Since the release of Nitrocid 0.2.0 back in February 12th, we have started working on the next major version of Nitrocid, which will bring more exciting features on the way to both improve your user experience and make it more enjoyable to use Nitrocid. The simulated kernel will be improved in this version of Nitrocid, with many breaking changes that will be done to the API so that mods can implement awesome commands more efficiently.

Nitrocid 0.2.0 brought new features, such as two-factor authentication for Nitrocid users, Chatbot AI, Widget Canvas API, configurable modern logon screen and homepage, and so on. This takes personalization options to a whole new level, while bringing several improvements to different areas of the kernel, including the attractive new look that has been applied to the kernel to make sure that it’s brought to modern aesthetics, while fixing bugs that impacted the previous releases.

However, this isn’t enough, as we are less than two years shy into the tenth anniversary of the first release of the Nitrocid kernel simulator, so we are here to announce something that is the start of the excitement that will happen in the fourth quarter of this year.

We are happy to announce that Nitrocid 0.2.1 Tech Preview is now available!

Based on our previous experiences with 0.2.0 Tech Preview that was released once the “technical parts” were done, we have done the same thing here by releasing various new versions of Terminaux, BassBoom, and more libraries that Nitrocid depends on, to ensure that we get the basics ready so that real development starts, with new features and improvements being added.

Tech Preview includes Terminaux 8.5, which introduced many improvements that were implemented since the release of Terminaux 8.0 last year. This includes accurate progress bar design and full support for FreeBSD, as we’ve worked hard to add FreeBSD support to our libraries and applications since April 2026.

We encourage you to try it out and give your feedback, so we can implement it in the release candidate version we’ll release this September.