In October of last year we shared here on the blog the news about the decision a core change by Trident OS developers which is a system that is based on BSD but the developers chose to switch to the Linux kernel.
Initially, Trident was built with FreeBSD and TrueOS technologies, Besides that makes use of the ZFS file system and the OpenRC initialization system. The project was founded by developers involved in working on TrueOS and was positioned as an adjacent project (TrueOS is a platform for creating distributions and Trident is a distribution based on this platform for end users).
Remember that the ad of the Trident project about project migration to Linux a reason from the inability to get rid of some issues that restrict users distribution, such as hardware compatibility, support for modern communication standards, and package availability.
After taking various requirements to select a base that meets them, Void Linux was the one to take it as the base for migration.
It is expected that after switching to Void Linux in Trident It is possible to expand the support for graphics cards and provide users with the latest graphics drivers, as well as improving support for sound cards, streaming audio, adding support for streaming audio via HDMI, and improving support for wireless network adapters and devices with a Bluetooth interface, offers newer versions of programs, speeds up the download process and implements support for hybrid installations on UEFI systems.
The first Linux version of True OS has been released
Now after almost 3 months of the news the first beta version has been released of the Trident operating system which It is now available for download and to be tested. This beta version migrated from FreeBSD and TrueOS to the base of the Void Linux package.
The size of the bootable iso image is 515 MB and it is important to mention that the system compilation use ZFS on the root partition, It is possible to roll back the boot environment using ZFS snapshots and a simplified installer is provided that can work on systems with EFI and BIOS.
As well It is mentioned that it is possible to use swap partition encryption, package options are offered for standard glibc and musl libraries, for each user separate ZFS dataset is created for home directory (can manipulate snapshots of home directory without getting root privileges), data encryption is provided in user directories.
Se offer multiple levels of installation: Void (the basic set of Void packages plus packages for ZFS compatibility), Server (working in console mode for servers), Lite Desktop (minimal desktop based on Lumina), Full Desktop (full desktop based on Lumina with additional office applications , communication and multimedia).
Finally it is also important to mention of the identified limitations of the beta version, the GUI is not ready to configure the desktop, the Trident specific utilities are not ported, and the installer does not have a manual partition mode.
For those who are Trident BSD users, they should know that the migration to the new system is not recommended since it is still a beta and has several bugs to solve, but when the stable version is available, it will require the manual transfer of the contents from the / home partition.
Support for BSD will be discontinued immediately after the release of the new edition and a stable package repository based on FreeBSD 12 will be removed in April 2020 (an experimental repository based on FreeBSD 13-Current will be removed in January).
The download of the ISO image of this beta version can be obtained from the following link. The image can be recorded with Etcher, which is a multiplatform tool.