carbonOS is designed to be minimal and intuitive
After almost six months of the previous release, the new update of the linux distribution «carbonOS 2022.2» was released which includes a large number of package updates, among which the inclusion of the most recent 5.19 kernel, the Mesa 22 graphics stack, glibc 2.36 and various security fixes, as well as the update to GNOME 43.
For those who are unaware of carbonOS I can tell you that this is a distribution based on the atomic system design model, where the base environment is delivered as a single whole, not split into separate packages. Additional applications are installed in Flatpak format and run in isolated containers.
The content of the underlying system mounts read-only to protect against modifications in case of compromise. It can write to the /usr/local partition. Btrfs is used as a file system with stored data compression enabled and snapshots are actively used.
The system update process is reduced to loading a new system image in the background and switch to it after reboot. At the same time, the old system image is preserved, and if desired or problems arise, the user can revert to the previous version at any time. During development of the distribution kit, the system environment stuff is assembled using the OSTree toolkit (the image is built from a Git-like repository) and the BuildStream build system, without using packages from other distributions.
Main novelties of carbonOS 2022.2
In this new version of the distribution that is presented, as mentioned at the beginning, a of the main novelties that is presented is the inclusion of the updates of the main components of the distribution, among which we can find andl kernel 5.19, Table 22 and glibc 2.36, plus the user shell is synchronized with gnomes 43.
Another novelty presented by carbonOS 2022.2 is the reworked kernel configuration, including missing drivers, plus added improved support for systems with Intel processors which are enabled for firmware updates and Thermald is used for temperature control.
In addition to that, it is also mentioned that the system sources have been unified and that to simplify debugging, debuginfo files are loaded as needed.
On the other hand, it also highlights partially implemented support for fingerprint authentication, support for systems with multiple GPUs and support for NVIDIA graphics cards.
It is also mentioned that a boot module was selected from the main composition, designed to build a distribution kit, which can now be used separately from carbonOS to build other projects.
Finally the developers They mention that if the error occurs “Install Failed” error during installation: At the end of the operating system installation, you may see an “Install Failed” error. This is a known issue and the installation was successful, but it is mentioned that you can ignore that error and reboot.
If you are interested in knowing more about it, you can consult the details In the following link.
Download and get carbonOS 2022.2
For those interested in being able to test this distribution, they should know that to install the distribution a graphical installer and interface for initial system configuration is provided. User-installed apps are isolated from each other in containers.
In addition to installing Flatpak packages, the distribution also allows you to use the nsbox toolkit to create custom containers, which can also host traditional distribution environments like Arch Linux and Debian. It also provides support for the podman toolkit, which provides compatibility with Docker containers. The distribution implements a centralized Polkit-based permissions management mechanism: sudo is not supported and the only way to run commands as root is with pkexec.
The project develops its own GDE user environment (Graphite Desktop Environment) based on GNOME. Among the differences from GNOME: improved login screen, configurator, volume and brightness indicators, panel and Graphite Shell. In the next release, we intend to drop maintenance of our shell in favor of the regular GNOME Shell and move on to promoting improvements developed by the project to the main GNOME composition.
The size of the installation image is 2 GB and they can get the image from the following link.