Presumably a reference to the river in Lord of the Rings or the WoW character, though the relation to either is somewhat lost on me. It is a cool name though.
Edit: or I'm dumb and the author's name is Anduin.
Even after reading this comment I looked back because I really didn’t know what you were talking about, and only after reading the comment about “Anduin” did I realize there was no r in the name. Crazy.
Technically what people often refer to as "Linux" should more properly be called "GNU slash Linux", or as I've taken to calling it, "GNU plus Linux", GNU being a holistic operating system with multiple kernel...
GNU people would insist so. But Linus Torvalds doesn't use that name and he seems indifferent to the whole GNU thing. The kernel was actually named Linux after Linus by early users and it kind of stuck. The license came later. And the Linux Foundation, the thing that is now probably closest to "owning" Linux (aside from Linus Torvalds) just calls it the "Linux kernel". There is no actual distribution called GNU/Linux. And insisting they all should be called that is a bit weird. None of those actually refer to themselves as GNU/Linux as far as I know.
Aside from that, it's also an inaccurate label these days. Most Linux distributions come with a lot of non GNU licensed software. To the point where these distributions (or any distribution) would be unusable without all that non GNU software. For example xfree86 and its modern replacement wayland are MIT licensed. Some popular window managers are GPL of course. But some aren't.
And some distributions actually replace GNU components on purpose (for stability/memory safety reasons usually). For example libc is now sometimes replaced by a MIT licensed variant called musl. You can now compile Linux with llvm instead of gcc. People commonly use zsh instead of bash. There are rust implementations of commonly used command line tools. Etc.
The last thing the world needs is another Linux package manager. F-Droid uses apt and it could hardly be considered Debian.
It's an interesting question though, that I haven't thought about. At a minimum I'd say that it should have some sort of coherent goals and philosophy, its own package repository, and should not be replicable from its parent distro with a script to install/remove various packages.
The last one is probably the most critical, if it can do something the base distro can't, then it at least has a reason to exist, whether or not you want to call it a "distro" or not.
I think I can allow it for nixos, which is such a pain in the ass (I say that affectionately) that it merits the accolade. it's an os made of nix the language and nixpkgs the package manager. it happens to use the Linux kernel and a lot of gnu stuff, so maybe it could still be called a distribution, but it's so unlike 99% of what's out there.
The last thing I'm going to care about comparing distros is whether they used the same naming pattern as Microsoft instead of Apple. To give credit to their author, it sounds like their name really is Anduin Xue and this is their OS, not that they intended for it to sound confusing. Not all that different than how Debian was named, beyond including OS at the end.
I think the gp is complaining specifically about the "OS" bit; that makes it sound like a new operating system rather than a derivative linux distribution
The points are are the same specific topic. A distro is a superset of the OS bit and the latter is rarely distributed without the additional software, documentation, and configuration that make up a distro so, to me, it's more than fine to me to include OS in the name. Even to switch between one Debian derivative to another it's extraordinarily rare to not reinstall the OS as part of that swap, so why not name the whole solution according to what it includes?
"In 2022, my project HowToCook became enormously popular on GitHub, causing me to spend significant time maintaining it.
Unfortunately, my relationship with Lily changed. Her arrogance and disrespect led to us breaking up. I learned that people change."
...
"After moving my account and files to Suzhou, I explored GPU computing, built a Boeing 737 simulator in Suzhou Center, and reignited my relationship with Lily, looking forward to our future together."
> AnduinOS has more than just cosmetic changes, though. It removes Canonical's controversial Snap packaging format and its supporting tools. It replaces it with Flatpak and the GNOME Software app store configured to show only Flatpak apps. AnduinOS uses native .deb packages throughout, including for Mozilla Firefox; it comes with no Flatpaks installed at all.
Sounds like a big win for those of us frustrated by Snap. Are there any other good Debian-derivatives with Flatpak? I suppose you can always add Flatpak on vanilla Debian.
This actually looks pretty neat, particularly the integration with Flatpak.
One thing that confused me when I first went to Linux a million years ago was the difference in how you install stuff. With Windows you download an exe file, double click it, next next next finish, and you have your app installed.
