Adrian Vovk, creator of the atomically updatable distribution carbonOS 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 GNOME developers into a general-purpose distribution suitable for daily use by regular users.
Adrian also announced the cessation of development of the carbonOS distribution as an independent project utilizing its own package base. However, the carbonOS project will continue to exist, but its development is now planned within the GNOME project as part of GNOME OS or as a fork of GNOME OS, investing resources in the development of GNOME OS. The development of GNOME OS employs a similar understanding of how an OS should be structured and utilises the same technologies as carbonOS, with the fundamental difference being that the carbonOS distribution was developed as an OS for mass deployment, while GNOME OS is a project for supporting GNOME development and testing.
Summarizing his experience working on the carbonOS distribution, Adrian concluded that a user-friendly operating system should possess the following properties:
- Delivery of an unmodified GNOME desktop environment and a standard set of applications, in the form and combination they are provided by the GNOME developers.
- Installation of additional programs in Flatpak format.
- System resilience to user action failures or after an update installation. Quick recovery of the state through rollback of changes.
- Invariance of the base environment across all systems and atomic updates by fully replacing the system image, which improves reliability and simplifies problem diagnosis.
- Security — using mechanisms such as encryption of user data, 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 various form factors (PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones) and ease of creating builds optimized for specific hardware.
- Eliminarea necesității utilizatorului de a lua decizii inutile, de exemplu, utilizatorul nu ar trebui să se preocupe de alegerea formatului pachetelor la instalarea aplicațiilor.
Sursa: opennet.ro
