section of the User Guide details preparations you should make before installing Feren OS. Click on an item to continue.

Making preparations in Windows

Turn off Fast Startup (Windows 8, 8.1 and 10)

The latest versions of Microsoft Windows enabled a feature called Fast Startup by default. This feature basically makes your computer hibernate after some parts of Microsoft Windows have been terminated, rather than properly shutting down Windows, which makes the next boot much faster.

However, a side-effect of this is that Windows will never properly unmount your C:\ drive meaning that it is unsafe to mount it in Feren OS with read and write access as long as Fast Boot is turned on.

Because of that it is recommended that you turn off Fast Startup in Windows before beginning the Feren OS installation process. You must do this if you want do either of these tasks:

• Back up data from your Microsoft Windows installation with Transfer Tool
• Install Feren OS alongside your Microsoft Windows installation

To turn off Fast Startup, do the following:

1. Open Start
2. Search for “Edit power plan” and open “Edit power plan” (in Microsoft Windows 10 this will also be indicated as a “Control panel” item)
3. In the address bar of the “Edit Plan Settings” window that appears click on Power Options (the bar at the top of the window)
4. On the left, there’ll be a bunch of options, click Choose what the power button does
5. Click Change settings that are currently unavailable and authenticate if required
6. Uncheck the Turn on fast start up (recommended) checkbox
7. Click Save changes

Once you’ve done that, you’ve successfully disabled Fast Startup.

Making room for Feren OS

Hint

This is only necessary if you want to install Feren OS alongside your Microsoft Windows installation. If you want to install Feren OS over Microsoft Windows, you can completely skip this section.

The next preparation you will want to make is to make some free space for Feren OS on the hard drive.

Hint

“Free space” is not being used in the terminology you might think of here. Instead it refers to a partition-less area of your hard drive disk where you can add a partition in or expand an existing partition into.

To start things off, you will want to go into Start again and search for “compmgmt.msc”. You should then get a result called “Computer Management”. If you do then right-click on it and select Run as Administrator in the menu that appears.

You should see Computer Management now open. Next you’ll want to look on the left, under Storage, and click on the item called Disk Management.

From here you’ll now see a bunch of lettered drives listed on the middle. “(C:)” usually represents your Windows installation partition unless the Windows ‘drive’ in File Explorer -> Computer states a different letter in which case that letter represents the Windows installation partition instead.

Hint

“Partition” refers to an allocated amount of a disk (e.g.: your computer’s hard drive) for data to be stored on, in simple terms. Different Operating Systems require different partitions to be made for them each. Microsoft Windows usually puts a partition for the main Operating System and a partition for Microsoft Windows Recovery on your hard drive.

Now that you are in Disk Management, right-click the block at the bottom that has a letter that matches the letter of your Microsoft Windows partition (check in File Explorer -> Computer to see the letter). After that click on Shrink Volume on the menu that appears.

Windows will now take a few moments to check how far down the size of that partition can go. Once it’s done, a dialog will appear. From here you should enter the amount of maximum disk space that you want Feren OS to have on your machine in the Enter the amount to shrink in MB box.

Hint

1GB = 1024MB. It’s best to use a Calculator here to calculate your desired disk space properly.

Hint

The amount of space you are shrinking Windows by here will be the maximum disk space for Feren OS to install inside of. Therefore you should shrink it by the size you want Feren OS’s disk space to be.

Warning

Windows will cap the maximum size that you can shrink the disk up to depending on how much free space is left on the Windows partition. If you cannot get the disk to be shrunk to the space you want Feren OS to have, free up space on the Windows partition and try again.

Warning

Feren OS should have 20GB or higher in disk space to be properly usable after being installed. Approximately 9GB of disk space is required to install Feren OS properly.

Now that you have done that, click Shrink. You should now see a block with a black top appear to the right of the Windows drive block that you right-clicked on earlier, at the bottom, once it has shrinked the Microsoft Windows partition. This should say “Unallocated”. If it does, you have successfully made free space to install Feren OS onto later.

Turn off Secure Boot

Hint

This section is only required for modern hardware that displays the manufacturer’s logo at the top of the screen instead of the Microsoft Windows logo when booting into Microsoft Windows (loading animation under the logo). If your machine displays the Microsoft Windows logo while booting into Microsoft Windows you very likely won’t need to and/or cannot disable Secure Boot (Secure Boot only exists on hardware that boots using UEFI).

Finally, you will want to turn off “Secure Boot” in your System Firmware settings.

You can boot into a Feren OS Live Session with Secure Boot turned on, however unless you disable it you cannot use certain drivers such as NVIDIA Hardware Drivers or Wireless Network Drivers for certain manufacturers such as Broadcom. You may also run into installation issues if it is turned on.

To turn off Secure Boot, you will first need to enter your System Firmware settings. There are different ways to enter System Firmware settings:

Warning

Firmware Settings should never be configured just because you can, unless you are an experienced computer user. If you take even one misstep you could lock yourself out of your computer or worse. If you’re unsure about disabling Secure Boot, ask a friend who has better experience with computers to help you with turning off Secure Boot.

• On Microsoft Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 go into Start -> Power -> (Hold SHIFT while clicking this option) Restart -> Troubleshoot -> Advanced options -> UEFI Firmware Settings -> Restart
• On other machines you will want to find out, using the internet, which key to press to enter System Firmware Settings. You should search for “(your machine’s model here) enter BIOS settings” without the quotes in your favourite search engine to find out.

Hint

At this point it is best to search the internet for a guide on disabling Secure Boot for your specific machine. This can be done by searching for “(your machine’s model name) disable secure boot” on the internet. If you find a guide, use that guide and disregard this one.

Warning

If you end up having to change the boot mode from “UEFI” or “EFI” to “CSM Boot” or “Legacy” to disable Secure Boot, you should have a USB or DVD flashed with your Feren OS ISO ready. If not, discard your changes, exit Firmware Settings and flash that ISO to a USB or DVD drive. If you do not do this, you could be stuck without anything to boot into until you undo your changes.

Now you are in the Firmware Settings screen, look around for a “Secure Boot” option. If you find an option for enabling Secure Boot then set it to be disabled.

If you can’t find one or find one but can’t change the value of it, look for an option with the value of “UEFI” or “EFI”, or an option for “Legacy Boot” or “CSM Boot”, instead. If you find one, set it so that it uses “CSM Boot” or “Legacy Boot” either before or instead of UEFI Boot.

Once you have done that, go into the Exit tab and choose Save Changes and Exit or similar to save your changes and restart the computer.

Next Steps

• Boot Feren OS from USB or DVD
• Using Transfer Tool to backup your data from Windows
• Installing Feren OS over Windows
• Installing Feren OS alongside Windows

Making preparations in macOS

Disabling Secure Boot for Modern Apple Devices

Hint

This only affects Apple Devices that were made in 2018 or newer. Previous Apple Devices do not come with the T2 Security Chip and therefore should be able to boot Feren OS immediately with no fuss. If your device was made before 2018, you can safely skip to the next preparation on this page.

Modern Apple Devices have introduced the T2 Security Chip (or similar) out of the box. This security chip however prevents anything that is not Apple’s macOS from running on these Mac Devices for security reasons.

However, since it does prevent booting into Feren OS as a result, you’ll want to disable Secure Boot in order to be able to boot into Feren OS.

To disable Secure Boot, you’ll first need to enter macOS Recovery. To do this, turn on your device and hold Command (⌘) + R after you see the Apple logo to boot into macOS Recovery.

Once in there, you’ll see the “macOS Utilities” window. From here go to the top of the screen and look for a Utilities menu. Open it and select the Startup Security Utility option.

You will then be prompted to authenticate. From there click Enter macOS Password, choose an administrator account (e.g.: the first account you ever made on your device) and enter the password for that account.

If you’ve done this correctly, the window shown below should now pop up on screen:

Source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208330

To disable Secure Boot, choose No Security under Secure Boot and choose Allow booting from external media under External Boot.

Now simply close the window and restart back into macOS as you’ve done what you need to do here.

Making room for Feren OS

Hint

This is only necessary if you want to install Feren OS alongside your macOS installation. If you want to install Feren OS over macOS, you can completely skip this section.

The final preparation you want to do is shrink your macOS Partition to make room for Feren OS later.

Hint

“Partition” refers to an allocated amount of a disk (e.g.: your computer’s hard drive) for data to be stored on, in simple terms. Different Operating Systems require different partitions to be made for them each. macOS usually puts a partition for the main Operating System on your hard drive.

To start off, you’ll want to log into your existing macOS installation as an administrator. If you haven’t created any extra users, your first created account is an administrator.

Now you’re logged in, open up Disk Utility. Now select View on the toolbar at the top of Disk Utility. After that select Show All Devices in the menu that appears so that the option is turned on.

Now on the left sidebar, under Internal select the hard drive that contains Macintosh HD (don’t select anything inside the hard drive on the sidebar, though, just select the hard drive itself). From there look back up at the toolbar for an option saying Partition and click it.

On the next dialog that appears (if you haven’t disabled this dialog in the past) click Partition.

Now you’re in the partitioner, look under the blue pie diagram that has a +/- button set. From there click + to create a new partition. You’ll now have another item on the pie diagram. Drag the circle around on the edge of the pie diagram to resize the partition to be the maximum size you want Feren OS to use on your hard drive. Then, under Format, select MS-DOS (FAT) and then click Apply. Finally click Partition on the dialog that appears.

Once that is done, you can now restart macOS and proceed to boot into the USB or DVD that you flashed earlier.

Next Steps

• Boot Feren OS from USB or DVD
• Installing Feren OS over macOS
• Installing Feren OS alongside macOS

Making preparations in Linux

Next Steps

You don’t need to make any preparation in Linux, most of the time, to boot into and install Feren OS. After all, Feren OS is Linux-based.

• Boot Feren OS from USB or DVD
• Using Transfer Tool to backup your data from Feren OS
• Installing Feren OS over Linux
• Installing Feren OS alongside Linux

Using Transfer Tool to backup your data from Windows

Warning

If you’re backing up data from a Feren OS installation, use the following guide instead:

• Using Transfer Tool to backup your data from Feren OS

Requirements

To backup your data using Transfer Tool, you will need the following available:

• An external data storage device to temporarily hold the backed up data on
• Access to the existing installation of Windows you want to back up data from
• A working Feren OS Live Session (accessed by booting into the USB or DVD that you flashed/burned your Feren OS ISO file onto)
• If the Windows version you want to back up data from is Windows 8, 8.1 or 10, then you’ll want Fast Startup turned off in Windows. You can refer to Making preparations in Windows to find out how to turn off Fast Startup

Video Guide

If you want a visual guide for all of these steps, there is a YouTube video that will guide you through all the necessary steps required to transfer data from Windows to Feren OS with Transfer Tool.

Note that this guide covers both backing up the data, before installing Feren OS over Windows, and restoring it after installing Feren OS over Windows. Therefore for the purpose of this part of the User Guide you should only follow the first half of the video guide for now.

The video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVN2NVvGCVI

If you want a text guide instead, continue reading below.

Launching Transfer Tool

To start things off, you will want to restart Windows normally and boot into the Feren OS USB or DVD flash/burn you did earlier to enter Feren OS.

Hint

Refer to Boot Feren OS from USB or DVD for guidance on booting into the USB or DVD that you flashed/burned earlier

From there, go into the Applications Menu (the bottom-left bird icon) ‣ System ‣ Transfer Tool to launch Transfer Tool.

Once you’ve got Transfer Tool running, you’ll be presented by this window:

Mounting Drives

Next, you’ll want to mount two drives: Your external backup drive and your Windows data partition. You can do this by clicking on them in Files’s left sidebar so that they have an eject icon on the right-side of them.

Hint

If you have not already plugged in your external backup drive, you should plug it in and then mount it.

Backing up data with Transfer Tool

Now you have mounted all the drives necessary for the backup process, go back into Transfer Tool and click on Backup Data.

On the next page in Transfer Tool click on the switch at the top saying Backup data from an external source so that it’s turned on. After that, click on the dropdown menu on the right of that switch and select your Windows partition.

Once this is done, an extra dialog will then pop up asking you which user you want to back up from. From there select the user you want to back up data from.

After that, the options to select what to back up should become usable once more.

Warning

If the options to select what to back up do not become usable again after selecting your Windows partition, it means your drive has not been mounted or is not accessible. Try ejecting (unmounting) and remounting your Windows partition in this case and then relaunching Transfer Tool.

Now go to the dropdown at the bottom that says Select where you’d like to back up the data to and from there select your external backup drive.

Now the ‘Begin Backup’ button should be enabled. When it is enabled, just click ‘Begin Backup’ to begin the backup process.

Once you’re done with Transfer Tool

Once Transfer Tool has backed up the data, you’ll be taken to a new page that will either say all the data has backed up successfully, most of the data has backed up successfully or the whole backup process has failed.

If your data is backed up properly then you should close the Transfer Tool, open Files, hit the eject button on your external backup drive and then disconnect the external backup drive, physically, from your computer until later when you restore the data from the backup you made.

Next Steps

• Boot Feren OS from USB or DVD
• Installing Feren OS over Windows
• Installing Feren OS alongside Windows

Using Transfer Tool to backup your data from Feren OS

Warning

If you’re backing up data from Windows, use the following guide instead:

• Using Transfer Tool to backup your data from Windows

Requirements

To backup your data using Transfer Tool, you will need the following available:

• An external data storage device to temporarily hold the backed up data on
• Access to your existing Feren OS installation that you want to back up data from
• A working Feren OS Live Session (accessed by booting into the USB or DVD that you flashed/burned your Feren OS ISO file onto)

Launching Transfer Tool

To start things off, you will want to be logged in to the user account you want to back up data from in Feren OS.

From there, go into the Applications Menu (the bottom-left bird icon) ‣ System ‣ Transfer Tool to launch Transfer Tool.

Once you’ve got Transfer Tool running, you’ll be presented by this window:

Mounting Drives

Next, you’ll want to mount one drive: Your external backup drive. You can do this by clicking on it in Files’s left sidebar so that it has an eject icon on the right-side of it.