With Linux, every distro is slightly different and it's almost never quite as straightforward to people. I think Flatpak has the potential to bring that kind of Windows-style of installation to the masses, and it always kind of annoyed me that Ubuntu doesn't embrace Flatpak outta the box.
Download a package (disk image) - macOS automatically extracts to the desktop. Drag and drop the application from the disk image into the /Applications directory. Done.
This is the way, I believe, most software should be installed. I understand some stuff might need to touch system files and for that, perhaps a wizard makes sense.
The Mac way kind of depends on how you get your application. Sometimes applications come from the app store, sometimes they're ZIP'ed files that get auto-extracted, sometimes they're in DMGs that are mounted but not extracted, and sometimes they open some kind of install wizard.
Some of them you can open by right-clicking them and hitting open. Others just open directly. There are also apps that throw up an error when you try to open them and you need to go to the security settings to hit an oddly-placed button to open them. Whether or not you've managed to run the program at least once also seems to influence whether or not an app in the applications folder actually shows up in Launchpad.
Windows does half of this too these days, but these days every OS is confusing and needs specific know-how when you just want to run the tool you downloaded.
Honestly, the fact that to install software you have to go on a site, download an installer, and run it, is one of the reasons why I don't like Windows.
Not only that thing is time consuming and cannot be easily automated, but it's error prone, you are likely to find in the first Google results not the official website of the software but some other site like Softonic that with the software also installs bloatware/malware/toolbars/etc. Of course an expert user can distinguish the official site from a scam, but usually the average computer user can't.
What I like about Linux is just that you type in a terminal (or you use one of the many GUI that exist) `sudo apt install <software name>` and a version of that software, along with its dependencies, it is installed. And not only installed, but packaged, if needed patched, and tested to work along with other software in the distribution. When I install Windows I spend at least 1 hours going to every website of software that I need, download the installer, run the installer, click next, next, next, and repeat. With Linux I can just type in a single command every software that I need, let it run and install it, while I do other things.
And when you need to uninstall a software? On Windows you need the uninstaller, that if it was not created correctly, or created at all, will leave a lot of stuff on the system, files, registry keys, broken links, cache files, etc that you need to remove either manually or with some "cleaner" programs that do more harm than good, for that reason an installation of Windows needs to be formatted every X years cause of the accumulated crap.
From a developer point of view, and I've done many times, writing an installer for Windows, even using open source frameworks like NSIS, is a manual operation that is time consuming, can induce in errors, you need to learn a specific scripting language, etc, while making a package for Ubuntu/Debian (for example) is a simple operation, as simple as put the files of your software in a directory, put in a metadata file, and launch a command to produce the package. Most build systems (automake, cmake) already can create deb packages automatically with commonly used plugins.
Anecdote: Most of the software I use isn't available in `apt`, or the version there is dated. I prefer to get software from its official source, not a third party I don't know will have the current or any versions. And, there is more to software than free/OSS.
I switched to an Arch based distribution and it's night and day. Almost everything is available through the AUR, you even have the choice to rebuild a package or to use a pre-compiled one. I'll never go back to Ubuntu and apt.
Oh, and it's a rolling release so my install doesn't break every 2 years with the new LTS upgrade.
The AUR really is night and day compared to other package managers. Official packages get updates FAST, user packages typically not much slower.
Issues with new versions get immediate solutions on the forums, so breaking changes hardly impact you if you just check the front page of the forums when they do happen.
Arch has the reputation of being the hardcore distro, but really its so user friendly to manage after the initial setup (and I think they have an "easy" setup process if you don't want to manually configure everything now).
I want to be able rely an an arch distro enough to be my main but it just seems like it needs too much maintenance and I'm afraid of some parts of my system breaking in some updates.
Meanwhile, on Ubuntu/Debian-based systems I can just install locally or use a third party repository for the things that need to be more up to date.
Since I've started daily driving Arch on my personal machine I've had two instances that I can recall of a breaking change, both related to an NVIDIA driver update relying on some package that for whatever reason couldn't be bundled with the NVIDIA driver package. On the front page of the forums the fix was immediately available.
