AerynOS might not ring a bell just yet (we cover the backstory in our article “No More Snakes: Serpent OS Rebrands as AerynOS“), but chances are we’ll be hearing more about it soon. The newly rebranded distro has just dropped its first release, 2025.03, under its new name.
For those unfamiliar, it is a still-in-development stateless (atomic updates, instant rollbacks, built-in deduplication, and seamless rolling updates) Linux distro targeted mainly at advanced users and developers.
Now, before you get too excited, let’s dial the hype back a bit. This release is still in its early Alpha stage, so a stable version is still somewhere down the road.
As for the rebranding, the snake logo is gone, replaced with something new. Whether it’s an upgrade or not probably depends on your taste. The signature green from Serpent OS is also out—violet seems to be the new go-to color. But enough about the visuals—let’s take a look at what AerynOS 2025.03 has to offer.
First, it incorporates a selection of new and noteworthy components, including GNOME 48, Linux kernel 6.13, Firefox 136, Mesa 25, the Vulkan SDK 1.4.309, and LLVM 19.1.7.
A key detail worth highlighting is the decision to decouple the internal tooling version from the ISO versions, making these numbers more human-friendly. As a result, future ISO releases will be clearer to follow.
A particularly forward-thinking addition to AerynOS is the new os-info system. Rather than relying solely on the traditional os-release or lsb_release files, the distro uses a JSON-based approach that preserves rich metadata about the operating system’s current and former identities.
This structured data resides in “/usr/lib/os-info.json” and keeps a record of the project’s previous incarnation as Serpent OS, complete with start and end dates.
The moss tool (AerynOS’s package manager) also taps into this JSON to manage branding and bootloader entries. Interestingly, boot menus may temporarily display older Serpent OS entries while the system transitions, ensuring that rollbacks remain possible.
On the installation side, despite the developers’ claims that the project has taken lichen-installer to the next level by splitting its privileged backend from the frontend and relying on gRPC messages for communication, much remains to be desired.
All my attempts to install AerynOS failed spectacularly, with Rust error messages. This is, of course, to be expected, given that the distribution is still in its Alpha stage.
Finally, for Serpent OS users wanting to make the jump to AerynOS, the process is about as painless as it gets. Users can simply run sudo moss sync -u.
Going forward, the AerynOS project will focus on a few key objectives. These include enhancing the installer images (potentially using the Slint framework for the frontend), polishing auto-partitioning capabilities, and streamlining the maintenance workflow with upstreams-rs and ABI tracking tools.
For more information, visit the official announcement, where you can download the live ISO image.