Hint

If you have not already plugged in your external backup drive, you should plug it in and then mount it.

Backing up data with Transfer Tool

Now you have mounted the external backup drive ready for the backup process, go back into Transfer Tool and click on Backup Data.

On the next page in Transfer Tool keep the switch at the top saying Backup data from an external source switched off (basically ignore the switch entirely, just keep it off).

Now go to the dropdown at the bottom that says Select where you’d like to back up the data to and from there select your external backup drive.

Now the ‘Begin Backup’ button should be enabled. When it is enabled, just click ‘Begin Backup’ to begin the backup process.

Once you’re done with Transfer Tool

Once Transfer Tool has backed up the data, you’ll be taken to a new page that will either say all the data has backed up successfully, most of the data has backed up successfully or the whole backup process has failed.

If your data is backed up properly then you should close the Transfer Tool, open Files, hit the eject button on your external backup drive and then disconnect the external backup drive, physically, from your computer until later when you restore the data from the backup you made.

After doing that you can proceed to reboot your existing Feren OS and boot into the Feren OS Live Session ready to install the OS onto your machine.

Next Steps

• Boot Feren OS from USB or DVD
• Installing Feren OS over Linux
• Installing Feren OS alongside Linux

Boot Feren OS from USB or DVD

Now that you have Feren OS on a USB stick (or DVD) boot the computer from it.

1. Insert your USB stick (or DVD) into the computer.
2. Restart the computer.
3. Before your computer boots your current operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux) you should see your BIOS loading screen. Check the screen or your computer’s documentation to know which key to press and instruct your computer to boot on USB (or DVD).

Note

Most BIOS have a special key you can press to select the boot device and all of them have a special key to enter the BIOS configuration screen (from which you can define the boot order). Depending on the BIOS, these special keys can be Escape, F1, F2, F8, F10, F11, F12, or Delete. That information is usually briefly written on the screen during the boot sequence.

Hint

On Macs, keep your finger pressed on the Alt or Option key after pressing the power on button.

4. The Feren OS ISO can be booted both in EFI, BIOS or CSM/Legacy Boot mode. In EFI mode it shows a grub menu. In BIOS or CSM/Legacy Boot mode it shows an isolinux menu that can be seen by pressing any key during the initial Feren OS logo.

The isolinux menu in BIOS mode

The grub menu in EFI mode

5. From one of these menus scroll down with the arrow keys to the appropriate boot option and press Enter to start Feren OS from your USB stick (or DVD).

Hint

The arrow keys (four pointing arrow keys) on your keyboard let you change what option you are currently selecting in both menus. Pressing the Enter key will start the option you selected.

Booting with ‘nomodeset’ (for NVIDIA users)

If you have NVIDIA Graphics on your device, you may run into graphical issues when booting into Feren OS normally as the correct drivers for your hardware are not present by default in Feren OS.

However, there is a quick workaround. In both boot menus there is an option called “nomodeset”. If you’re having problems with booting Feren OS normally on NVIDIA hardware then simply select the No Mode Set option instead and Feren OS should boot, albeit with some graphical deficiencies compared to what it looks like once properly installed and with the correct drivers installed onto it.

If you need to boot with No Mode Set then please refer to Booting with nomodeset for NVIDIA Hardware after you have installed Feren OS to boot into your Feren OS installation for the first time without issues.

Accessibility Options

Finding the accessibility options

Accessibility options are an important feature for certain users with disabilities who need special tweaks to be able to better make use of their Operating System. Feren OS has accessibility options available right out of the box in System Settings.

To find them, you will first need to open System Settings. You can do this by going into Applications Menu (the bird icon on the bottom-left) ‣ Settings ‣ System Settings.

In Feren OS Classic you’ll find System Settings on the right-side of the applications menu immediately as you open it, unless you have chosen the “Linux Mint Layout” in which case it will be in Preferences ‣ System Settings.

Once you’ve opened up System Settings, go to the item called “Accessibility”. It will be there with an icon that has a person with their arms held up slightly in a blue circle.

From here, you can change your accesibility options.

Once you’ve done the changes you want to make, hit the ‘Apply’ button at the bottom-right side of the window to apply the changes.

Activating “Keys” Accessibility Features using the keyboard

It is also possible to activate Sticky Keys and Slow Keys at any time using the keyboard.

• To activate Sticky Keys press Shift 5 times in fast succession
• To activate Slow Keys hold Shift for 8 seconds
• To activate Mouse Keys hold Shift and press NumLock

Warning

These keyboard triggers for the aforementioned keys features may not work on Feren OS Classic.

Once you have done this, a dialog will, by default, appear to confirm if you want to enable the feature you tried to enable or not. From here you can press Yes, No, or even change whether the dialog displays in the future or not.

The dialog will look similar to this below image in Feren OS:

Installing Feren OS to an empty hard drive

Hint

Before you start this guide, you’ll want to boot into the Feren OS USB or DVD you flashed earlier. For guidance on booting into your USB or DVD follow this guide and then come back to this guide once you’ve booted in.

Opening the installer

To start installing Feren OS you will want to run the installer. The installer is placed in the following locations:

• The Install Feren OS shortcut placed on the desktop
• The Install Now button in Welcome Screen
• Applications Menu (bottom-left bird icon) ‣ System ‣ Install Feren OS

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS and Feren OS Classic 64-Bit)

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone.

Once you’ve set your location click Next again.

Now you’ll have the option to either erase your empty disk or use partition Feren OS manually. Select Erase disk and then click Next.

Warning

Be sure to check the dropdown menu at the top of this screen to make sure it has selected the correct disk to install Feren OS onto. Better safe than sorry.

You’ll now be taken to a page that summarises what will be done during installation. This will allow you to look over what you have chosen for your new Feren OS installation before installation begins.

Once you’re sure you’ve got everything correct, click Install and then Install now on the final confirmation dialog.

Warning

Once you have hit Install now there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here you can choose whether you want to immediately reboot into your new Feren OS installation when you click Done or not.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

On the first boot into Feren OS, you will be greeted with just a “Set up Feren OS” program on screen. Select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next to begin the set up process.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone. This will be used to set the timezone, currency, and so on on your Feren OS installation.

Next you will see a diagram of a keyboard at the top of the window. Below that is a keyboard model setting and a keyboard layout list. Select a keyboard model if required (not usually required) and then select your keyboard layout using the list of layouts in the bottom two boxes.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve set your keyboard layout, click Next once more.

You’ll now be taken to a page where you can create a new user for your new Feren OS installation. Type your desired full name, your desired username, your desired computer name and the password you want for the first user account on your new Feren OS installation.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers. The full name however is way more flexible.

There will also be an optional checkbox below the password textboxes saying Log in automatically without asking for the password. If you want Feren OS to log in automatically to your machine on boot then tick this checkbox.

Warning

Enabling this option causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

Once you’ve done this, press Set Up.

Feren OS will now do some final preparations before you can use it.

Once Feren OS has done setting itself up, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here click Done to continue to your all-new Feren OS installation.

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS Classic 32-Bit)

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit has a different installer as the installer used in other ISOs does not support Feren OS Classic 32-Bit currently. As such, the steps are slightly different.

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the list of languages at the left of the window and then press Continue.

You’ll now be taken to a screen to choose your keyboard layout. You can either click the Detect Keyboard Layout button at the bottom or you can manually select your keyboard layout from the two boxes at the top.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve done that, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can choose to either Download updates while installing Feren OS, Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware and additional media formats or both. Once you’ve ticked the checkboxes you want to tick, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select whether you want to Erase disk and install Feren OS or do Something else to manually partition Feren OS yourself. Select Erase disk and install Feren and click Install Now.

You will now get a final summary dialog explaining what is going to happen to your disk. When you are ready, click Continue.

Warning

Once you have hit Continue there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select where you are on the world map. Either click where you are on the world map or type in the textbox directly below the world map to select a timezone and then click Continue.

You will then be taken to a screen where you can configure your user account for your new Feren OS installation. Fill out each textbox with what you want and then optionally select Log in automatically if you want Feren OS to log in immediately to your user account automatically when booting up.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers.

Warning

Selecting Log in automatically causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

When you’re done, click Continue one last time.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, the installer will close and a dialog will appear telling you that installation has finished. From here you can click either Continue Testing to not restart immediately into your Feren OS installation or click Restart Now to restart immediately into your Feren OS installation.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

Next Steps

• First Steps

Installing Feren OS over Windows

Hint

Before you start this guide, you’ll want to boot into the Feren OS USB or DVD you flashed earlier. For guidance on booting into your USB or DVD follow this guide and then come back to this guide once you’ve booted in.

Opening the installer

To start installing Feren OS you will want to run the installer. The installer is placed in the following locations:

• The Install Feren OS shortcut placed on the desktop
• The Install Now button in Welcome Screen
• Applications Menu (bottom-left bird icon) ‣ System ‣ Install Feren OS

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS and Feren OS Classic 64-Bit)

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone.

Once you’ve set your location click Next again.

Now you’ll have the option to either erase your disk, replace a partition with Feren OS or use partition Feren OS manually. Select Replace a partition with Feren OS, click your Windows partition from the top partition bar at the bottom of the window and then click Next.

Warning

Be sure to check the dropdown menu at the top of this screen to make sure it has selected the correct disk to install Feren OS onto. Better safe than sorry.

Warning

Before installing Feren OS over your current Windows installation please back up your data elsewhere as choosing Replace a partition with Feren OS will destroy all the data from your old Operating System’s partition and you cannot undo that once it is done.

You’ll now be taken to a page that summarises what will be done during installation. This will allow you to look over what you have chosen for your new Feren OS installation before installation begins.

Once you’re sure you’ve got everything correct, click Install and then Install now on the final confirmation dialog.

Warning

Once you have hit Install now there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here you can choose whether you want to immediately reboot into your new Feren OS installation when you click Done or not.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

On the first boot into Feren OS, you will be greeted with just a “Set up Feren OS” program on screen. Select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next to begin the set up process.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone. This will be used to set the timezone, currency, and so on on your Feren OS installation.

Next you will see a diagram of a keyboard at the top of the window. Below that is a keyboard model setting and a keyboard layout list. Select a keyboard model if required (not usually required) and then select your keyboard layout using the list of layouts in the bottom two boxes.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve set your keyboard layout, click Next once more.

Now you’ll be taken to a page where you can create a new user for your new Feren OS installation. Type your desired full name, your desired username, your desired computer name and the password you want for the first user account on your new Feren OS installation.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers. The full name however is way more flexible.

There will also be an optional checkbox below the password textboxes saying Log in automatically without asking for the password. If you want Feren OS to log in automatically to your machine on boot then tick this checkbox.

Warning

Enabling this option causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

Once you’ve done this, press Set Up.

Feren OS will now do some final preparations before you can use it.

Once Feren OS has done setting itself up, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here click Done to continue to your all-new Feren OS installation.

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS Classic 32-Bit)

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit has a different installer as the installer used in other ISOs does not support Feren OS Classic 32-Bit currently. As such, the steps are slightly different.

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the list of languages at the left of the window and then press Continue.

You’ll now be taken to a screen to choose your keyboard layout. You can either click the Detect Keyboard Layout button at the bottom or you can manually select your keyboard layout from the two boxes at the top.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve done that, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can choose to either Download updates while installing Feren OS, Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware and additional media formats or both. Once you’ve ticked the checkboxes you want to tick, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select whether you want to Erase disk and install Feren OS or do Something else to manually partition Feren OS yourself. Select Erase disk and install Feren and click Install Now.

Warning

Before installing Feren OS over your current Windows installation please back up your data elsewhere as choosing Erase disk and install Feren will destroy all the data from your disk and you cannot undo that once it is done.

You will now get a final summary dialog explaining what is going to happen to your disk. When you are ready, click Continue.

Warning

Once you have hit Continue there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select where you are on the world map. Either click where you are on the world map or type in the textbox directly below the world map to select a timezone and then click Continue.

You will then be taken to a screen where you can configure your user account for your new Feren OS installation. Fill out each textbox with what you want and then optionally select Log in automatically if you want Feren OS to log in immediately to your user account automatically when booting up.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers.

Warning

Selecting Log in automatically causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

When you’re done, click Continue one last time.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, the installer will close and a dialog will appear telling you that installation has finished. From here you can click either Continue Testing to not restart immediately into your Feren OS installation or click Restart Now to restart immediately into your Feren OS installation.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

Next Steps

• First Steps

Installing Feren OS alongside Windows

Hint

Before you start this guide, you’ll want to boot into the Feren OS USB or DVD you flashed earlier. For guidance on booting into your USB or DVD follow this guide and then come back to this guide once you’ve booted in.

Warning

This guide also expects you made some room beforehand for Feren OS on your hard drive using the guide here: Making preparations in Windows. If you have not done this yet then you should follow this guide first and then return to this guide.

Opening the installer

To start installing Feren OS you will want to run the installer. The installer is placed in the following locations:

• The Install Feren OS shortcut placed on the desktop
• The Install Now button in Welcome Screen
• Applications Menu (bottom-left bird icon) ‣ System ‣ Install Feren OS

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS and Feren OS Classic 64-Bit)

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone.

Once you’ve set your location click Next again.

Now you’ll have the option to either erase your disk, replace a partition with Feren OS, install Feren OS alongside your current Windows partition or partition Feren OS manually. Select Replace a partition and then click the “Free Space” that you generated by shrinking the Windows partition earlier on the “Current” partition bar at the bottom of the window. After doing that, click Next.

Warning

Be sure to check the dropdown menu at the top of this screen to make sure it has selected the correct disk to install Feren OS onto. Better safe than sorry.

Hint

There may be more than one Free Space item on the partition bar. Make sure you select the one you created earlier when you shrank Windows. It will always be on the right of the Windows installation’s “NTFS” partition.

You’ll now be taken to a page that summarises what will be done during installation. This will allow you to look over what you have chosen for your new Feren OS installation before installation begins.

