Performance-oriented Linux-based OS
aerynOS
aerynOS is an independent Linux distribution being built from the ground up with its own tooling. We are developing an atomic operating system which supports both declarative and imperative system management approaches, and offers rollback capabilities that help reduce the risk of system failure from unsuccessful or interrupted updates.
Whilst we are actively developing aerynOS towards becoming a stable, user-friendly, general-purpose Linux distribution, it is currently in development (Alpha). During this stage, we cannot guarantee a seamless user experience. We welcome testers and early adopters but caution that, at present, you will likely need to be somewhat technically minded and willing to report – and potentially help fix – issues, and generally be willing and able to self serve and show initiative re. any rough edges you might encounter. All kinds of contributions are welcome; come join the fun!
Alpha technical preview — aerynOS is under active development and is not yet recommended for daily driving by users who require a stable, production-ready operating system.
aerynOS uses atomic system transactions to apply changes as a single operation. Previous system states remain available allowing you to rollback as needed.
From building packages with boulder to installing those packages and managing system states with moss, we are developing our own bespoke in-house tools in Rust.
A Linux desktop should still feel like home. aerynOS offers a choice of desktop environments and Wayland compositors, alongside a growing collection of applications and developer tools.
A different approach to system updates
Section titled “A different approach to system updates”A big problem with traditional package managers is that they apply updates incrementally, so if the update fails part way through, you can be left with a partially updated and broken system. aerynOS takes the atomic approach to package management. moss downloads and prepares the package update in one go and then atomically switches over to the new system state. If an update were to fail, the transaction would not complete and your system would be left untouched. We do this without immutable system images that require reboots for every system update.
Things can still go wrong, so we keep all previous system states available to users to allow for roll backs. Via moss, you can roll back to any earlier system state. You can also roll back to one of the previous 5 system states at boot time. This provides an extra protection layer in case anything goes wrong. Check out the video below of an aerynOS system updating to a new system state via moss.
moss is our package and system state manager. We use a transaction-based approach that allows for new system states (or “transactions”) to be constructed and then activated atomically reducing the risk of broken updates.
Previous system states remain available to the user so they can rollback as needed.
boulder is our tool for building packages for aerynOS from yaml based recipe definitions.
When combined with our build infrastructure, it allows us to package up open source software and publish it to our repositories.
blsforme is our custom Boot Loader Specification compliant management tool.
It helps manage ESP and XBOOTLDR partitions and generally manage booting aerynOS systems.
Built in the open
Section titled “Built in the open”aerynOS is an open source project that thrives based on community effort. We are developing the distribution, our Rust based tooling and package recipes in the open, primarily over at GitHub. We share regular updates on our blog and communicate via Zulip and Discourse. We welcome people who want to test the distribution, report issues, improve documentation or contribute code, artwork, or package recipes.