The * Blog

blendOS v3

The true end to distro hopping gets an upgrade!

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Asterisk
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2 min read

blendOS v3

So blendOS v3 came out (I still have to update the docs oh god).

v3

What I like

So far, I'm excited about the full immutability (snapshots and easy backups), and this newfangled ISO update system (to confuse 'ol Baldy here). The akshara utility is cool too.

So what's new?

Rudra made a trailer to push all this, I recommend you watch it for the iMovie stock music (although Apple only recently unveiled actual Apple stores in India):

https://youtu.be/Ugv1mAdPN04

Rudra also outlined everything in a blog post (iframe'd badly below):

TL;DR

It all boils down to the following:

  • Installation ISOs are used for updates (never seen before, a new breakthrough!).

  • akshara, some new management utility that Rudra forgot to write the README for. It's a mystery what it is to me anyway.

  • zsync is being set up for the ISO repo to only download changed files, like what git does.

  • Updates are in the background and instantaneous.

  • Rudra made assemble, a tool based on the LineageOS repo build tool, which makes remixing and ISO building easy via XML manifests

  • Akshara can be used to install extra drivers, though the ISO comes with many.

  • It supports these distro containers:

    • Arch

    • AlmaLinux 9

    • Crystal Linux

    • Debian

    • Fedora 38

    • Kali Linux (rolling)

    • Neurodebian Bookworm

    • Rocky Linux

    • Ubuntu 22.04

    • Ubuntu 23.04

  • Misc. bug fixes

  • Same old binary naming scheme (BINARY_NAME.CONTAINER_NAME)

  • I'm put under more pressure to finish the docs 🙂

Releases are named after Indian foods now, in alphabetical order (so what happens after v23...)

I also want v4 to be called blendOS Cheeseburger, although Leviathan and Avalon are valid options.

blendOS is like a cheeseburger, in every single way except for all of them.

- Asterisk

What's next?

  • We're planning on moving most of the repositories to our new GitLab instance.

  • We're also hoping to have a proper KB by v3 stable.

  • zsync needs to be implemented for updates.

  • We have to get v3 onto peoples' mirrors and we have to set up mirrorbits on the build server.

Conclusion

This one was a bit shorter, but in general I'm happy with the project and hope it only gets better. These changes will help it be a better replacement for (or get it closer to, depending on your opinion) Bedrock Linux or VanillaOS, and give it a better user experience and more customizability overall.

Thanks for reading!

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