A corrective release of the TileOS 1.1 "T-Rex" distribution, based on the Debian package base and offering a desktop utilizing mosaic window managers, is now available. TileOS aims to achieve the same goals as the Ubuntu Sway Remix distribution (developed by the same author), providing a ready-to-use interface that requires no additional setup and is geared towards both experienced Linux users and beginners who want to try out a mosaic window manager environment without spending a lot of time on configuration.
Unlike Ubuntu Sway Remix, TileOS is much more open to various modifications and customizations and is free from any potential copyright issues (Ubuntu Sway Remix uses registered trademarks of Canonical, but an official response regarding the inclusion of the distribution in the official Ubuntu family is still pending). Builds for the amd64 architecture are prepared for download (support for arm64, particularly for Raspberry Pi boards, is planned for the future). The source code of TileOS components is available on GitLab.
TileOS focuses primarily on window managers that use the Wayland protocol. Official editions with Sway and River desktops are available, while editions with SwayFX (a fork of Sway enhanced with various desktop effects) and Qtile are under development. The distribution uses a Debian Stable package base; however, various enhancements, newer versions of some software, and graphics drivers are pulled from the testing branch. Additionally, several optimizations for disk subsystem and memory performance have been included, as well as some improvements from Ubuntu, such as mounting disks in the file manager without prompting for a password.
In the new release:
- The package base is synchronized with Debian 12.5;
- The Linux kernel has been updated to version 6.6.33;
- The set of open video drivers Mesa has been updated to version 23.3.5;
- Xwayland has been updated to version 23.2.2;
- Multimedia server PipeWire has been updated to release 1.0.7;
- Utilities wl-mirror (for mirroring video outputs), wshowhotkeys (for displaying pressed keys on screen), and gpu-screen-recorder (a high-performance screen recording utility, a functional equivalent of Nvidia Shadowplay) have been added to the repository.
Source: opennet.ru
