AerynOS, an atomic-update-based (not to be confused with immutability) still-in-development Linux distro currently in alpha, has shared its latest project update for December 2025.
The distro released its latest Alpha ISO, version 2025.12. This GNOME-based live environment includes Linux kernel 6.17.10 and uses the Lichen installer, which still requires a network connection to fetch pkgsets during installation.
The update brings COSMIC Beta9, GNOME 49.2, KDE Plasma 6.5.4, KDE Frameworks 6.20, and KDE Gear 25.08.2, alongside updates to core tools such as the Bash shell, Mesa with Vulkan anti-lag, LLVM, Buildah, Docker, OpenVPN, SCX schedulers, Vim, Wine, Zed, and more.
COSMIC’s packaging pipeline has been further automated, allowing quicker turnaround on System76’s many Beta-phase tags. The team also resolved several usability issues, including missing USB auto-mounting in COSMIC due to absent gvfs components and sudo-rs behaviour in terminal environments.
Apart from that, a new auto-pruning mechanism has landed in the Vessel repository manager—the backend service responsible for storing, indexing, and serving all built packages that make up the distribution. The system now reviews stored packages daily and removes those no longer reachable through repository indexes, preventing accidental storage overrun and reducing maintenance overhead.
Additionally, according to devs, much of the recent work focused on the infrastructure side. In light of this, AerynOS migrated its servers to Netcup, improving performance and delivering notably faster download speeds for European users.
A new auto-pruning mechanism has also landed in the Vessel repository manager. The system now reviews stored packages daily and removes those no longer reachable through repository indexes, preventing accidental storage overrun and reducing maintenance overhead.
Looking ahead, the devs plan to complete the Versioned Repositories feature, along with its Moss system-model companion. This will let AerynOS introduce breaking repository or on-disk format changes without requiring user intervention. Once deployed, systems will be able to migrate seamlessly during routine sudo moss sync -u operations.
If you want to give the distro a try, keep in mind that AerynOS doesn’t include a graphical installer. Instead, the installation takes place entirely in the terminal using its Rust-written, in-house Lichen installer (currently heavily under development).
For more information, see the report on AerynOS’ blog.
Image credits: AerynOS
