After officially announcing their position on the use of LLMs a few days ago, 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 January 2026.
As with previous releases, the ISO is provided as a live GNOME image and primarily serves as a delivery mechanism for the project’s Lichen installer.
Even though GNOME remains the default live environment, users can choose between GNOME, KDE Plasma, COSMIC, a terminal-only setup, or assemble a custom environment using Wayland compositors such as MangoWC, Niri, or Sway.
Keep in mind that regardless of the selected option, the installer always pulls the most recent packages available at install time.
And this is the moment to say that, even though the Lichen installer is still considered alpha, the installation I performed, including adding the COSMIC desktop environment, went completely smoothly with no issues. So, well done, AerynOS devs.
Desktop environments and frameworks have been refreshed to COSMIC 1.0.3, GNOME 49.3, KDE Plasma 6.5.5, KDE Frameworks 6.22, and KDE Gear 25.12.1. Graphics and multimedia updates include Mesa 25.3.4 and PipeWire 1.4.10.
The base system has also moved forward, with glibc 2.43, Linux kernel 6.18 LTS, QEMU 10.2, and updated toolchains and runtimes, including Node.js 24.13 and Ruby 4.0. User-facing applications and utilities have been refreshed as well, including Firefox 147, Thunderbird 147, Wine 11, Visual Studio Code 1.108.2, VSCodium 1.108.10359, and the Zed editor 0.221.4.
Wayland-focused tools and shells remain a notable part of the stack, with updated releases of MangoWC, Quickshell, Foot, Ghostty, and several Rust- and Zig-based utilities. Additional updates and smaller changes round out the release.
The AerynOS 2026.01 Alpha ISO is available on the project’s download page for testing and evaluation, not for production use.
If you want to try the distro, keep in mind that AerynOS doesn’t include a graphical installer. Instead, the installation takes place entirely in the terminal using the Rust-written, in-house Lichen installer. Before using it, however, you must manually create the appropriate partitions.
Finally, it’s worth noting that, alongside the updated ISO, the project team also shared a detailed overview of their accomplishments in January, as outlined in the announcement.