Once you’re sure you’ve got everything correct, click Install and then Install now on the final confirmation dialog.

Warning

Once you have hit Install now there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here you can choose whether you want to immediately reboot into your new Feren OS installation when you click Done or not.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

On the first boot into Feren OS, you will be greeted with just a “Set up Feren OS” program on screen. Select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next to begin the set up process.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone. This will be used to set the timezone, currency, and so on on your Feren OS installation.

Next you will see a diagram of a keyboard at the top of the window. Below that is a keyboard model setting and a keyboard layout list. Select a keyboard model if required (not usually required) and then select your keyboard layout using the list of layouts in the bottom two boxes.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve set your keyboard layout, click Next once more.

Now you’ll be taken to a page where you can create a new user for your new Feren OS installation. Type your desired full name, your desired username, your desired computer name and the password you want for the first user account on your new Feren OS installation.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers. The full name however is way more flexible.

There will also be an optional checkbox below the password textboxes saying Log in automatically without asking for the password. If you want Feren OS to log in automatically to your machine on boot then tick this checkbox.

Warning

Enabling this option causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

Once you’ve done this, press Set Up.

Feren OS will now do some final preparations before you can use it.

Once Feren OS has done setting itself up, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here click Done to continue to your all-new Feren OS installation.

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS Classic 32-Bit)

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit has a different installer as the installer used in other ISOs does not support Feren OS Classic 32-Bit currently. As such, the steps are slightly different.

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the list of languages at the left of the window and then press Continue.

You’ll now be taken to a screen to choose your keyboard layout. You can either click the Detect Keyboard Layout button at the bottom or you can manually select your keyboard layout from the two boxes at the top.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve done that, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can choose to either Download updates while installing Feren OS, Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware and additional media formats or both. Once you’ve ticked the checkboxes you want to tick, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select whether you want to Install Feren alongside Windows, Erase disk and install Feren OS or do Something else to manually partition Feren OS yourself. Select Something else and click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen to partition your drives manually. From here you want to do the following:

1. Select the “free space” that you made earlier when you shrank the Windows partition in the list of partitions and then click +.

Hint

The free space you made earlier will always be below the Windows partition, which will be identified as an ‘ntfs’ partition and will be the size you shrank Windows to earlier.

2. A dialog will now pop up. Click the Use as dropdown menu and select Ext4 journaling file system.
3. Click the Mount point dropdown menu and select “/”.

4. Click OK.
5. You may then see a dialog about writing changes to disk. If you do, click Continue on that dialog.
6. Once the partition list is refreshed, click the Device for boot loader installation dropdown menu at the bottom and then select the hard drive you have Windows installed on currently if it is not already selected.
7. Now click Install Now after you’ve done partitioning.

You will now get a final summary dialog explaining what is going to happen to your disk. When you are ready, click Continue.

Warning

Once you have hit Continue there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select where you are on the world map. Either click where you are on the world map or type in the textbox directly below the world map to select a timezone and then click Continue.

You will then be taken to a screen where you can configure your user account for your new Feren OS installation. Fill out each textbox with what you want and then optionally select Log in automatically if you want Feren OS to log in immediately to your user account automatically when booting up.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers.

Warning

Selecting Log in automatically causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

When you’re done, click Continue one last time.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, the installer will close and a dialog will appear telling you that installation has finished. From here you can click either Continue Testing to not restart immediately into your Feren OS installation or click Restart Now to restart immediately into your Feren OS installation.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

Next Steps

• First Steps

Installing Feren OS over macOS

Hint

Before you start this guide, you’ll want to boot into the Feren OS USB or DVD you flashed earlier. For guidance on booting into your USB or DVD follow this guide and then come back to this guide once you’ve booted in.

Opening the installer

To start installing Feren OS you will want to run the installer. The installer is placed in the following locations:

• The Install Feren OS shortcut placed on the desktop
• The Install Now button in Welcome Screen
• Applications Menu (bottom-left bird icon) ‣ System ‣ Install Feren OS

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS and Feren OS Classic 64-Bit)

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone.

Once you’ve set your location click Next again.

Now you’ll have the option to either erase your disk, replace a partition with Feren OS or use partition Feren OS manually. Select Replace a partition with Feren OS, click your macOS partition from the top partition bar at the bottom of the window and then click Next.

Warning

Be sure to check the dropdown menu at the top of this page to make sure it has selected the correct disk to install Feren OS onto. Better safe than sorry.

Warning

Before installing Feren OS over your current macOS installation please back up your data elsewhere as choosing Replace a partition with Feren OS will destroy all the data from your old Operating System’s partition and you cannot undo that once it is done.

You’ll now be taken to a page that summarises what will be done during installation. This will allow you to look over what you have chosen for your new Feren OS installation before installation begins.

Once you’re sure you’ve got everything correct, click Install and then Install now on the final confirmation dialog.

Warning

Once you have hit Install now there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here you can choose whether you want to immediately reboot into your new Feren OS installation when you click Done or not.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

On the first boot into Feren OS, you will be greeted with just a “Set up Feren OS” program on screen. Select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next to begin the set up process.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone. This will be used to set the timezone, currency, and so on on your Feren OS installation.

Next you will see a diagram of a keyboard at the top of the window. Below that is a keyboard model setting and a keyboard layout list. Select a keyboard model if required (not usually required) and then select your keyboard layout using the list of layouts in the bottom two boxes.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve set your keyboard layout, click Next once more.

Now you’ll be taken to a page where you can create a new user for your new Feren OS installation. Type your desired full name, your desired username, your desired computer name and the password you want for the first user account on your new Feren OS installation.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers. The full name however is way more flexible.

There will also be an optional checkbox below the password textboxes saying Log in automatically without asking for the password. If you want Feren OS to log in automatically to your machine on boot then tick this checkbox.

Warning

Enabling this option causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

Once you’ve done this, press Set Up.

Feren OS will now do some final preparations before you can use it.

Once Feren OS has done setting itself up, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here click Done to continue to your all-new Feren OS installation.

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS Classic 32-Bit)

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit has a different installer as the installer used in other ISOs does not support Feren OS Classic 32-Bit currently. As such, the steps are slightly different.

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the list of languages at the left of the window and then press Continue.

You’ll now be taken to a screen to choose your keyboard layout. You can either click the Detect Keyboard Layout button at the bottom or you can manually select your keyboard layout from the two boxes at the top.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve done that, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can choose to either Download updates while installing Feren OS, Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware and additional media formats or both. Once you’ve ticked the checkboxes you want to tick, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select whether you want to Erase disk and install Feren OS or do Something else to manually partition Feren OS yourself. Select Erase disk and install Feren and click Install Now.

Warning

Before installing Feren OS over your current macOS installation please back up your data elsewhere as choosing Erase disk and install Feren will destroy all the data from your disk and you cannot undo that once it is done.

You will now get a final summary dialog explaining what is going to happen to your disk. When you are ready, click Continue.

Warning

Once you have hit Continue there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select where you are on the world map. Either click where you are on the world map or type in the textbox directly below the world map to select a timezone and then click Continue.

You will then be taken to a screen where you can configure your user account for your new Feren OS installation. Fill out each textbox with what you want and then optionally select Log in automatically if you want Feren OS to log in immediately to your user account automatically when booting up.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers.

Warning

Selecting Log in automatically causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

When you’re done, click Continue one last time.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, the installer will close and a dialog will appear telling you that installation has finished. From here you can click either Continue Testing to not restart immediately into your Feren OS installation or click Restart Now to restart immediately into your Feren OS installation.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

Next Steps

• First Steps

Installing Feren OS alongside macOS

Hint

Before you start this guide, you’ll want to boot into the Feren OS USB or DVD you flashed earlier. For guidance on booting into your USB or DVD follow this guide and then come back to this guide once you’ve booted in.

Warning

This guide also expects you made some room beforehand for Feren OS on your hard drive using the guide here: Making preparations in macOS. If you have not done this yet then you should follow this guide first and then return to this guide.

Opening the installer

To start installing Feren OS you will want to run the installer. The installer is placed in the following locations:

• The Install Feren OS shortcut placed on the desktop
• The Install Now button in Welcome Screen
• Applications Menu (bottom-left bird icon) ‣ System ‣ Install Feren OS

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS and Feren OS Classic 64-Bit)

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone.

Once you’ve set your location click Next again.

Now you’ll have the option to either erase your disk, replace a partition with Feren OS, install Feren OS alongside your current macOS partition or partition Feren OS manually. Select Replace a partition and then click the FAT32 partition you made earlier from the “Current” partition bar at the bottom of the window. After doing that, click Next.

Warning

Be sure to check the dropdown menu at the top of this screen to make sure it has selected the correct disk to install Feren OS onto. Better safe than sorry.

Hint

An indication of the partition type will be below the partition’s colour on the partition bar in light grey text. The partition you made earlier will say FAT32 in this light grey text. As long as you remember the size of that partition you made earlier you should be able to easily find it among all the other partitions shown.

You’ll now be taken to a page that summarises what will be done during installation. This will allow you to look over what you have chosen for your new Feren OS installation before installation begins.

Once you’re sure you’ve got everything correct, click Install and then Install now on the final confirmation dialog.

Warning

Once you have hit Install now there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here you can choose whether you want to immediately reboot into your new Feren OS installation when you click Done or not.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

On the first boot into Feren OS, you will be greeted with just a “Set up Feren OS” program on screen. Select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next to begin the set up process.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone. This will be used to set the timezone, currency, and so on on your Feren OS installation.

Next you will see a diagram of a keyboard at the top of the window. Below that is a keyboard model setting and a keyboard layout list. Select a keyboard model if required (not usually required) and then select your keyboard layout using the list of layouts in the bottom two boxes.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve set your keyboard layout, click Next once more.

Now you’ll be taken to a page where you can create a new user for your new Feren OS installation. Type your desired full name, your desired username, your desired computer name and the password you want for the first user account on your new Feren OS installation.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers. The full name however is way more flexible.

There will also be an optional checkbox below the password textboxes saying Log in automatically without asking for the password. If you want Feren OS to log in automatically to your machine on boot then tick this checkbox.

Warning

Enabling this option causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

Once you’ve done this, press Set Up.

Feren OS will now do some final preparations before you can use it.

Once Feren OS has done setting itself up, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here click Done to continue to your all-new Feren OS installation.

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS Classic 32-Bit)

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit has a different installer as the installer used in other ISOs does not support Feren OS Classic 32-Bit currently. As such, the steps are slightly different.

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the list of languages at the left of the window and then press Continue.

You’ll now be taken to a screen to choose your keyboard layout. You can either click the Detect Keyboard Layout button at the bottom or you can manually select your keyboard layout from the two boxes at the top.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve done that, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can choose to either Download updates while installing Feren OS, Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware and additional media formats or both. Once you’ve ticked the checkboxes you want to tick, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select whether you want to Install Feren alongside macOS, Erase disk and install Feren OS or do Something else to manually partition Feren OS yourself. Select Something else and click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen to partition your drives manually. From here you want to do the following:

1. Select the “fat32” partition from earlier in the list of partitions and then click Change….
2. A dialog will now pop up. Click the Use as dropdown menu and select Ext4 journaling file system.
3. Check the checkbox saying Format the partition.
4. Click the Mount point dropdown menu and select “/”.

5. Click OK.
6. You may then see a dialog about writing changes to disk. If you do, click Continue on that dialog.
7. Once the partition list is refreshed, click the Device for boot loader installation dropdown menu at the bottom and then select the partition you set as EXT4 and “/” just now. You can see which drive this is by looking for that drive’s “/dev/sdXY” value on the left of it (where X is a letter and Y is a number).
8. Now click Install Now after you’ve done partitioning.

You will now get a final summary dialog explaining what is going to happen to your disk. When you are ready, click Continue.

Warning

Once you have hit Continue there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select where you are on the world map. Either click where you are on the world map or type in the textbox directly below the world map to select a timezone and then click Continue.

You will then be taken to a screen where you can configure your user account for your new Feren OS installation. Fill out each textbox with what you want and then optionally select Log in automatically if you want Feren OS to log in immediately to your user account automatically when booting up.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers.

Warning

Selecting Log in automatically causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

When you’re done, click Continue one last time.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, the installer will close and a dialog will appear telling you that installation has finished. From here you can click either Continue Testing to not restart immediately into your Feren OS installation or click Restart Now to restart immediately into your Feren OS installation.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

Next Steps

• First Steps

Installing Feren OS over Linux

Hint

Before you start this guide, you’ll want to boot into the Feren OS USB or DVD you flashed earlier. For guidance on booting into your USB or DVD follow this guide and then come back to this guide once you’ve booted in.

Opening the installer

To start installing Feren OS you will want to run the installer. The installer is placed in the following locations:

• The Install Feren OS shortcut placed on the desktop
• The Install Now button in Welcome Screen
• Applications Menu (bottom-left bird icon) ‣ System ‣ Install Feren OS

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS and Feren OS Classic 64-Bit)

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone.

Once you’ve set your location click Next again.

Now you’ll have the option to either erase your disk, replace a partition with Feren OS, install Feren OS alongside your current Linux partition or partition Feren OS manually. Select Replace a partition, click your old Linux Distribution’s root partition from the “Current” partition bar at the bottom of the window and then click Next.

Warning

Be sure to check the dropdown menu at the top of this screen to make sure it has selected the correct disk to install Feren OS onto. Better safe than sorry.

Warning

Before installing Feren OS over your current Linux Distribution please back up your data elsewhere as choosing Replace a partition with Feren OS will destroy all the data from your old Operating System’s partition and you cannot undo that once it is done.

You’ll now be taken to a page that summarises what will be done during installation. This will allow you to look over what you have chosen for your new Feren OS installation before installation begins.

Once you’re sure you’ve got everything correct, click Install and then Install now on the final confirmation dialog.

Warning

Once you have hit Install now there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here you can choose whether you want to immediately reboot into your new Feren OS installation when you click Done or not.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

On the first boot into Feren OS, you will be greeted with just a “Set up Feren OS” program on screen. Select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next to begin the set up process.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone. This will be used to set the timezone, currency, and so on on your Feren OS installation.

