carbonOS 2022.3 Release!

I hope all of you have had a happy holiday season, and happy New Years! Today, I’m excited to announce the fourth alpha of carbonOS: 2022.3!

What is carbonOS?

carbonOS is an independent Linux distribution that focuses on UX and robust system design more than it does on compatibility with Linux tradition. It is an atomic distribution, which means that OS updates are always safe. The system’s layout ensures the integrity of system files. Unlike other atomic distros, carbonOS does not attempt to keep around traditional package management features: carbonOS is Flatpak-first for your apps and container-first for everything else. This will allow carbonOS to achieve unique features, like Verified/Secure Boot.

carbonOS’s end goal is to be a distro that uses Linux’s unique capabilities to provide a secure, stable, and robust environment for users’ apps and work. I want it to be a general-purpose OS that the user doesn’t have to think about. Users should be able to game on it, work on it, program on it, and do whatever else they want without ever having to worry about the technical details of their operating system. Basically, I’d love to fulfill the “GnomeBook” dream: an OS as maintenance-free as Chrome OS, but as powerful as a real desktop OS and all without compromising the users’ ultimate freedom over their hardware.

If you’d like a detailed explanation of the project, including its development history, please see the very first release announcement!

What’s New?

• Anniversary! This Christmas, carbonOS turned 4 years old!
• Updated software: Including the latest 6.0-series kernel, and the latest bug and security fixes from various upstream projects.
• GNOME: Graphite DE has now been retired, and carbonOS has switched to GNOME. I intend to keep my build of GNOME very vanilla, only applying some patches that are likely to eventually make their way upstream and that substantially improve UX.
• Input Methods: Switching to GNOME has allowed the use of IBus input methods. You can now type in CJK languages (any many others!) using Pinyin, Anthy, etc.
• Accessibility: Switching to GNOME has allowed the use of various accessibility technologies in carbonOS. Support for this is currently largely untested, but it seems like the screen reader and various other accessibility tools have at least basic function.
• Taming OOMD: Previously systemd-oomd was configured to be very aggressive at stopping user apps for using too much memory. It has now been re-tuned to be a little friendlier, and more suitable for a desktop use-case.
• Distrobox: Distrobox is now packaged and included in carbonOS out of the box! This is the recommended tool to manage pet-containers and do traditional Linux package management on carbonOS.
• Removal of nsbox: nsbox has been removed from carbonOS, hopefully temporarily. The nsbox upstream is working on a potential rewrite. It will likely be reintroduced once the project stabilizes upstream

We’ve got a few features that are still a work-in-progress:

• NVIDIA support: All the bits are in place, but they are not yet configured quite correctly and the OS is likely to not boot. This needs a little more work still, and probably a special NVIDIA-specific build of the OS.

There’s also a significant known issue:

• “Installation Failed” Error during installation: If you’ve followed the installation instructions linked from the warning banner at the top of this page, you still might see an “Installation Failed” error message after the installation is done. This is a known issue, and it is likely that the installation has actually succeeded. You can ignore that error and simply reboot the system.

What’s Next?

Loads more work needs to be done before carbonOS will be ready for everyday, production use. For the next few releases, I’m planning on focusing on these areas:

• Handle Fosshost Sunset: Fosshost, our current hosting provider, is sunsetting their services. We will need to take action about this.
• Preinstalled Flatpaks: Currently, we ship all of our preinstalled apps as part of the OS image. However, most apps don’t actually need to be a part of the OS, and in fact many (most notably the browser) would benefit from running in a Flatpak container: faster updates, better security, sandboxing/isolation, codecs, and so on. This change will also allow users to uninstall most of the default apps if un-needed or if they prefer to use something else. For more info, and to follow the development of this feature, check out the issue on GitLab
• System integrity and data protection: Using technologies like Secure Boot, TPM, systemd-homed, and many others, carbonOS will verify the integrity of every bit of operating system data at boot and during runtime. carbonOS will also fully encrypt all user data. Of course, you own your device so you will be able to disable this integrity check. To be implemented properly, this feature will need lots of upstream work, so it is still a long while away. For more info, and to follow the development of this feature, check out the issue on GitLab
• Build Enhancements: There’s still lots of work to do to improve the build process of carbonOS, including (but not limited to) setting up CI/CD, creating shared build artifact caches, and porting to the new BuildStream 2. These changes combined should allow me to fall into a much faster release cycle.
• ARM: An aarch64 port might be on the horizon for the coming year! From there, a GNOME Mobile edition of carbonOS could be possible
• Incomplete features: Finish up the incomplete features listed in the “What’s New” section.

For more detail on these changes and to track progress, check out the milestone on GitLab!

Contributing

If you’re interested in contributing, there are many different ways you can! If you’d like to test out carbonOS, you can download it here. If you’d like to contribute code or translation, check out the source code and join the development channel: #carbonOS on Matrix. Thank you!