The reputation that things are always breaking just doesn't have merit anymore.
I was scared too and found out that it's actually the opposite !
I'm using Manjaro (derived from Arch), so I can't talk for Arch itself but so far (2 years) it's been way more friendly to me than Ubuntu (which I used for 7 years before).
An interesting anecdote for you about just how much an exe/dmg equivalent may be the missing link to mass adoption:
My older brother needed a new laptop. A little bit of background about him, he is not technically inclined at all and doesn't want to be. He uses Siri to operate things like alarms and reminders on his iPhone because he doesn't know how to use them. I even offered to show him, he doesn't want to know. This is someone for who an alarm clock app is too technical to get involved in.
So anyway, he needed a new laptop, and I of course had a fair collection of Thinkpads so gave him one of them; loaded up with Fedora (Gnome as the DE). I installed the basics he uses, pretty much just Chrome and the Spotify Desktop app.
He's been using that for a few years now and far less than having difficulty with it, he actually loves it, and says (I suppose mostly due to the speed of it) that he wouldn't want to go back to Windows.
Now obviously Flatpak can install everything he uses there, but I think for most people, that being an option rather than a requirement is scary. Windows doesn't have the option of using .exe, thats just how you install things, like it or not (*yes I know there's winget and whatnot, but you've gotta be pretty in the weeds to even be aware that exists). And if you want to install some non-free software, you can find yourself in a difficult position.
Clearly from my brothers case, Linux is now at a point where anyone can use it, I do think the last missing link is a unified executable/installer, that works across distros (in his mind, he's not using Fedora, he's using linux) and works in the same way as exe and dmg. And not just as another option either (see xkcd 927), but as a core requirement of shipping on Linux, and that's a far more difficult problem to solve.
It has been years most distros allows you to install apps through tools like Gnome Software or KDE <whichever its name is> which look exactly like an app store regardless if you are using flatpak or regular packages.
You can also download an MSI file
... or execute a Powershell script
... or install via chocolatey
... or install via myget
... or install via winget
... or the Windows Store
Not quite as straight forward as you are suggesting.
It used to be that simple but Microsoft (and others) are intent on copying Linux here. That would probably be fine on Windows as well as Linux if there was just one standard.
MSI files are still basically the same experience as the exe. The rest are pretty developer-centric, except the Windows Store, which I agree is more analogous.
Yes, this makes sense, since most distros use a "standard release" system. The intention behind it is to keep your OS stable and only apply security patches at some point.
If you want to have a system with always the newest software, you need to use a "rolling release " system. I think Arch Linux is the most popular (arch user btw). This is much more fun, if you know what you are doing. Otherwise you will end up with a broken system pretty fast. Ofc you can fix it, but depending on experience and skill something like Ubuntu is the better choice.
It's one of those things, I think younger people would adapt to Linux just fine because of the reason you stated, but I think people my age (or my parents' age) would have the most trouble with it. When I learned how to use a computer, outside of the Commodore 64 that I broke as a little kid, I learned to download .exe files and next next next finish to install, as did my parents.
> Others can just run a distro for people who believe in open source software.
What about Flatpak is contrary to open source software as you seem imply? Flatpak itself is free software, so is most of the software packaged with it. There are quite a few good reasons to use Flatpak, especially for developers who want to make their software available on different distributions without wanting to worry about packaging separately themselves. There are valid criticisms of it, but being somehow against open source software or being somehow related to Microsoft is not one of them.
In the spirit of conversation I will give you my take on this.
Things I hate: Flatpak, Snaps, Docker containers, SystemD (different I know, but worth a mention due to the strong emotions nonetheless). Obviously too big a topic to talk about everything, but one common theme in all of them is they are often presented as the only way to do things by the developers that use them. The projects that use them tend to be harder to customize than they should be - sometimes much harder. Some of them, like Snaps and SystemD, get shoved down my throat so I hate them with a smouldering hate! And I won't use Ubuntu or derivatives any more. If you want to make a derivative distro, use Debian, use Arch, use openSuse, use RedHat.
