Vanilla OS 22.10 Kinetic, the first stable version of the project, is available
The launch of the first stable version of a custom Linux distribution, “"Vanilla OS", based on the base of the Ubuntu package, but going beyond a normal rebuild.
The interesting thing about the distribution is that the GNOME desktop environment is used as a user environment (so far everything normal), but this is offered in the way the developers originally published it, without changing the settings.
In addition to shipping GNOME unmodified, the Vanilla OS distribution also stands out for the following features.
Vanilla OS Main Features
Vanilla OS is presented as a distribution based on Ubuntu 22.10 and GNOME 43, along with which the own graphics configurators are written in GTK4 using Libadwaita.
One of the main characteristics that we can find in this distribution is that the system environment is mounted in read-only mode and cannot be modified, only the home directory and directories with settings are open for writing.
Another important feature of Vanilla OS to take into account is that instead of updating at the package level individual, the ABRoot atomic update mechanism is used, in which two identical root partitions are created on the disk: active and passive.
Vanilla OS is not an ordinary Linux distribution, it is a project that sets itself many goals and is not afraid to present itself, proudly displaying its unique technologies such as the Apx subsystem, its own automatic update system and ABRoot transactions.
The system update is downloaded In its whole and it is installed in the passive partition without affecting the operation of the active one. After the reboot, the partitions are swapped: the partition with the new update is activated and the old active partition is switched to passive mode and waits for the next update to be installed. If something went wrong after the update, a rollback to the previous version is performed.
In addition to this, it is also highlighted that a automated update application system, that allows you to configure the intensity of the search for updates and their download and installation in the background at the time of least system load and with the necessary battery charge. The update is installed in a separate partition and is applied at the next reboot.
Additional apps are installed in separate containers. For package management, the apx package manager is being developed, which allows installing packages from other distributions in sandboxed environments, regardless of the package manager used in the distribution (for example, Arch Linux and Fedora packages can be installed) .
Apx introduces a whole new paradigm in package management. The idea is to use your system just as a box to store your files, leaving it clean of packages and limiting the risk of breaking due to incompatible, poorly built, or conflicting packages.
Functionality is implemented using Distrobox, which allows the user to be able to quickly install and run any Linux distribution in a container and ensure its integration with the main system.
At the first start, user is prompted to select a container-based package format. There are Flatpak, Snap, and Appimage formats to choose from. On first launch, it also prompts the user to install the NVIDIA drivers and gives the user the option to activate dark mode.
To do the administration work, VSO toolkit offered (Vanilla System Operator), which allows you to solve tasks such as updating the system, changing settings and creating linked tasks to some actions (for example, you can run a task to display a notification after the battery runs out).
finally if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details in the following link.
Download and get
For those interested in being able to try or install this system on their computer, they can obtain the installation image from the following link. The size of the iso image is 1,7 GB.