Adrian Vovk, the creator of the atomically updatable carbonOS distribution and installer for GNOME OS, as well as one of the developers of systemd-homed and systemd-sysupdate, announced an initiative to transform GNOME OS from a distribution for testers and developers into a general-purpose distribution suitable for everyday use by regular users.
Adrian also stated that development of the carbonOS distribution as an independent project utilizing its own package base will be discontinued. However, the carbonOS project itself will continue to exist, but its development is now planned within the GNOME project as part of GNOME OS or as a derivative of GNOME OS, investing resources into the development of GNOME OS. The development of GNOME OS uses a similar vision of how the OS should be structured and the same technologies as carbonOS, with the main difference being that carbonOS was developed as an OS for mass deployment, while GNOME OS serves as a project for supporting the development and testing of GNOME.
Summarizing his experience working on the carbonOS distribution, Adrian concluded that an operating system friendly to regular users should possess the following characteristics:
- Delivery of an unmodified GNOME desktop environment and standard application set, in the form and combination they are offered by the GNOME developers.
- Installation of additional programs in Flatpak format.
- System resilience to failures resulting from user actions or after an update installation. The ability to quickly restore the state through rollback.
- Immutability of the base environment across all systems and atomic updates through complete replacement of the system image, which enhances reliability and simplifies problem diagnosis.
- Security—using mechanisms such as user data encryption, verified boot, and advanced technologies like systemd-homed.
- A modern software stack utilizing components such as Wayland, Pipewire, XDG portals, etc.
- Flexibility and adaptability for devices of various form factors (PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones) and ease of creating builds optimized for specific hardware.
- Relieving the user from the need to make unnecessary decisions, for instance, the user shouldn't have to worry about selecting package formats when installing applications.
Source: opennet.ru
