The release of the user-friendly Linux distribution carbonOS 2022.2 has been published, built using the atomic system composition model, where the base environment is delivered as a single unit, not divided into separate packages. Additional applications are installed in Flatpak format and run in isolated containers. The size of the installation image is 2 GB. Project developments are distributed under the MIT license.
The content of the base system is mounted in read-only mode to protect against modification in case of compromise. The /usr/local partition is writable. Btrfs is used as the file system with enabled data compression and active snapshot application. The system update process involves the background downloading of a new system image and switching to it after a restart. In this case, the old system image is preserved, and if desired or if problems arise, the user can return to a previous version at any time. During the development of the distribution, the system environment is assembled using the OSTree tools (the image is formed from a Git-like repository) and the BuildStream build system, without using packages from other distributions.
To install the distribution, a graphical installer and initial system setup interface are offered. User-installed applications are isolated from one another in containers. In addition to installing Flatpak packages, the distribution also allows the use of the nsbox tool to create arbitrary containers, which can also host environments of traditional distributions such as Arch Linux and Debian. There is also support for the podman tool, ensuring compatibility with Docker containers. The distribution implements a centralized privileges management mechanism based on Polkit — sudo is not supported, and the only way to run commands with root rights is via pkexec.
The project develops its own user environment GDE (Graphite Desktop Environment), based on GNOME. Differences from GNOME include: modernized login screen, configurator, volume and brightness indicators, panel and Graphite Shell interface. In the next release, they plan to discontinue support for their shell in favor of the standard GNOME Shell and focus on promoting improvements developed by the project within the main core of GNOME.
In the new version:
- Updated versions of distribution components, including Linux kernel 5.19, Mesa 22, and glibc 2.36.
- The custom shell is synchronized with GNOME 43.
- Kernel settings have been reworked, and missing drivers included.
- Improved support for systems with Intel processors, ensuring the installation of microcode updates, and thermald has been deployed for temperature control.
- System fonts have been unified.
- To simplify debugging, loading of debuginfo files has been organized as needed.
- A bootstrap module has been extracted from the core components, designed for building the distribution, which can now be used independently of carbonOS for building other projects.
- Partial support for fingerprint authentication has been implemented, along with support for systems with multiple GPUs and NVIDIA graphics cards.
Source: opennet.ru
