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AerynOS Blog

More choice and developing tooling

aerynos.com

Key points

The 2026.11 AerynOS ISO is out with a second, experimental installer, lichen-installer, and Budgie Desktop as a choice at install time. The moss package manager has a restructured command line that breaks the commands early adopters use now. fwupd has been added to the repository.

moss command changes

  • Early adopters have to relearn how to add and remove repositories and packages. The project made this breaking change while AerynOS is still in development so that the commands match how the system-model works.
  • sudo moss repo... adds, removes, enables and disables repositories in the system-model, and refreshes the local cache of those repositories.
  • sudo moss package... adds or removes packages in the system-model and syncs the result to the installed system.
  • If the system-model is defined declaratively, sudo moss package... changes only a temporary model, which stays active until the next sync to the declared model. The project says this is similar in spirit to Nix but differs in the details.
  • sudo moss sync -u refreshes the enabled repositories, then syncs the installed system with what the system-model resolves to.
  • Short aliases:
  • sudo moss pad for package add
  • sudo moss prm for package remove
  • sudo moss pif for package info
  • sudo moss rad for repo add
  • sudo moss rrm for repo remove
  • --help lists the others.
  • The new moss tree command prints the whole command hierarchy with examples and documentation. Help output and error messages have also been improved.
  • The new interface is still in progress, and some features are not implemented yet.
  • Internally, the CLI moved from the clap builder pattern to the clap derive pattern. This means less code to maintain and documentation built into --help. It also clears the way for merging moss search with moss file-search and for adding shell completions.

New installer

  • The ISO ships both installers. The new one is not the default yet.
sudo lichen #old installer
lichen-tui #new installer
  • It partitions and formats the target drive itself, so drives no longer need preparing beforehand.
  • It supports Btrfs root partitions with a separate @home subvolume.
  • Wi-Fi and keyboard layout can be set during installation, and both settings carry over to the installed system.
  • Users can supply their own system-model.kdl to choose the packages to install.
  • A new install-model format describes install-time settings such as locale and keyboard layout in a KDL file.
  • The text interface has better navigation, progress reporting and rendering.
  • It does not yet support disk encryption or dual booting.
  • Feedback goes to a dedicated topic on Zulip, and problems to the lichen-installer repository.

2026.11 ISO

  • The live environment runs GNOME 51 with Linux 7.2.14.
  • Both installers offer four desktops: Budgie, COSMIC, GNOME and KDE Plasma.
  • The terminal-only and headless install options were removed because they generated a disproportionate share of support requests despite being marked expert-only. They may come back later.

Package and desktop updates

  • COSMIC 1.11.0 now includes COSMIC Viewer, written by AerynOS staff member Bryan Hyland together with System76.
  • Other desktops:
  • GNOME 51.1
  • KDE Plasma 6.8.2
  • Budgie 10.10.4, packaged with help from Budgie lead Joshua Strobl
  • Compositors:
  • Hyprland 0.57
  • Mango 0.18.4
  • Miriway 26.10
  • Noctalia 5.4.1
  • System and applications:
  • Linux 7.2.14 and 6.18.60 LTS
  • Mesa 26.2.6
  • Firefox 159 and Thunderbird 159
  • QEMU 11.1.3
  • PipeWire 1.6.11
  • Wine 11.21
  • About a dozen Wayland compositors are now in the repositories for people who want to build their own desktop.
  • fwupd is available for firmware updates through the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS).
  • Desktop problems should be reported as issues in the recipes repository.

Project news

  • Jaredy89 and K1ngfish3r have joined the staff. Both started as community members and became Trusted Contributors, then Trusted Maintainers.
  • Jaredy89 keeps most packages current and helps new packagers.
  • K1ngfish3r, who moved over after Clear Linux reached end of life, works on repository maintenance and bug fixes.
  • The aerynos.com and aerynos.dev sites have been merged into aerynos.com, with updated home, about and tooling pages. A full website redesign is still being worked on separately.

Next steps

  • The project aims to make lichen-installer the default installer on the next ISO and asks for testing feedback on Zulip.
  • Discussion has started on the next development cycle of moss, along with reworking search and adding command completion.
  • People can help with packaging, documentation, testing or code, or by reporting issues. The community is on Zulip and Discourse, and financial sponsorship is possible.
  • Hardware vendors and infrastructure partners can write to [email protected].

Summary by DistroNews, based on the original post.

It’s been a couple of months since our last update and there has been quite a lot going on. With the project having spent the last 18 months shoring up its foundations, we are now able to start shifting towards more open and collaborative development. We have landed our new moss command-line structure, which is a pretty significant departure from old CLI organization. The commands for adding and removing both repositories and packages from the internal system-model have changed so early adopters will need to adjust their mental model of how moss operates. It’s a “breaking change” we are making now whilst aerynOS is still in development and better aligns the command convention to how moss is intended to work. Budgie Desktop is now offered as an option for aerynOS early adopters, including as an install time option within our installer(s). Whilst we are still heavily in development, we are now at a point where we can offer multiple different Desktop Environments and a dozen Wayland Compositor options for those that want to “Build You Own Desktop”. We have a new 2026.11 ISO being released this month along side this blog post. It includes our existing installer but also a secondary option lichen-installer. Whilst it’s not yet ready to be our default and only installer, is being added to the ISO for wider testing purposes. This newer installer takes care of drive partitioning and has a number of under the hood enhancements that will make aerynOS installation more robust. It is still Work in Progress and does not yet support disk encryption, dual booting or other features that might indicate aerynOS is daily driver ready. It does however pave the way for those features to be added in the future. A smaller but important request was for fwupd, which we have also now landed in our repository to ease hardware firmware updates for early adopters using aerynOS. Lastly, we have also been doing housekeeping on our web presence.

This is the opening of the story. The full text is on the original page.

Read the original at aerynos.com