Next you will see a diagram of a keyboard at the top of the window. Below that is a keyboard model setting and a keyboard layout list. Select a keyboard model if required (not usually required) and then select your keyboard layout using the list of layouts in the bottom two boxes.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve set your keyboard layout, click Next once more.

Now you’ll be taken to a page where you can create a new user for your new Feren OS installation. Type your desired full name, your desired username, your desired computer name and the password you want for the first user account on your new Feren OS installation.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers. The full name however is way more flexible.

There will also be an optional checkbox below the password textboxes saying Log in automatically without asking for the password. If you want Feren OS to log in automatically to your machine on boot then tick this checkbox.

Warning

Enabling this option causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

Once you’ve done this, press Set Up.

Feren OS will now do some final preparations before you can use it.

Once Feren OS has done setting itself up, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here click Done to continue to your all-new Feren OS installation.

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS Classic 32-Bit)

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit has a different installer as the installer used in other ISOs does not support Feren OS Classic 32-Bit currently. As such, the steps are slightly different.

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the list of languages at the left of the window and then press Continue.

You’ll now be taken to a screen to choose your keyboard layout. You can either click the Detect Keyboard Layout button at the bottom or you can manually select your keyboard layout from the two boxes at the top.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve done that, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can choose to either Download updates while installing Feren OS, Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware and additional media formats or both. Once you’ve ticked the checkboxes you want to tick, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select whether you want to Erase disk and install Feren OS or do Something else to manually partition Feren OS yourself. Select Erase disk and install Feren and click Install Now.

Warning

Before installing Feren OS over your current Linux Distribution please back up your data elsewhere as choosing Erase disk and install Feren will destroy all the data from your disk and you cannot undo that once it is done.

Hint

If you have a special partition configuration such as a separate /home partition it’s best to select Something else instead and tell the installer to use that special /home partition as a partition in Feren OS.

You will now get a final summary dialog explaining what is going to happen to your disk. When you are ready, click Continue.

Warning

Once you have hit Continue there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select where you are on the world map. Either click where you are on the world map or type in the textbox directly below the world map to select a timezone and then click Continue.

You will then be taken to a screen where you can configure your user account for your new Feren OS installation. Fill out each textbox with what you want and then optionally select Log in automatically if you want Feren OS to log in immediately to your user account automatically when booting up.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers.

Warning

Selecting Log in automatically causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

When you’re done, click Continue one last time.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, the installer will close and a dialog will appear telling you that installation has finished. From here you can click either Continue Testing to not restart immediately into your Feren OS installation or click Restart Now to restart immediately into your Feren OS installation.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

Next Steps

• First Steps

Installing Feren OS alongside Linux

Hint

Before you start this guide, you’ll want to boot into the Feren OS USB or DVD you flashed earlier. For guidance on booting into your USB or DVD follow this guide and then come back to this guide once you’ve booted in.

Opening the installer

To start installing Feren OS you will want to run the installer. The installer is placed in the following locations:

• The Install Feren OS shortcut placed on the desktop
• The Install Now button in Welcome Screen
• Applications Menu (bottom-left bird icon) ‣ System ‣ Install Feren OS

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS and Feren OS Classic 64-Bit)

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone.

Once you’ve set your location click Next again.

Now you’ll have the option to either erase your disk, replace a partition with Feren OS or use partition Feren OS manually. Select Install alongside and then click your old Linux Distribution’s root partition from the ‘Current’ partition bar at the bottom of the window. Now choose how big Feren OS should be (the new Feren OS partition is the right-side partition (pictured in red below)) and then click Next.

Warning

Be sure to check the dropdown menu at the top of this page to make sure it has selected the correct disk to install Feren OS onto. Better safe than sorry.

Hint

The size allocated for Feren OS’s partition (in red on the below image) will be the maximum disk space your Feren OS installation is able to use until resized in the future manually so make sure Feren OS’s partition is the size you want it to be.

You’ll now be taken to a page that summarises what will be done during installation. This will allow you to look over what you have chosen for your new Feren OS installation before installation begins.

Once you’re sure you’ve got everything correct, click Install and then Install now on the final confirmation dialog.

Warning

Once you have hit Install now there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here you can choose whether you want to immediately reboot into your new Feren OS installation when you click Done or not.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

On the first boot into Feren OS, you will be greeted with just a “Set up Feren OS” program on screen. Select your language using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the window and then press Next to begin the set up process.

You should now see a location select screen. From here either click where you are on the world map or use the dropdown menus below the map to select your region and zone. This will be used to set the timezone, currency, and so on on your Feren OS installation.

Next you will see a diagram of a keyboard at the top of the window. Below that is a keyboard model setting and a keyboard layout list. Select a keyboard model if required (not usually required) and then select your keyboard layout using the list of layouts in the bottom two boxes.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve set your keyboard layout, click Next once more.

Now you’ll be taken to a page where you can create a new user for your new Feren OS installation. Type your desired full name, your desired username, your desired computer name and the password you want for the first user account on your new Feren OS installation.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers. The full name however is way more flexible.

There will also be an optional checkbox below the password textboxes saying Log in automatically without asking for the password. If you want Feren OS to log in automatically to your machine on boot then tick this checkbox.

Warning

Enabling this option causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

Once you’ve done this, press Set Up.

Feren OS will now do some final preparations before you can use it.

Once Feren OS has done setting itself up, it’ll take you to a screen saying “All Done”. From here click Done to continue to your all-new Feren OS installation.

Installing Feren OS (Feren OS Classic 32-Bit)

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit has a different installer as the installer used in other ISOs does not support Feren OS Classic 32-Bit currently. As such, the steps are slightly different.

Once you have the installer opened up you should see a screen similar to the one shown in the below image:

Feren OS Classic 32-Bit’s installer

Now that you are in the installer, select your language using the list of languages at the left of the window and then press Continue.

You’ll now be taken to a screen to choose your keyboard layout. You can either click the Detect Keyboard Layout button at the bottom or you can manually select your keyboard layout from the two boxes at the top.

Warning

Make sure to set the correct keyboard layout for your machine and just to be sure type using the textbox at the bottom to test if your choice of keyboard layout matches with your keyboard keys.

Once you’ve done that, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can choose to either Download updates while installing Feren OS, Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware and additional media formats or both. Once you’ve ticked the checkboxes you want to tick, click Continue.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select whether you want to Install Feren alongside (your current Linux Distribution), Erase disk and install Feren OS or do Something else to manually partition Feren OS yourself. Select Install Feren alongside (your current Linux Distribution) and click Install Now.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can split the size of the current Linux Distribution’s partition between that partition and a new partition for the soon-to-be Feren OS installation to be on. Once you have picked a size, click Continue.

You will now get a final summary dialog explaining what is going to happen to your disk. When you are ready, click Continue.

Warning

Once you have hit Continue there is no going back to change the installation settings. Make sure you’ve got everything just the way you want it before you confirm beginning the installation.

You will now be taken to a screen where you can select where you are on the world map. Either click where you are on the world map or type in the textbox directly below the world map to select a timezone and then click Continue.

You will then be taken to a screen where you can configure your user account for your new Feren OS installation. Fill out each textbox with what you want and then optionally select Log in automatically if you want Feren OS to log in immediately to your user account automatically when booting up.

Hint

The username can only contain lowercase letters and numbers.

Warning

Selecting Log in automatically causes a security risk for your data on that user as anyone can then boot into your machine and immediately have access to your personal files and other data.

When you’re done, click Continue one last time.

Feren OS will now be installed. Have a cup of coffee or something as Feren OS will take a little while to install onto your machine.

Once Feren OS has finished installing, the installer will close and a dialog will appear telling you that installation has finished. From here you can click either Continue Testing to not restart immediately into your Feren OS installation or click Restart Now to restart immediately into your Feren OS installation.

Congrats, you have installed Feren OS! When rebooting eject your USB or DVD and press Enter on your keyboard when Feren OS prompts you to remove your installation medium, then press ENTER.

Next Steps

• First Steps

Transitioning from Feren OS Classic to Feren OS

What you need

Before you can start this guide, you will need the following prepared and ready:

• An existing Feren OS Classic installation
• feren-cinn2plas (“Transition to the new Feren OS”) being installed on your system
• An internet connection

Hint

“feren-cinn2plas” should be automatically installed by an update to “feren-app-packages-cinnamon” that you can obtain in Update Manager. If you still do not have it then go into the Store, search for and manually install “Feren-cinn2plas”.

Once you have these three things, you can continue on this guide.

Transitioning from Feren OS Classic to Feren OS

To start off, you should open “Transition to the new Feren OS” up if it is not already running. When it’s running, you should see this window appear:

Transition to the new Feren OS (feren-cinn2plas)’s first page

Once it has appeared, click Next and then Next again.

You will now be taken to a page offering you the ability to transfer some settings from Feren OS Classic to Feren OS. Click Backup Cinnamon Configurations for all users and authenticate. A dialog will then appear to confirm that the backup was successful and is ready for being restored later, so click OK on that dialog. After that, press Next.

Hint

Backing up the current Cinnamon settings for all users on the system is entirely optional. You can skip over this page if you want to start afresh when transitioned over to Feren OS.

Now you will be taken to the final page. This is where you can choose to start the transition now, delay it until the next time you log in or never show the dialog again.

Warning

Once you have confirmed the transition there is no way to cancel it unless an error occurs.

For the purpose of this guide, you will want to click on Begin the transition now. A final confirmation dialog will appear to make sure you’re entirely fine with doing the transition now rather than later. Click Yes to confirm starting the transition and you will then get an authentication dialog. Authenticate through that dialog and the transition process will begin.

Warning

Feren OS will restart automatically without asking during the transition process to start Phase 2 of the transition process (no longer necessary packages are removed and preparations are made for the new experience during the next boot). You should save your work before you start the transition.

Once Feren OS has restarted itself it will then indicate on the boot screen that it is finishing the transition process. You can press Ctrl + Alt + F2 to see the progress in verbose mode at any time if you’d like to. Once this process is complete Feren OS will take you to the login screen.

Once you’re at the login screen the transition has completed successfully. Just log in to start the settings restoration process (if you have backed up data from Cinnamon) and go through some new pages of the OOBE window.

Once that is all done, welcome to the new Feren OS!

Booting with nomodeset for NVIDIA Hardware

Booting with nomodeset on an installed system

If you had to use the “nomodeset” option to boot into the Feren OS Live Session earlier to install Feren OS, you may find that you will need to also boot into your newly installed Feren OS via “nomodeset” too. Thankfully this is very easy to do in Feren OS.

Hint

You will only need to follow this guide if you had to use the “nomodeset” option to boot into Feren OS from your USB or DVD drive successfully. If you could boot using the normal boot option you can skip over this page and move on to First Steps.

To start this guide, you will need to open the Feren OS GRUB boot menu. If you installed Feren OS alongside your prior Operating System the boot menu should show itself automatically to let you choose the OS you want to boot into. However, if you installed Feren OS over your prior Operating System(s) you will need to force GRUB to show the boot menu.

To force GRUB to show the boot menu press ESC once after the screen goes blank following the manufacturer’s logo appearing on screen and before Feren OS starts booting. If you’re successful, a screen similar to the one shown below will appear:

Warning

If you are too early you’ll trigger whatever pressing ESC does on your machine’s firmware before any Operating Systems start to load. If you are too late Feren OS will boot normally. Furthermore, if you press ESC too many times you’ll either enter the “GRUB command line” or back into your machine’s firmware’s boot menu or another menu on your machine’s firmware.

If you enter the “GRUB command line”, type reboot and press Enter to restart your machine.

Feren OS GRUB Boot Menu

Now you are at the GRUB screen, scroll down to Advanced options for Feren OS and press the ENTER key. A new list of options will appear on-screen. Of these options, scroll down to Feren OS, with Linux … (nomodeset) and press the ENTER key again. Feren OS should now start booting with nomodeset on.

Installing Drivers

Now you are in Feren OS, the next thing you need to do is install adequate NVIDIA Drivers for your machine. You can do this by going in Driver Manager. Please continue on to Driver Manager for instructions on installing your NVIDIA Drivers (as well as potentially some other drivers).

Once you have followed that guide, restart Feren OS and let it boot normally and then proceed to “First Steps” (the next page in this guide).

First Steps

Logging in for the first time

At this point of the guide, it is assumed you have just booted into your new Feren OS installation and just logged in. Welcome to Feren OS! Before you can start using Feren OS, Feren OS wants to ask you a few quick questions when you log in for the first time about how you want your desktop to look and if you want to set a few extra features up to improve your user experience.

When you log in, you will see a dialog greeting you to Feren OS, ready to ask you a few questions. It will look similar to the dialog depicted below:

When you see this dialog, press Next to continue through each page after you have looked at each page. You are free to choose whatever option suits you on each page, as well as skip over pages shown to you.

Here’s a quick description of each page:

• Virtual Machine - Install VirtualBox Guest Additions or VMWare Tools if necessary (only shown on Virtual Machines)
• Codecs - Install third-party multimedia codecs to your new Feren OS installation (if your country serves Windows N or similar then skip this step)
• Look and Feel - Choose a layout to start off with on Feren OS
• Theme Mode and Accent Colour - Choose Default, Light Mode or Dark Mode and then choose an optional accent colour if desired
• Pair Feren OS with your Android Device - Set up KDE Connect on Feren OS and your Android Device
• Reduce eye strain at night - Set up Night Colour, a feature to reduce blue light on your screen to reduce eye strain in dark environments

Feren OS Classic has a different set of steps, however:

• Virtual Machine - Install VirtualBox Guest Additions or VMWare Tools if necessary (only shown on Virtual Machines)
• Codecs - Install third-party multimedia codecs to your new Feren OS installation (if your country serves Windows N or similar then skip this step)
• Layout - Choose a layout to start off with on Feren OS
• Theme Mode and Accent Colour - Choose Default or Dark Mode and then choose an optional accent colour if desired
• Toggle Animations - Enable or disable animations in Feren OS Classic

Once you are done you will see a final thank you page and then the window will close when you click Enjoy.