I don't love it when I see so many projects on github where the project is a docker image or a flatpak - instead of writing an app that I can directly install on at least some flavor of Linux, with an optional wrapper / container / package. Of course I understand why its done, but it does feel a bit antithetical to the spirit of open source if I have to do a ton of arcane work to decouple your project from these containers (all of which have obvious downsides as well as upsides) just to use it directly in an OS - which is ultimately where all this type of software runs.
Why write beautiful or useful software, and lock it in a box? Technically, of course it remains open source. Yes, I can probably laboriously take it out of the box. No, locking it in the box in the first place is not as effectively open as if it had never been placed only there in the first place. Developers who want to do this are totally free to do so - just it will rub me wrong and I won't appreciate their work nearly as much. That is a trade off I presume they know they are making for many users, so to each his own.
Practically? I have opted to avoid all flatpaks and snaps, and to only use appimages - to avoid having a variety of these tools with their variety of performance, maintenance, and security concerns to deal with on my system. I chose appimage because snaps are terrible and I much prefer the fuller inclusion of dependencies in an appimage compared to flatpaks just duplicating what a repository already does - and sharing dependencies between apps. I only use appimage if I really need a piece of software and there is no other packaging available. Similarly, I only use docker off my main device, but there are a few projects that require me to use it. I will always prefer an LXC or a VM first if I can.
That's my own little world. I know it doesn't matter. But I would guess it fits pretty close to the sentiment and practice of a lot of people.
Huh. I'm sure there's some projects that release exclusively via docker or snap/flatpak, but in my experience that's pretty uncommon. Far more often I see a release page with a dozen or more options. Binaries for Arm, AMD64, flatpak, snap, a few flavors of Mac, dockerfile, and of course the venerable tarball. The advanced will have deb and rpm as well. I see these options as very much aligning with the spirit of free or open source software: everyone can pick what's best for themselves.
Obviously when the choices are removed and there's cramming down throats, that's a problem. And I'm sure being forced to shuck software from a container would leave a bad taste. However I don't see the popularity of the formats you dislike as causing a broad decline of those you do.
I agree! I think the easy/simple thing to move towards is more compatible ABIs, and just... running standalone executribles, unless the program triggers a certain complexity threshold most don't.
Calling it (edit: using the term) "free software" is a great example of utterly failing to promote your own principles, and stabbing the entire mission in the face.
Let's try to repurpose an incredibly widely used pre-existing term, that means almost the opposite of the essence of our entire mission, to mean our mission. And every time people tell us that's moronic, we double down. As we continue to watch people somehow totally miss the point of the mission, but surely the fact that we're mind-bogglingly self-sabotaging at advocacy can't have anything to do with that. We should totally keep stabbing ourselves in the face.
IMHO, it is one of the most shameful failures of marketing of the last century.
Flatpak is unambiguously and undeniably free and open source software and the fact that you think it isn't demonstrates that you have been misinformed. The Flatpak project is licensed with the LGPL. Furthermore, the vast majority of software packaged with Flatpak is free and open source software.
I don't understand this. The software is free. But calling it "free software" is a mistake?
And I don't understand the advocacy angle. Is any reference to "free" or "open" in any tech-related conversation automatically advocacy (even if the author did not intend to be an advocate for it)?
Genuinely curious. Apologies if it doesn't read like genuine curiosity, I am genuinely curious.
It's the opposite. Windows users don't procure their software from centralized stores, they install them from each of their individual installers downloaded from their respective websites.
I run NixOS so I have my own opinions on the best way to package software. I'm just saying that I think Flatpak is, if nothing else, good for people who want to transition away from Microsoft.
My parents are both pretty smart people but I genuinely doubt that I would be successful in converting over to Linux if they have to type `sudo apt search my_package` and then `sudo apt install my_package` all the time. For people like them, who have been on windows for the last thirty years, I think that Flatpak is great.
> if they have to type `sudo apt search my_package` and then `sudo apt install my_package` all the time.
As opposed to the much easier `flatpak install com.fqdn.app.name`? Don't confuse underlying package format with CLI/GUI; Synaptic, GNOME Software, Plasma Discover, etc. are fine ways to install normal packages.
