A community that works together, builds together

Key points

The August 2026 project update from aerynOS (the project has changed the spelling of its name from AerynOS) reports work on the moss package manager, faster package builds in boulder, a rebuild of every package in the repository, a new TUI installer in open testing and a move of community discussions to a Discourse forum. Nothing in it requires action from current users.

moss package manager

• A new fstree driver API separates the idea of a filesystem tree from the mechanism that creates it. The existing native implementation now works through it, and an overlay-image driver is being developed and tested.
• The hardlink approach is now supplemented by reflinks on filesystems that support them.
• EROFS metadata-only images, meant to make moss filesystem agnostic, are still under development and not delivered; testing and integration work remains.
• The command line is being restructured on clap_derive (PR #687, awaiting review). Commands being converted include repo, pkg, search, state, sync, cache and boot; the separate help and version subcommands are being removed in favour of conventional handling.
• Search is being reworked (PR #788) into one coherent moss search interface covering package, provider and file searches, along with better shell completion.

boulder build tool

• It can now emit multiple packages concurrently, while limiting concurrent work so CPU stays available for compression.
• The BOLT configuration moves from the deprecated hfsort+ option to cdsort and drops obsolete options; more LLVM tuning flags were added.

Global rebuild and packaging team

• Every package was rebuilt to establish a consistent ABI baseline, since the tooling does not yet guarantee ABI sanity automatically. The last such rebuild was around May to June of last year.
• The repository holds over 1,700 recipes; the infrastructure handled the rebuild without problems.
• A new "Trusted Maintainers" role sits under staff, currently held by two people who review and approve recipe changes.
• A new Packaging Policy and new issue and PR templates were introduced.

Package highlights

• Kernels: Linux stable 7.1.12, LTS 6.18.48 and gaming 7.2.2.
• Desktops: COSMIC 1.7.0, KDE Plasma 6.7.4, KDE Frameworks 6.29.0, KDE Gear 26.08.0, Qt 6.11.2.
• Toolchain and base: GCC 16.2.0, Glibc 2.43, Rust 1.98.0, CMake 4.4.3, Mesa 26.2.1, ZFS 2.4.4, NetworkManager 1.58.1, QEMU 11.1.1.
• Applications: Firefox 154.0.1, Thunderbird 154.0, VS Code 1.135.0, Zed 1.17.2, Neovim 0.12.5, Wine 11.16, Gamescope 3.16.26.

New lichen installer

• A TUI rewrite is being developed on the tui branch of the lichen-installer repository, with development builds shared on the project's Zulip server.
• It adds automatic disk formatting, system-model-driven installs, storage and filesystem selection, networking, account configuration and btrfs as a root partition option.
• Hardening covered Polkit, ESP and XBOOTLDR handling and password hashing.
• It is development code. Until it is ready, the current ISO with the old installer remains the officially supported way to install.

Community and branding

• A Discourse forum, hosted free of charge by Discourse, replaces GitHub Discussions and is open for public use. The Zulip server stays; the project acknowledges the concern about splitting the community across two places.
• The name is now written aerynOS. The triquetra logo stays, with refined orange and green shades, font and kerning, taking colour blindness into account.

Website and licensing

• The redesigned website (Hugo/Hextra, developed on Codeberg) is close to launch and may go live in stages, with the documentation site moving later.
• Licences were set: website code under MIT, blog posts under CC BY-ND 4.0 and documentation under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Next steps

• Continue the EROFS work towards production, the CLI refactor and the new search, and further rounds of installer testing before it ships in a future ISO.

Summary by DistroNews, based on the original post.