Now that is done, Welcome Screen should appear next. Check out the Welcome Screen if you want some extra advice on some things you can do in Feren OS and then feel free to set up Feren OS however you want.

Warning

If you backed up data earlier using Transfer Tool before replacing your previous Operating System with Feren OS, don’t forget to follow the steps on Restoring data with Transfer Tool before you start setting up your desktop. If you restore data with Transfer Tool after setting up, it may override some of your settings during data restoration.

Welcome Screen

What is the Welcome Screen?

The Welcome Screen is a utility built in to Feren OS that guides you through a few handy tips, things to do and more to introduce and help get you familiar with Feren OS. You can use it to get an introduction to what Feren OS is, some extra tips on Getting Started, and more. You can access it via Applications Menu ‣ System ‣ Welcome Screen or via the shortcut on your Desktop.

Welcome Screen

Introduction

The Introduction page tells you some facts about what Feren OS is, what makes Feren OS, Open Source technology and a few other related facts about Feren OS. Feel free to have a read-up if you’d like, though you might as well just skip over this page unless you seriously care about Feren OS enough.

Features

The Features page tells you some features that Feren OS has. Feel free to have a read-up if you’d like, though you might as well just skip over this page unless you seriously care about Feren OS enough.

Getting Started

The Getting Started page gives you some advice on the first things to do in Feren OS to get your machine set up better. It can be used as an extension of the User Guide to install and configure one or two extra items in Feren OS.

Recommendations

The Recommendations page gives you a few suggestions for programs to install in Feren OS to either add features to the user experience or provide you with easier ways to do tasks in Feren OS such as gaming. Check the page out if you want some ideas for applications to install on your new Feren OS installation.

Community

The Community page is a great place for getting quick access to Feren OS on Social Media as well as some forums, etc that may support Feren OS users as well.

Get Involved

The Get Involved page tells you ways in which you can help support Feren OS grow, join the community, and help contribute to the future of Feren OS. You will also find links to the Feren OS GitHub there as well as a few upstream links.

Install Software

The Install Software button gives you two options for installing applications, being through the Store for classic packages and Flatpaks or the “Snap Store” for Snaps.

Classic Packages are archives containing whole applications or other parts of the inner-workings of Feren OS or the applications installed on it packaged up in an archive format and extracted onto your system when installed.

Flatpaks are an alternative to Classic Packages that provide more guaranteed security (most of the time) as well as generally being more up-to-date than Classic Packages or exclusively Flatpaks.

Snaps are very similar to Flatpaks, except Snaps can all be obtained from a single repository owned by the creators of Snap (Canonical). The Snap Store may also have a few Snap-only exclusives in rare cases.

Changelog

The Changelog page is a good page for finding out the changes made in the current snapshot of Feren OS since the release of the previous snapshot of Feren OS was released.

Hint

‘Snapshot’ refers to updates done to all the Feren OS ISO files during a 3-month release cadence (unless a snapshot has to be delayed). This page will appear automatically every time a new Feren OS snapshot is made unless the toggle on that page is switched off.

Default Settings

Finally, the Default Settings button takes you to a page where you can reset your theme and layout back to the default settings in case you ever mess up the themeing or your desktop layout and want an easy way to undo your changes quickly.

Restoring data with Transfer Tool

Requirements

To restore your data using Transfer Tool, you will need the following available:

• The external data storage device that you backed up your data to earlier with Transfer Tool
• Access to your new Feren OS installation

Video Guide

If you want a visual guide for all of these steps, there is a YouTube video that will guide you through all the necessary steps required to transfer backed up data to Feren OS with Transfer Tool.

Note that this guide covers both backing up the data (from Windows), and restoring it after installing Feren OS over Windows. Therefore for the purpose of this part of the User Guide you should only follow the second half of the video guide.

The video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVN2NVvGCVI

If you want a text guide instead, continue reading below.

Launching Transfer Tool

To start things off, you will want to be logged in to the user account you want to restore data to in Feren OS.

From there, go into the Applications Menu (the bottom-left bird icon) ‣ System ‣ Transfer Tool to launch Transfer Tool.

Once you’ve got Transfer Tool running, you’ll be presented by this window:

Mounting Drives

Next, you’ll want to mount one drive: Your external backup drive. You can do this by clicking on it in Files’s left sidebar so that it has an eject icon on the right-side of it.

Hint

If you have not already plugged in your external backup drive, you should plug it in and then mount it.

Restoring data with Transfer Tool

Now you have mounted the external backup drive ready for the restoration process, go back into Transfer Tool and click on Restore Data.

On the next page in Transfer Tool go to the dropdown at the top that says Select where you’d like to restore data from and from there select your external backup drive.

Now the ‘Begin Restore’ button should be enabled. When it is enabled, just click ‘Begin Restore’ to begin the restoration process.

Once you’re done with Transfer Tool

Once Transfer Tool has restored your data, you’ll be taken to a new page that will either say all the data has restored successfully, most of the data has restored successfully or the whole restoration process has failed.

If your data has restored properly then you should close the Transfer Tool. Feel free to then eject your drive as you’ll no longer need it for the rest of the User Guide.

After doing that you can proceed to start properly setting up Feren OS. Have fun!

Next Steps

• First Steps
• Welcome Screen

Update Manager

What is Update Manager?

Update Manager is a utility built into Feren OS that allows you to manually install updates. It’s the place to go to if there is any updates available for Feren OS if you don’t want to wait for Feren OS to automatically install updates.

Hint

Feren OS installs available updates daily automatically by default from the default set of repositories included in Feren OS. Packages from extra repositories you’ve added will not get automatically updated by default.

Update Manager

To install available updates in Update Manager, click on Install Updates.

To check for updates, click on Refresh.

To select all the available updates so that they get installed when you click on Install Updates.

To select none of the available updates click on Clear.

Extra Options

There are also multiple other options in Update Manager in the menubar.

In the Edit menu you can find Preferences to change some Update Manager settings, System Snapshots to launch Timeshift and Software Sources to launch Software Sources.

In the View menu you can toggle visible columns, toggle descriptions for updatable packages, show your system’s update history, manage Linux Kernels and view Update Manager window information.

In the Help menu you can view the first login page in Update Manager, view Keyboard Shortcuts, view Help contents and view the Update Manager About dialog.

Disabling Automatic Updates

Warning

Disabling automatic updates is not recommended.

Hint

A future update to Update Manager will eventually add an easier way to toggle automatic updates in Update Manager preferences. At that point this guide will be updated to reflect this.

If you don’t want automatic updates to occur on a daily basis, you can easily disable it through a user with administrator privilleges.

To start off, you will want to edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic. In Feren OS you just need to open this file in Kate, and you will find it through Files at File System ‣ etc ‣ apt ‣ apt.conf.d ‣ 10periodic.

In Feren OS Classic, however, you will need to open a text editor as Superuser. An easy way to do this is to go into the Terminal and run this command: sudo xed /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic

You should find a line saying APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";. Change the 1 to a 0 and save the document. Once the document is saved and the line is now saying APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "0"; restart and automatic updates should now be disabled.

Hint

If the file doesn’t yet exist, write that line in and save the file anew.

Driver Manager

The Driver Manager is a tool that lets you manage certain drivers on Feren OS that currently cannot be legally distributed with Feren OS.

You will need to use Driver Manager if:

• Your machine uses NVIDIA Graphics Drivers
• Your machine uses Broadcom Wireless Network Drivers

1. Open Driver Manager (Applications Menu ‣ System / Administration ‣ Driver Manager).

Hint

If you are offline, the Driver Manager will complain that it cannot connect to the Internet.

Insert the USB stick or DVD you flashed/burned your Feren OS ISO to earlier, wait for it to be mounted, and click OK.

2. Tick the appropriate checkboxes to select the available drivers and click Apply Changes.
3. Restart the computer.

Broadcom Wireless Network Drivers

Why is my WiFi not working?

Some machines use Wireless Network Interface Controllers manufactured by Broadcom. Feren OS, without the necessary drivers, cannot detect or connect to wireless networks on these wireless network interface controllers. You will need to install the Broadcom drivers applicable to your Broadcom Wireless Network Interface Controller.

Hint

A Wireless Network Interface Controller is the thing in your machine that lets you connect to WiFi Networks

Installing the Wireless Network Drivers

Fortunately, installing the Broadcom Wireless Network Drivers is simple enough. Insert the USB or DVD you flashed/burned your Feren OS ISO to install Feren OS with and then follow these steps.

Extra tips for NVIDIA users

Adding the Optimus Indicator

Certain NVIDIA Hardware comes with NVIDIA Optimus support, which means you can have 2 or more Graphics Cards and are able to freely change between them on supported Operating Systems. Feren OS is able to make use of a program that can switch between these Graphics Cards at any time as long as you are willing to log out and back in each time to do so.

Feren OS Classic already pre-includes similar functionality in the form of an applet that you can add in System Settings ‣ Applets.

However, for Feren OS you will need to install it first. To do this, open the Store and search for “Mate-optimus” (without the quotes). When you’ve found “Mate-optimus” install it and then you should see the NVIDIA logo appear in the System Tray (set of indicator icons at the right-side of the panel) on the next time you log in.

If you can see the NVIDIA logo in the System Tray, click it to see the options for switching graphics cards at any time.

Hint

If you do not see the NVIDIA logo in the System Tray after installing this tool and logging out and in again then either you haven’t got the necessary NVIDIA drivers in Driver Manager or your machine doesn’t have NVIDIA Optimus support.

Using the Desktop

The default Feren OS

When you first log into Feren OS, and if you skip over the layout section of “Welcome to Feren OS”, you will have this desktop:

The default Feren OS desktop

This desktop can be either left alone to be your default desktop or can be the beginnings of your own desktop customisation, however that is beside the point.

The desktop, by default, is laid out into these core fundamentals:

• Icons are on the desktop for whatever you place in your Desktop folder
• At the top-center of the screen there is the (appropriately dubbed) Cappuccino Notch housing both your time, calendar and notifications. If you open a window under the Cappuccino Notch it’ll hide itself, until you hit your mouse against the top-center part of your screen hard enough, to stay out of your way.
• At the bottom-left you will find your Applications Menu (the Feren OS logo), and next to that your pinned and open applications
• Finally, at the bottom-right you will find your System Tray (click the up arrow to reveal hidden tray indicators and click each icon for their respective statuses)

Tablet Mode

If you choose Tablet Mode as your layout for Feren OS, the desktop will look and work slightly differently than it does by default.

Tablet Mode in action

The desktop, in this layout, is laid out into these core fundamentals:

• Icons are on the desktop for whatever you place in your Desktop folder
• At the bottom-left you will find your Applications Menu (the Feren OS logo), and next to that your pinned and open applications
• Finally, at the bottom-right you will find your System Tray (click the up arrow to reveal hidden tray indicators and click each icon for their respective statuses), clock and calendar, an on-screen keyboard toggler, notifications and the show desktop button

Applications Menu - Simple Menu (Default and Tablet Mode)

The applications menu is the place to go to whenever you want to launch an application. It’s quite simple to use when you get the hang of the menu, however I might as well explain what each part of the menu is and does.

• The list on your left is your categories - hover over each category to list applications in that category
• The search bar at the top lets you search for applications, settings, files and more
• The buttons on the top-right are your power buttons. They go in this order: Switch User, Lock, Log Out, Power Off
• The items on the remaining area of the menu are the applications from the current category that you are on
• If you’re currently on the “All Applications” category, the first page is your favourite applications (every page following that is all the applications installed on your system)
• Finally, the circles at the bottom of the applications list represent how many pages of applications there are in your current category (the opaque circle represents what page you are on out of those pages)

Hint

Tablet Mode uses Simple Menu instead of Application Dashboard as otherwise you currently cannot get an on-screen keyboard to make use of in Application Dashboard.

Cupertino Layout

If you choose Cupertino Layout as your layout for Feren OS, the desktop will look and work slightly differently than it does by default.

Cupertino Layout in action

The desktop, in this layout, is laid out into these core fundamentals:

• Icons are on the desktop for whatever you place in your Desktop folder
• At the bottom-center you will find your dock containing your pinned and open applications, a shortcut to the Application Dashboard and your Wastebin
• At the top-left is a power menu, the title of the currently opened window and a menubar (for supported applications when they are open and currently focused (being used)).
• Finally, at the top-right you will find your System Tray (click the up arrow to reveal hidden tray indicators and click each icon for their respective statuses), the clock and calendar, notifications and search

Familiar Layout

If you choose Familiar Layout as your layout for Feren OS, the desktop will look and work slightly differently than it does by default.

Familiar Layout in action

The desktop, in this layout, is laid out into these core fundamentals:

• Icons are on the desktop for whatever you place in your Desktop folder
• At the bottom-left you will find your Applications Menu (the Feren OS logo), and next to that your pinned and open applications
• Finally, at the bottom-right you will find your System Tray (click the up arrow to reveal hidden tray indicators and click each icon for their respective statuses), clock and calendar, notifications and the show desktop button

Applications Menu - Tiled Menu (Familiar Layout)

The applications menu is the place to go to whenever you want to launch an application. Familiar Layout’s application menu is completely different to the default one, and it might even remind you of a certain other menu from somewhere else. Here’s how it works:

• On the direct left of the menu is a row of buttons: Only Show Tiles, List Applications Alphabetically, List Applications By Categories, User Options, Documents Folder, Pictures Folder, Open Files, Open Settings and Power.
• The list next to that is all the applications installed on your system
• The search bar directly below the installed applications list lets you search for applications, settings, files and more
• Finally, the colourful blocks on the right are ‘Tiles’ - they’re your favourite applications, basically, in this menu (they can be moved and resized however you want)

Redmond Layout

If you choose Redmond Layout as your layout for Feren OS, the desktop will look and work slightly differently than it does by default.