The key differences are: Windows 11-like UI via GNOME extensions, Flatpak-first approach instead of Snap, removal of Ubuntu telemetry, and pre-configured extensions that would otherwise require manual setup.
It is emphatic about no telemetry, so I wondered if that was in contrast to Ubuntu (been forever since I've used Ubuntu so I don't know, unless package repository interaction counts as telemetry). But it might just mean that in contrast to Windows or even just a general sense that distinguishes it even from apps which for many are one of the bigger sources of telemetry concerns.
Yeah I saw that too, but since it doesn't say how Ubuntu compares I assumed it was just a random fact they picked to put there.
For comparison the Bazzite website is fantastic for making me interested in it because it explains a lot about what it does to make my life easier!
It's good to have facts about things, but explaining how something helps the user is important too, the open source community definitely benefits from having marketing-style info IMO.
Seeing the screenshot on the site with WPS Office seem like a huge red flag to me, while the distro might not be affiliated with WPS Office, I'll just put the link here to raise attention that WPS Office DOES NOT worth anyone's trust.
Considering we already have Linux Mint which is Ubuntu based with the shite parts removed and where flatpacks are well supported, I wish it would say more about about the unique selling point of AnduinOS.
There's currently a large amount of non-technical Windows users who are being told Windows 10 is going to be no longer supported, and the only way for them to switch to Windows 11 is to buy a brand new device.
Anecdotally these people are less resistant to moving to Linux instead than you'd think, and having a distro which looks exactly like windows would be useful. Although I've just been recommending Kubuntu - KDE Plasma is already pretty close to Windows, and likely to be supported for a long time unlike this.
Getting off topic now, but I think this forced sunsetting of hardware by MS is a huge misstep - desktop/laptop PCs are no longer the necessity they used to be, I feel like a large proportion of people are going to choose to switch to just using their phone/tablet full time instead of buying a new Windows PC or installing Linux. Combined with their seemingly intentional devaluing of the xbox brand they seem to be hellbent on destroying everything that gives them mindshare with regular people.
Yeah but for these people Linux Mint is the clear recommendation. Cinnamon is pretty close to the traditional Desktop they know.
For non-technical users you want something mainstream with a big community. Sure, for me AnduinOS not being very popular would not be an issue because of the Ubuntu base and me knowing what to search for but for beginners it is better to stick something where it is easy to get help for.
> they seem to be hellbent on destroying everything that gives them mindshare with regular people
I agree. MS is making Win11 hard to swallow while at the same time devaluing the Xbox brand.
But Windows market share is remarkably resilient - especially PC gaming. They can afford to lose some tiny % market share if it will benefit them elsewhere. I don't see the benefit, but maybe someone in MS does?
Would I like to see PC gamers suddenly flip to desktop linux? Sure, I'd be pleasantly surprised. But history suggests that's not the way to bet.
Come November, maybe Windows will go from 95% on the Steam hardware listings to 94%. Although I guess change starts somewhere and that 1% is not to be discounted.
I doubt many people will switch to Linux because of the forced switch. Most people will putter along on Windows 10 until they can upgrade. It's still too much of a disruption to swith to Linux, especially for non-technical users.
For sure - the people I mentioned anecdotally willing to switch were only willing because I was there to go through the rigmarole of making a bootable usb, changing bios boot settings and giving them a rundown of the differences in UX.
I have in the past used solutions like these to move elderly people to Linux that cannot emotionally handle a change in icons or where they exist on screen, and would never research technical problems on their own.