Redmond Layout in action

The desktop, in this layout, is laid out into these core fundamentals:

• Icons are on the desktop for whatever you place in your Desktop folder
• At the bottom-left you will find your Applications Menu (the Feren OS logo), and next to that your pinned applications, Show Desktop and open applications
• Finally, at the bottom-right you will find your System Tray (click the up arrow to reveal hidden tray indicators and click each icon for their respective statuses), notifications, clock and calendar

Applications Menu - Application Menu (Redmond Layout)

The applications menu is the place to go to whenever you want to launch an application. Redmond Layout’s application menu is completely different to the default one. Here’s how it works:

• On the direct left of the menu is a row of buttons consisting of your favourite applications, Switch User, Log Out and Shut Down
• The list next to that is all the categories for applications installed on your system - hover over each category for the applications in that category to pop out in a sub-menu
• Finally, the search bar directly below the categories list lets you search for applications, settings, files and more

Ubuntu Unity Layout

If you choose Ubuntu Unity Layout as your layout for Feren OS, the desktop will look and work completely differently than it does by default.

Ubuntu Unity Layout in action

The desktop, in this layout, is laid out into these core fundamentals:

• Icons are on the desktop for whatever you place in your Desktop folder
• At the left you will find a dock containing a shortcut to the Application Dashboard, your pinned and open applications and your Wastebin
• At the top-left is the title of the currently opened window and a menubar (for supported applications) when they are open and currently focused (being used) (when the focused window is maximised window buttons will also appear on the top-left in the top panel)
• Finally, at the top-right you will find your System Tray (click the up arrow to reveal hidden tray indicators and click each icon for their respective statuses), notifications, the clock and calendar and the user menu

Applications Menu - Application Dashboard (Cupertino and Ubuntu Unity Layout)

The applications menu is the place to go to whenever you want to launch an application. This menu takes a full-screen approach.

• The list on your left is your favourite applications
• The buttons directly beneath are for Switch User, Log Out and Shut Down
• The search text at the top lets you search for applications, settings, files and more
• The list on the center is the applications from the current category that you are on
• The list on your right is your categories - hover over each category to list applications in that category in the center

Using the Desktop (Feren OS Classic)

The default Feren OS Classic

When you first log into Feren OS Classic, and if you skip over the layout section of “Welcome to Feren OS”, you will have this desktop:

The default Feren OS Classic desktop

This desktop can be either left alone to be your default desktop or can be the beginnings of your own desktop customisation, however that is beside the point.

The desktop, by default, is laid out into these core fundamentals:

• Icons are on the desktop for whatever you place in your Desktop folder
• At the top-right of the screen there is a desktop clock that stays on the desktop unless disabled (alternatively it’ll be on the bottom-right if the desktop clock is disabled)
• At the bottom-left you will find your Applications Menu (the Feren OS logo), and next to that your pinned and open applications
• Finally, at the bottom-right you will find your System Tray (click the up arrow to reveal hidden tray indicators and click each icon for their respective statuses)

Tablet Mode

If you choose Tablet Mode as your layout for Feren OS, the desktop will look and work slightly differently than it does by default.

Tablet Mode in action

The desktop, in this layout, is laid out into these core fundamentals:

• Icons are on the desktop for whatever you place in your Desktop folder
• At the bottom-left you will find your Applications Menu (the Feren OS logo), and next to that search, virtual desktops, your pinned applications and open applications
• Finally, at the bottom-right you will find your System Tray (click the up arrow to reveal hidden tray indicators and click each icon for their respective statuses), clock and calendar, and titlebar buttons

Applications Menu - CinnVIIStarkMenu

The applications menu is the place to go to whenever you want to launch an application. It’s quite simple to use when you get the hang of the menu, however I might as well explain what each part of the menu is and does.

• On the initial menu page, the list on the left is your Favourite Applications
• On the initial menu page, the list on the right is your custom menu items list, and below that is Shut Down, Log Out and Lock
• The search bar at the bottom lets you search for applications
• On the “All Apps” page, the list on the left is your categories - hover each category to show the applications in them
• Finally, on the “All Apps” page, the list on the right is the list of applications on your currently viewed category

Applications Menu - Menu (Linux Mint Layout)

The applications menu is the place to go to whenever you want to launch an application. The application menu works differently if you choose the Linux Mint Layout. Here’s how it works:

• On the direct left of the menu is a row of buttons consisting of your favourite applications, Switch User, Log Out and Shut Down
• The list next to that is all the categories for applications installed on your system - hover over each category to view the applications in that category
• The list to the right is the list of applications in the currently viewed category
• Finally, the search bar at the top lets you search for applications

System Settings

The System Settings Application

Feren OS’s System Settings application allows you to change most settings in your system.

System Settings

The list on the left is for all the categories and pages in System Settings. On the home page of System Settings, to the right, you will find the most frequently used settings that you’ve used.

You can also find some settings outside of System Settings, as well.

External Settings

There are some settings that currently reside outside of System Settings, under the following applications:

• Firewall Configuration - configure and/or toggle the Firewall built in to Feren OS
• Input Method - change your current Input Method (only necessary for certain languages on your system)
• Languages - manage and set your system’s default languages and regions
• Login Window - change Login Screen settings such as the look and feel of the Login Screen, autologin and more
• Software Sources - change the package repositories on your machine
• Theme Colouriser - change the accent colour of the default Feren OS theme easily

The “Desktop” Category

As for the settings in System Settings, settings are split into categories depending on what they provide. Starting with the Desktop category, there is:

• Theme - change appearance settings such as the theme of your desktop and your desktop layout
• Desktop Effects - toggle on/off desktop effects
• Fonts - change the fonts used on your desktop
• Window Management - change settings for window behaviour and change how ALT+TAB works and looks
• Screen Locking - change your lock screen background and other lock screen settings
• Accessibility - toggle accessibility features

The “Personalisation” Category

In the Personalisation category, there is:

• Account Details - edit yours or others’ account details such as name, password and account picture
• Applications - change default applications and file associations
• Regional Settings - configure date and time
• Workspace Behaviour - change minor workspace behaviour settings and choose between single-click to open files and folders or double-click
• Screen Actions - configure hotcorners and touch screen swipe actions
• Shortcuts - configure keyboard shortcuts and KRunner’s web search feature’s trigger
• Virtual Desktop - configure virtual desktops for your user
• Startup and Shutdown - manage what programs launch on startup and also change minor session startup behaviour settings
• KDE Connect - configure KDE Connect and manage paired devices
• Notifications - configure how notifications show, for how long they show, and more

The “System” Category

In the System category, there is:

• Input Devices - manage settings for mice, trackpads, keyboards, some game controllers and graphic tablets
• Display and Monitor - configure Night Color, active monitors (for those with more than one screen), screen resolution, screen rotation and more
• Audio - manage volume and default input and output devices
• Power Management - configure Energy Saving settings and some other power settings
• Removable Storage - configure device insertion actions, configure settings for some digital cameras and configure automatic mounting of external storage devices
• Network - manage known networks and configure proxy settings
• Printers - manage printers on your system or network
• Thunderbolt - configure Thunderbolt devices (not supported by most laptops and machines)

The “Advanced” Category

In the Advanced category, there is:

• About System - find out about the version of Feren OS you are using
• Other - configure miscellaneous, or mostly redundant, settings

The “Theme” Subcategory

In the Theme subcategory, there is:

• Global Theme - change the overall theme and layout of your Feren OS desktop
• Plasma Style - change the theme for KRunner, the panel, menus that pop up from the panel and more
• Window Decorations - change the way titlebars in supported applications look or change the layout of buttons on titlebars
• Application Style - change the application style used for Qt Applications (System Settings, desktop right-click menu, Kate, Konsole, Okular, etc.)
• GNOME/GTK Application Style - change the application style used for GTK Applications (almost everything else)
• Icons - change the icon set used in applications and on the desktop
• Colours - change the colour set used in applications, on titlebars and on supported Plasma Styles
• Cursors - change the way your pointer (the arrow you click things with) looks
• Splash Screen - change the animation that plays while logging in or disable it entirely
• Launch Feedback - change the animation that plays next to your pointer when an application is being launched
• Emoticons - change the emoticon style for supported applications

The “Other” Subcategory

Finally, in the Other subcategory, there is:

Warning

Here be dragons. Some of these settings might either be useless or might result in bad things happening to your desktop. Be careful.

• File Search - change the behaviour of file and folder searching in the applications menu and in KRunner
• KRunner - configure KRunner, the ALT + F2 command launcher
• Background Services - manage miscellaneous background services used by the desktop
• Activities - manage the Activities feature
• Activity Settings - configure Activities
• Compositor - manage the window compositor, change the compositing engine used and enable or disable the compositor entirely
• Locations - manage the locations for each folder on supported applications
• Spell Check - manage spell check settings on supported applications
• KWin Scripts - manage Window Manager scripts
• Window Rules - define special rules for certain windows or applications to follow
• Connection Preferences - configure miscellaneous network settings
• SSL Preferences - manage known certificates for supported applications
• Cache - configure cache options for supported applications
• Cookies - configure cookie options for supported applications
• Browser Identification - change the browser that websites identify you using on supported web browsers
• Gamma - configure the gamma settings for your screen(s)
• Audio CDs - configure CD-related settings for supported applications
• Windows Shares - configure the username and password used to authenticate into Windows Shares
• Font Management - manage fonts on your system

System Settings (Feren OS Classic)

The System Settings Application

Feren OS Classic’s System Settings application allows you to change most settings in your system.

System Settings

On the home page of System Settings you will find each item in System Settings laid out in their categories.

You can also find some settings outside of System Settings, as well.

External Settings

There are some settings that currently reside outside of System Settings, under the following applications:

• Fingerprint GUI - manage Fingerprints for authentication on supported machines or machines with fingerprint readers plugged in
• Theme Colouriser - change the accent colour of the default Feren OS theme easily

The “Appearance” Category

As for the settings in System Settings, settings are split into categories depending on what they provide. Starting with the Appearance category, there is:

• Backgrounds - change your desktop background
• Effects - manage desktop effects and animations
• Font Selection - change the fonts used on your desktop
• Theme - change the theme, application style, Cinnamon style, cursor theme and icon set, among other small visual tweaks

The “Preferences” Category

In the Preferences category, there is:

• Accessibility - manage accessibility features
• Account details - edit your account details such as name, password and account picture
• Applets - manage the items on your panel
• Date & Time - configure date and time
• Desklets - manage widgets on your desktop
• Desktop - manage icons on your desktop
• Extensions - configure Cinnamon extensions
• General - configure miscellaneous Cinnamon settings
• Hot Corners - configure hotcorners and their actions
• Input Method - change your current Input Method (only necessary for certain languages on your system)
• Languages - manage and set your system’s default languages and regions
• Notifications - configure how notifications show and their behaviour in the notifications history applet
• Online Accounts - configure Online Accounts integration for supported applications
• Panel - change panel settings
• Preferred Applications - change your default applications
• Privacy - change privacy settings in Cinnamon
• Screensaver - configure the lock screen
• Startup Applications - manage what programs launch on startup
• Window Tiling - change window tiling behaviour
• Windows - change general window manager behaviour
• Workspaces - configure virtual desktops for your user

The “Hardware” Category

In the Hardware category, there is:

• Bluetooth - manage paired bluetooth devices and change bluetooth settings
• Color - change colour settings for your display(s)
• Display - configure active monitors (for those with more than one screen), screen resolution, screen rotation and more
• Graphics Tablet - configure compatible graphics tablets
• Keyboard - configure keyboard settings, keyboard shortcuts and keyboard layout
• Mouse and Touchpad - configure your mouse and/or touchpad
• Network - manage known networks and configure proxy settings
• Power Management - configure Energy Saving settings and some other power settings
• Printers - manage printers on your system or network
• Sound - manage volume, sound effects and default input and output devices
• System Info - find out about the version of Feren OS you are using

The “Administration” Category

In the Administration category, there is:

• Driver Manager - launch Driver Manager
• Firewall - launch Firewall Configuration
• Login Window - launch Login Window
• Users and Groups - edit yours or others’ account details such as name, password and account picture

Using Vivaldi

This section of the User Guide details how to use Vivaldi in Feren OS to browse the internet. Click on an item to continue.

Using Vivaldi in Feren OS

Using Vivaldi

Using Vivaldi in Feren OS is quite simple. If you have used Vivaldi before, you’ll already know where everything is, however if you do not then here is a brief tour of Vivaldi:

Vivaldi in Feren OS

If you need help with Vivaldi, don’t forget to click the Vivaldi icon on the sidebar on the left of the window to open up the official help guide on Vivaldi.

Configuring the Feren OS Start Page

Feren OS uses a custom Start Page website by default as Vivaldi’s New Tab Page. To configure the Start Page, click the cog on the top-right of the Start Page.

Once there, here is what each setting currently does:

• Background Image: Changes the background image used on the Start Page
• Hide elements of Start Page: Toggle on/off whether to hide the tiles under the search bar on the Start Page, the Feren OS Blog and Twitter panels below that or the credits. You can even hide them all to change the Start Page to an alternative layout based on its original layout before it gained the other items below the search bar.

Hint

Due to security reasons the Start Page cannot take links to local files on your computer for the Start Page background - the background will just be black

Alternatively, you can also change the Start Page back to Vivaldi’s own one, if you so desire. To change the Start Page back to Vivaldi’s own, do the following:

1. Click the Vivaldi Settings (⚙) icon on the bottom-left of Vivaldi
2. Under Homepage select “Start Page”
3. Go into Tabs
4. Under New Tab Page select “Start Page”

If you want to go back to the Feren OS Start Page at any time just undo the changes you made there. In case you lose the address it is at https://feren-os.github.io/start-page.

Using the unmodified Vivaldi experience

If you are a purist or just want to use Vivaldi without any of the changes made in Feren OS, you can easily get an unmodified Vivaldi up and running with these steps:

1. Click the person icon on the top-right
2. Click Manage People… in the menu that appears
3. Click Add Person twice
4. A new Vivaldi window will pop up. Close the previous Vivaldi window
5. In this new Vivaldi window click the person icon on the top-right again
6. Click Manage People… again
7. Click Person 1 (or whatever you named the old profile if you changed its name)
8. Click Remove Person

Warning

Once you remove “Person 1”, this operation cannot be undone without completely reimporting the Vivaldi configuration folder from /etc/skel manually which will completely reset Vivaldi back to the state it is initially in in Feren OS.

Changes in Feren OS to Vivaldi

Feren OS has a few changes made to Vivaldi by default to improve on its user experience for newcomers and to integrate the browser better in Feren OS by default.

These changes are mostly just cosmetic, however they might as well get mentioned here:

• The titlebar buttons were changed to be akin to the default Feren OS titlebar theme
• 7 new themes are added in Vivaldi: “Edgy”, “Ow”, “Who Turned The Lights Out?”, “Classic”, “Classic Dark”, “Feren OS (Default)” and “Feren OS Dark”
• The theme used was changed to “Feren OS (Default)”
• The homepage was changed to https://feren-os.github.io/start-page
• “Show Exit Confirmation Dialog” was disabled
• “Show Close Window Confirmation Dialog” was disabled
• The Start Page background image was changed
• Speed Dial Appearance was set to “Show Title when Needed”
• New Tab Page was set to “Homepage”
• “Remove Tab Spacing in Maximized Windows” was enabled
• “Dim Icon when Hibernated” was enabled
• Page Load Progress was set to “Favicon Spinner”
• “Show Search Field in Address Bar” was disabled
• Three Web Panels were added: Vivaldi Help, Feren OS on Medium and Feren OS on Social Media

Getting help with Vivaldi

Places to go to get help with Vivaldi

There are multiple places to go to look for help with Vivaldi.

If you need help with changes to Vivaldi in Feren OS such as the differing Start Page, etc, go here:

• Using Vivaldi in Feren OS
• Get help from fellow Feren OS users and others

Otherwise if you need help with Vivaldi in general, you can find help on these places:

• Official Vivaldi Help Page

Store

What is the Store?

The Store is the go-to place for getting most if not all the applications you’d ever need in Feren OS.

Feren OS’s Store

The home page, which you get greeted to, is split into the following sections:

• Suggested application (a randomly picked application from a pre-defined list of possible applications)
• Editors’ Picks (some randomly items from a pre-defined list of applications for being applications of decent quality)
• Categories to list many applications by in the Store

You can also search for applications using the search bar at the top right either by their standard name (most of the time) or their package name.

Categories in Store

The Store has categories at the bottom for listing most applications in the Store by each category.

These categories are:

• Accessories - utilities for Feren OS
• Customisation - extra items to make use of when customising Feren OS
• Games - games for Feren OS
• Graphics - graphics utilities for Feren OS
• Internet - web browsing, email, chat and file sharing utilities for Feren OS
• Office - office utilities for Feren OS
• Programming - programming software for Feren OS
• Science and Education - science and education software for Feren OS
• Sound and video - multimedia playing and multimedia creating software for Feren OS
• System tools - system utilities for Feren OS
• Editors’ Picks - the full list of pre-defined recommended applications
• Flatpak - list all the Flatpak packages available from the Store

Viewing an application in Store

Whenever you want to view an application in Store, you can simply click on the application in the listings of applications when either searching for applications or viewing a category.

When you are viewing the application, a screen similar to this one will appear:

• Install lets you install the application. This button will change into Launch and Remove if the application is installed.
• The top will give you the application’s icon, the first line of its description and how its reviews score the application overall
• Below that is the rest of the description
• In the middle there are screenshots of the application (if any are available for the currently viewed application)
• In the Details section you will find the package name for the application, the version of the application’s package and the estimated disk space requirements for installing the application
• Finally, at the bottom you’ll find reviews for the application you are currently viewing

Other Tips

To change settings in the Store hit the cog icon on the top-right of the Store window.

Web Browser Manager

What is Web Browser Manager?

Web Browser Manager is an application made for Feren OS that lets you easily install and remove popular web browsers, including those that currently cannot be obtained by default from the Store.

You can find it in the Internet category in the Applications Menu.

Web Browser Manager

Using Web Browser Manager

Using Web Browser Manager is rather simple. Each button in the Browser Manager corresponds to a different action:

• Clicking the web browser’s logo gives you a quick and concise description of the browser you clicked the logo of
• Clicking Install starts the installation process of the browser beneath that button
• Clicking Uninstall starts the removal process of the browser beneath that button
• Clicking Close or closing the window quits Web Browser Manager

Snap Store

What is the Snap Store?

The Snap Store is the go-to place for getting Snap Packages in Feren OS.

Hint

Snap Packages are like Flatpaks - they’re locked down (for security) applications designed to stay up to date at all times. However, there is only one adequate Snap repository currently for Snap Packages and these packages are regulated by the software publishers rather than also being carefully vetted by Canonical (the Snap Store owner).

Snap Store

The Snap Store has a similar look and feel to the Store application (search is the magnifying glass symbol button on the top-left, the layout of the home page is very similar, and so on), so it should be easy to adjust to.

The Snap Store is not installed by default in Feren OS (neither is support for Snap Packages) though so you’ll want to install Snap Store if you want to use it.

Installing Snap Store

The Snap Store is quite easy to install in Feren OS. To start off you will want to open up Welcome Screen to the home page.

Now you’re on the home page, click Install Software then click Snap Apps.

Assuming you have not got Snap Store installed yet, you will now see a prompt asking you if you want to install “Snap Support”. If you see this dialog, click Yes and then authenticate when prompted to.

A Terminal window will now open to show the progress of Snap Store installation. Let it do its job and once it has installed “Snap Support” the Terminal window will close and Snap Store will be automatically launched.

Where is Snap Store after installation?

After Snap Store is installed, you can quickly access it from the following places in the future:

• Applications Menu ‣ System ‣ Snap Store
• Welcome Screen ‣ Install Software ‣ Snap Apps

Hint

The system may need to be restarted after installing Snap Store for it to appear in the applications menu.

Furthermore, Feren OS Classic, because Cinnamon, may not be able to display Snap Applications in its applications menu at all.

Other Tips

To change settings in the Snap Store hit the hamburger (three lines) icon on the top-right of the Store window.

AppImages

Warning

AppImages are a bad idea for Feren OS security. Be careful with what AppImages you use and where you get them from. I, The Feren OS Developer, take no responsibility for any damage a malicious AppImage file might cause.

Only authenticate AppImage applications to do stuff as Superuser if they’re from a trusted source and if THEY show the authentication dialog themselves.

What are AppImages?

AppImages are applications packaged in an executable file that are designed to be directly ran from the “.AppImage” file you download them as. Users of macOS will be very familiar with the concept of AppImages as macOS applications are packaged in a very similar way.

As such, they provide the simplicity of macOS applications and Windows “EXE” files that just work when you run them on Feren OS and other Linux distributions.

To run an AppImage, simply right-click it, select Properties, go to the Permissions tab and make sure Allow executing file as program is ticked. Then close the Properties window and open up the file as if it was any other file. Before you know it, the application in the file you just opened is now running.

Common Program Replacements

Why Common Program Replacements are important

When you are going to a new Operating System and have specialist software on your old Operating System that you rely on, you will find that replacements for these programs are a requirement for re-completing your workflow on Feren OS. Most programs, fortunately, are available on Feren OS right away, however you may find some programs are not.

Examples of applications that support Feren OS

Before I mention some Common Program Replacements, I’d like to start off mentioning the most prominent examples of programs supporting Feren OS:

• Google Chrome (available in Store)
• Mozilla Firefox (available in Store)
• Vivaldi (pre-installed)
• Opera (available in Web Browser Manager)
• Brave (available in Web Browser Manager)
• Chromium (available in Store)
• Skype (available in Store)
• Slack (available in Store)
• Microsoft Teams
• Discord (available in Store)
• Telegram (available in Store)
• Mozilla Thunderbird (available in Store)
• LibreOffice (available in Store)
• TeamViewer
• Python (pre-installed)
• Visual Studio Code (available in Store)
• VLC (pre-installed)
• Audacity (available in Store)
• Spotify (available in Store)
• HandBrake (available in Store)
• Dropbox (available in Store)
• Krita (available in Store)
• Blender (available in Store)
• GIMP (available in Store)
• Inkscape (available in Store)
• OBS Studio (available in Store)
• Google Earth (available in Store)
• Steam (available in Store)
• Plex
• Oracle VM VirtualBox (available in Store)
• VMWare Workstation and Player

There are very likely way more applications that can be listed here, however this list should show the brunt of important software that is already available on Feren OS.

Examples of Common Program Replacements

Now, for the Common Program Replacements.

• Microsoft Office can be replaced with: LibreOffice, WPS Office, OnlyOffice and more in Store
• Microsoft Edge can be replaced with Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Vivaldi, Chromium, etc.

Hint

Microsoft has officially announced that a Linux version of Microsoft Edge is coming soon. Once they have released their Linux version this page will be updated to remove this entry and put it as a supported program above instead.

• Microsoft Outlook and Mail can both be replaced with Geary (pre-installed) and other email clients
• Photoshop can be replaced by GIMP and Krita
• PDF Readers can be replaced by Okular (pre-installed) and Evince/Document Viewer (Classic pre-installed)
• iTunes can be replaced by Rhythmbox (available in Store)
• Remote Desktop Connection can be replaced by Reminna (available in Store)
• Screen Recorders can be replaced by SimpleScreenRecorder (available in Store) and OBS Studio
• Calendar can be replaced by Calendar (pre-installed)
• 7-Zip, WinRAR, and so on can be replaced by Ark (pre-installed) and File Roller/Archive Manager (Classic pre-installed)
• System Restore and Time Machine can both be replaced by Timeshift (pre-installed)
• Maps can be replaced by Maps (pre-installed)
• Snipping Tool, Snip & Sketch and Screenshot can be replaced by Spectacle (pre-installed) and Screenshot (Classic pre-installed)
• Rainmeter can be replaced with Conky… and just standard widgets on the desktop (unless you are using Feren OS Classic in which case only Conky is a truly adequate replacement due to 3rd-party support when compared to Cinnamon Desklets)

There are very likely even more examples of common program replacements that I have missed. If you know of any be sure to let me know via social media.

Either way, this should give you a good idea on most of the applications you can use in Feren OS or use as replacements for ones you can’t use in Feren OS.

Steam

How to install Steam

Steam is a very popular video game digital distribution service by Valve with a standalone software client. It is natively available on Feren OS and Linux, and Valve does a lot to work with multiple communities in the Linux gaming sector to make Steam even better for its Linux and Feren OS users.

Steam in action

You can get Steam right from the Store. To find it in Store, do the following:

1. Open Store
2. Go to the Games category
3. Select Steam from the All subcategory
4. Hit Install on the Steam page in Store

Hint

Can’t find Steam in the haystack of applications listed? Just use the search bar at the top right to search for it instead.

Extra Tips

Enabling Steam Play for all titles is a great thing to do. By default Steam only lets you play some Windows-only games in Feren OS (as well as, obviously, native games that support Feren OS) that Valve has whitelisted. However, there are many games that can work in Feren OS that are Windows only.

To check how well your Windows-only Steam games and other games work in Feren OS, check out ProtonDB.

To enable Steam Play for all titles, open up Steam and then on the menu at the top-left of the Steam window click Steam. A menu should now pop up beneath that. Click Settings. A window will now pop up. On the left sidebar of that new window click Steam Play. Now finally look for and tick the checkbox saying Enable Steam Play for all other titles and click OK.

Now try running any Windows-only game in Steam that has a positive rating on ProtonDB.

Lutris

What is Lutris?

Lutris is a small but very famous project designed to make game management on Feren OS and other Linux Distributions way easier by grouping all the games from all the popular video game distribution services and more into one single place, as well as providing easy ways, from the community, to install these games.

Lutris when launched for the first time

To install Lutris, just like with Steam simply do the following:

1. Open Store
2. Go to the Games category
3. Select Lutris from the All subcategory
4. Hit Install on the Lutris page in Store

Hint

Can’t find Lutris in the haystack of applications listed? Just use the search bar at the top right to search for it instead.

Getting started with Lutris

To start using Lutris, you’ll need to get the grasp of how the basics of how it works.

The most important feature of Lutris is installing games. To install a game with Lutris you have two options:

• Search Lutris.net right from the application - click the magnifying glass icon on the top-right of the Lutris window, type the name of the game you want to install and then click Search Lutris.net
• Search https://lutris.net/games right from your web browser - when you’ve found the game you want to install, click the Install button on the website for that game and allow “xdg-open” to be opened to continue the installation process in Lutris

Now you know that, don’t be afraid to explore Lutris. The rest of Lutris is fairly intuitive, after all.

If you need more help, check out Lutris’s website at https://lutris.net for useful links and social media links.

Extra Tips

If you have Steam, I’d recommend integrating Lutris through Steam by signing up to Lutris.net and linking that to your Steam account to make your Steam Library appear in Lutris when signed in there too, and also recommend integrating Lutris into Steam using this guide: https://github.com/lutris/lutris/wiki#steam. It’s entirely optional, but it improves the overall experience.

Global Theme

Hint

This guide doesn’t work on Feren OS Classic. For Feren OS Classic you need to use System Settings ‣ Theme instead, and you can get new themes from Store ‣ Customisation ‣ Themes.

What are Global Themes?

Global Themes are theme packs for Feren OS and other distributions with the Plasma desktop. They provide a layout for your desktop and set many parts of the way your Feren OS desktop looks all in one go.

You can find Global Theme in System Settings ‣ Theme ‣ Global Theme.

Hint

You can apply just the theming and not also the desktop layout when applying Global Themes. To do so select the Global Theme you want to apply, untick the checkbox saying Use desktop layout from theme and then click Apply.

Global Theme

To apply a Global Theme, select it and then click Apply.

Getting new Global Themes

To get a new Global Theme, go into Global Theme and click Get New Global Themes… at the bottom-right above Apply. A window will now pop up allowing you to install and remove a variety of Global Themes made by the community.

To install Global Themes, simply find the theme you want, click Install for that theme, let it install and then when you’re done close the window and Global Theme should now populate with themes that were successfully installed.

Getting new themes

Hint

This guide doesn’t work on Feren OS Classic. For Feren OS Classic you need to download and install themes from an external source.

To get a new themes, go into the area in System Settings ‣ Theme that you want to obtain themes/icon sets/etc for and click the Get New (item here)… button at the bottom-right above Apply. A window will now pop up allowing you to install and remove a variety of themes/icon sets/etc (depending on the settings area you are getting more items for) made by the community.

To install them, simply find the theme/icon set/etc you want, click Install for them, let it install and then when you’re done close the window and the settings area you just got themes/icon sets/etc for should now populate with the ones that were successfully installed.

Adding widgets to your desktop

Feren OS

Adding widgets is very easy in Feren OS. To do so, do the following:

1. Right-click your desktop or any panel
2. Click Add Widgets…
3. A sidebar will now open up on the left, like this:

Add Widgets Sidebar

4. Drag any item on the sidebar’s item grid of widgets to either the desktop or a panel to place the widget there.
5. Hit the close button on the top-right of the sidebar when you’re done adding widgets

Hint

Adding a widget triggers the “Show Desktop” feature to move your windows out of the way. If Show Desktop is still active hit Super + D to deactivate Show Desktop once more.

Feren OS Classic

Feren OS Classic’s Cinnamon Desktop Environment splits the widgets into two types:

• Applets - widgets on the panel
• Desklets - widgets on the desktop

Depending on what widgets you want to add where, open System Settings, open the applicable page in System Settings, select the widget you want to add and hit the + icon to place it on your panel/desktop.

If it’s a Desklet, you can immediately freely drag the new widget to where you want it to be at.

If it’s an Applet, you will need to right-click the panel and turn on Panel Edit Mode before you can move the applet on the panel, and then turn “Panel Edit Mode” off right afterwards to restore panel functionality.

Theme Colouriser

What is the theme colouriser?

The Theme Colouriser utility is a utility for Feren OS that is designed to let you quickly create themes off of compatible themes. These created themes are the same as the originals except their accent colours are changed to be what you have specified. Basically think of this utility as an accent colour changer.

Using Theme Colouriser in Feren OS

Using Theme Colouriser is very easy. To create a theme colourisation, do the following:

1. Open up Theme Colouriser (Applications Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Theme Colouriser)
2. Select Create a new theme colourisation and click OK
3. Pick the theme you want to create an accent colourisation of (Feren OS Theme is the default theme)
4. Pick a colour and click Select
5. Name your theme and click OK
6. Select what theme type you’d like to use (‘Default’ is the dark panel but light applications, ‘Light’ is light everything and ‘Dark’ is dark everything) and click OK
7. Choose whether you would like the titlebars and window borders to be coloured by your accent colour (if you choose No the titlebars will be silver or dark grey depending on the theme type)
8. Click OK on the theme creation confirmation dialog and then choose whether to apply the theme now or not

To apply an existing theme colourisation later, all in one go, do the following:

1. Open up Theme Colouriser (Applications Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Theme Colouriser)
2. Select Apply an existing theme colourisation and click OK
3. Select the theme colourisation you would like to apply and click OK

Hint

You can apply created theme colourisations in System Settings, however that entails applying the Plasma Theme, Colour Scheme and GTK Theme manually (as well as the general Feren OS Global Theme beforehand if you have changed the overall theme)

To delete an existing theme colourisation, do the following:

1. Open up Theme Colouriser (Applications Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Theme Colouriser)
2. Select Remove an existing theme colourisation and click OK
3. Select the theme colourisation you would like to delete and click OK

Using Theme Colouriser in Feren OS Classic

Using Theme Colouriser is very easy. Unlike the version Feren OS comes with however, Theme Colouriser in Feren OS Classic can only make theme colourisations for compatible themes.

To create a theme colourisation, do the following:

1. Open up Theme Colouriser (Applications Menu ‣ Preferences ‣ Theme Colouriser)
2. Pick the theme you want to create an accent colourisation of (feren is the default theme)
3. Pick a colour and click Select
4. Name your theme and click OK
5. Choose whether you would like the titlebars and window borders to be coloured by your accent colour (if you choose No the titlebars will be silver and you’ll be asked if you want to colour just the titlebar button symbols instead)
6. Click OK on the theme creation confirmation dialog and then choose whether to apply the theme now or not

Theme Colourisations can be applied later manually through System Settings ‣ Themes.

Customising your Lock Screen

General Lock Screen settings

The main thing to customise, for the lock screen, is the general lock screen settings.

In Feren OS you can go into System Settings ‣ Screen Locking to do so.

In Feren OS Classic you can go into System Settings ‣ Screensaver to do so.

Hint

The rest of this guide does not support Feren OS Classic.

Changing the lock screen background

Changing the Lock Screen background is pretty easy to do. From System Settings ‣ Screen Locking you’ll find a Appearance tab. Click on that tab and you’ll be given a wallpaper selector for the lock screen. Simply select the background you want, click Apply and then Lock to see your new background in action.

The background picker works just like it does for setting desktop backgrounds so if you are familiar with the desktop background settings you’ll be right at home with the Lock Screen settings.

More tweaks you can do to the lock screen

There are a few more tweaks you can do to the lock screen if you would like to. The most important fundamental thing you can change is the overall lock screen appearance itself. Global Themes control what lock screen is used and can even go as far as bundling their own overall lock screen themes. This means applying certain Global Themes such as Breeze, Breeze Dark and third-party Global Themes from the Get New Global Themes… area can change the way the lock screen looks entirely (excluding the background).

Finally, each lock screen theme from Global Themes can supply their own settings for the user to be able to change. These settings can be found right above the lock screen background picker in the Appearance tab. The default lock screen themes let you toggle Media controls (the media player controls on the lock screen when music or video is playing), for instance.

Customising the Login Screen

Login Window

To change login screen related settings, you will want to open up Login Window.

Warning

Only those with administrative privileges or those who can obtain these privileges can open Login Window.

Login Window can be opened via Applications Menu ‣ Settings / Preferences ‣ Login Window.

Login Window

The following is a list of what each setting does:

Appearance:

• Background: Sets the background image on the login screen
• Background colour: Fallback background color used in case the image can’t be used
• Draw a grid: Draw a grid pattern over the login screen background
• GTK theme: Sets the application style used in the login screen
• Icon theme: Sets the icon theme used in the login screen
• Other monitors: Sets the logo that appears in the center of extra monitors (if applicable) that do not have the mouse in them
• Bottom left: Sets the logo that appears at the bottom left of the login screen

Users:

• Allow manual login: Allows users to manually type in their username and password to log in
• Hide the user list: Hides the user list making it so you have to type your username and password to login (useful on school or business machines)
• Allow guest sessions: Allows Guest Session login (currently contains security issues)
• Username: The user that you want to automatically log into when booting into Feren OS
• Delay before connection: Time before the user is automatically logged in when booting into Feren OS

Settings:

• Activate numlock: Automatically activate numlock on the login screen
• HIDPI support: Enable higher DPI scaling on the login screen (for screen resolutions so large that you need to scale the stuff on screen up to be able to read it)
• Monitor: Set monitor type (I personally would never touch this setting)

Panel indicators:

• Hostname: Toggle the text at the top-left of the login screen
• Accessibility options: Toggle the accessibility options icon and menu visibility
• Battery power: Toggle the battery status icon visibility
• Keyboard layout: Toggle the keyboard layout changer visibility
• Clock: Toggle the clock visibility
• Quit menu: Toggle the power menu visibility

Feren OS Classic exclusives - Appearance:

• Draw user backgrounds - show the background the user you’re currently on is using on their desktop on the login screen

Sending Feedback about Feren OS

Where can you send feedback about Feren OS?

The best way to send feedback about Feren OS is through the “Send Feedback or Report an Issue” application, which can be found in the following places:

• The Desktop (until you delete it from the desktop)
• Applications Menu ‣ System / Administration ‣ Send Feedback or Report an Issue

Hint

For those curious, these shortcuts are provided by a package called ‘feren-feedback’.

Once you have opened the shortcut, your favourite browser (Vivaldi by default) will open up to the Feedback Center. From here you can choose one of three options:

• Report a bug in Feren OS (something is happening that shouldn’t be happening in Feren OS, such as a glitch, that you’re sure isn’t an intentional feature)
• Report a package dependency issue (this is for packages that say Not Available in Store and when installed through Terminal result in an error stating that “You have held broken packages”)
• Contact me or submit a Feren OS Review (this is pretty self-explanatory)

When you’ve made your decision, click the item corresponding to what you want to do. That item will then expand out to show the ways you can go about doing the task you want to do. Click the big button underneath the suggestion for completing the task you want to do to get started with your providing feedback.

Once you’re done, click the appropriate button to send your feedback and it’ll be submitted to me. Thanks for the feedback and I’ll get to it whenever I can.

Hint

Don’t forget that I do have a busy life and, in the case of the website’s contact form, have to sift through barrages of NSFW link spam to find legitimate entries, currently.

If you’re responsible for that aforementioned spam, please stop. Not only are you (at the time of writing) basically sending NSFW stuff to a minor but it also gets in the way of me reading actual messages from good-hearted people. Furthermore, if you’re going to send that stuff I just won’t look at it (I never do to be honest when I see what the message body says) and you’ll just be put on a personal blacklist permanently.

The Troubleshooting Page

The troubleshooting page on the Feren OS website is a great place to diagnose and fix any common Feren OS issues that may arise over time. You can find it here:

https://ferenos.weebly.com/troubleshooting

If any issues you have are mentioned in any articles there, follow those articles to (hopefully) fix that/those issue(s) instantly.

If those fixes do not work or you can’t find a fix for your issue there, don’t be afraid to ask for help from us: https://ferenos.weebly.com/help

Resetting the package repositories

If you ever make a mistake with the repositories on your system for obtaining packages for Feren OS from, there is a very easy way to reset your repositories.

First you will want to open up Software Sources. Software Sources can be opened via Applications Menu ‣ System / Administration ‣ Software Sources.

Warning

Only those with administrative privileges or those who can obtain these privileges can open Software Sources.

Software Sources

From here, click the red button at the bottom that says Restore the default settings and then click OK in the notice that then appears at the top of the window. Once that is done, simply close Software Sources - you’re done.

Removing old packages

For packages that are now redundant on your system, there is an easy and quick way to remove these redundant packages to save on disk space, among other benefits. Currently there is no way through the Software Sources, however you can easily do this operation in a Terminal window.

To remove redundant packages from your system, do the following:

1. Open Terminal (Applications Menu ‣ System / Administration ‣ Konsole / Terminal)
2. Type pkexec apt autoremove and press Enter
3. Authenticate through the authentication dialog that appears
4. Check the output specifying what packages will be removed from your system in case there are any packages you would like to keep installed

Hint

If any packages you want to keep installed are listed there, type ‘n’ on the question, press Enter, type pkexec apt install (the package's name goes here without brackets) and press Enter again to mark that package as manually installed (makes the package immune to autoremove)

5. Once you’re sure that everything the command wants to remove is fine on your terms to be removed, type ‘y’ on the question and press Enter to confirm the package operations.
6. When you’re taken back to the prompt, with green and blue text on the left of your input, close Konsole or Terminal as you’re done.

Removing or downgrading foreign packages

Removing foreign packages

If you ever install packages from external places on the internet or have packages still installed from third-party repositories that you have removed, there is an easy way to find and remove these packages from your system.

First you will want to open up Software Sources. Software Sources can be opened via Applications Menu ‣ System / Administration ‣ Software Sources. Once you have Software Sources open, click the Maintenance tab at the top of the window.

Warning

Only those with administrative privileges or those who can obtain these privileges can open Software Sources.

Software Sources ‣ Maintenance

From here, click the Remove foreign packages button, wait a while for a new window to open, select the foreign packages you would like to remove from the list shown in that new window and then click Remove to remove those selected packages. Once that is done close Software Sources as you’re done.

Downgrading foreign packages

If you ever update installed packages using third-party repositories that you have since removed, there is an easy way to find and downgrade these packages from your system back to their standard versions.

First you will want to open up Software Sources. Software Sources can be opened via Applications Menu ‣ System / Administration ‣ Software Sources. Once you have Software Sources open, click the Maintenance tab at the top of the window.

Warning

Only those with administrative privileges or those who can obtain these privileges can open Software Sources.

Software Sources ‣ Maintenance

From here, click the Downgrade foreign packages button, wait a while for a new window to open, select the foreign packages you would like to downgrade from the list shown in that new window and then click Downgrade to downgrade those selected packages. Once that is done and you are taken to a ‘#’ prompt close that window and Software Sources as you’re done.

Warning

Definitely close the “Foreign packages” window once it is done. Keeping it open is a major security risk as, because of upstream code, it drops you to a Superuser SH Terminal prompt which gives anyone with physical access to the computer access to basically everything in Feren OS.

Reporting Bugs

Where and how do I report bugs?

Because of the nature of Feren OS, there are three main locations to report bugs at:

Feren OS Bug Reporting: https://github.com/feren-OS/Bug-Reporting-Center/issues/ ‣ New

Linux Mint Bug Reporting: https://github.com/linuxmint ‣ project name of project you’re writing a bug report for ‣ Issues ‣ New

Ubuntu Bug Reporting: Open up Terminal/Konsole (Applications Menu ‣ System / Administration ‣ Konsole / Terminal), type ubuntu-bug (package you are reporting a bug for goes here without brackets) and press Enter to report a bug

If you are not sure about where to report a bug, don’t be afraid to ask around as well as others will very likely know, from the application you describe, just what you want to report a bug for and where you can report it at.

Where to find help

Finally, if you ever need any more help with Feren OS, don’t forget to check the following places:

• https://ferenos.weebly.com/help for help pages and for social media links to get in touch with me and others
• https://unix.stackexchange.com for generic Linux help from a wide community of Linux users

That’s it for the User Guide. I hope you’ll enjoy Feren OS as much as I did making it, and thank you for choosing Feren OS!