Generally a bad call for anyone else who will be unable to apply online advice for linux because the OS they have in front of them which is meant to imitate windows.
it's pretty straightforward to change: a makefile, some preset variables in a .sh, then it iterates through https://github.com/Anduin2017/AnduinOS/tree/5bbd94d9c4fa455e... - the tree also points at the gnome-extensions it uses to create and mod the global menu.
can't be too hard to rebase onto Debian (the superior .deb distribution). I put it on 2 endof10 laptops as whatever I do every few years, kde just doesn't stick
This approach is something I wonder about versus the freedom to fragment with a thousand full distros, each with their own maintenance staff (and burden of supporting what they release if they want to be taken seriously) and experimenting with something. I think there's value in experimenting and exploring new directions, but it would be overall beneficial if there were efforts to consolidate or make it an easy to enable option if those branches prove valuable and compatible with the parent distro
addressing that concern, the dev blog roadmap[1] lays out the plan to commonize in the 1.4 version cycle with completion in v1.5 to
> .. establish our own apt software repository, managing all changes directly via dpkg. [..] This also allows other Linux distributions like Debian to install AnduinOS's customizations easily
The desktop background reminds me of some screens that MEPIS OS used [0] back when I was first getting into Linux in high school and the idea of live distributions blew my mind. I assume it's a coincidence people just like pyramids I guess.
It's fun to see new waves of Linux UI polish attempts (like DHH's Ubuntu/Arch scripts, or this project). The Linux desktop could use some care -- and it's the kind of work a single (talented) person can actually do.
The harder problem is the underlying drivers and app ecosystem. Will some third-party package actually run, or will it require qt-2 and then crash on launch? Why is the laptop's webcam upside down, or why is wi-fi dropping every 11 minutes?
One-man distros rarely fix this (unless the person actually has same trouble). It takes a company, that would be willing to invest the sheer human-hours. We had Red Hat, Ubuntu -- companies that did a lot, but eventually capped their investment in the desktop. We need a new one. Until then, we'll keep getting the same experience under a new label.
Because instead of trying to improve GNU/Linux to be a solid alternative to Apple, Google and Microsoft offerings, we have politics with everyone doing their own little village.
It was one of the reasons I eventually went back to Windows as main driver, yes it sucks for some things, there is M$ and all that, yet when one of my devices breaks down, I can get a replacement on the same day, without dealing with whatever snowflake hardware I need to order online that hopefully will actually support 100% of its capabilities.
VMWare Workstation, and WSL nowadays, take care of whatever needs I might have on GNU/Linux related development.
On Cloud side, we use whatever is the provider's custom distro, with customisations that most likely never end upstream.
> yet when one of my devices breaks down, I can get a replacement on the same day,
How many times has it happened in your life?
Anyone who uses a computer professionally has a backup ready at all time anyway. These days it is not like it is hard to find a computer with its baseline compatible with linux anyway. An incompatible network chip issue is easily solved with a know USB compatible wifi card. Usually only people buying brand new uncommon tech/features or gaming experience issues.
I use computers since 1986, UNIX in various flavours since 1992, GNU/Linux since 1995 starting with Slackware 2.0 (kernel 1.0.9, first ELF support), and to this day that is the usual answer in Linux forums.
Yet, other than the Netbooks glory days, I am yet to buy a Laptop, even from Linux shops, where everything is 100% supported, or eventually doesn't get broken in some kernel update.
I rather use the Linux kernel in the shape of Android/Linux, WebOS/Linux, or device specific ones like Raspberry or Cloud vendors sponsored distros, which they have to maintain themselves for their hardware.
Best of all, it all works on whatever I can get on Media Markt, Saturn, FNAC, Cool Blue, Conrad, Publico, Dixons,...
> Yet, other than the Netbooks glory days, I am yet to buy a Laptop, even from Linux shops, where everything is 100% supported, or eventually doesn't get broken in some kernel update.
Purism’s laptops appear to be well-supported and to hold up well over time.
> Because instead of trying to improve GNU/Linux to be a solid alternative to Apple, Google and Microsoft offerings, we have politics with everyone doing their own little village.
The politics are required by the fact that we don’t all agree on what improves GNU and Linux versus what makes them worse.
But at least with GNU/Linux we have the freedom to disagree and ‘[do] our own village.’ On Windows, Microsoft decides and users comply. Don’t like Windows 11? Tough! Don’t like some (mis)features of Windows 11? Tough!
This freedom is a comfort of toothless and powerless. FOSS crowd do not have a power to enact a real change and really liberate computer users, so they comfort themselves by escaping to their small digital fiefdoms.
The reason I ask "why" is I don't understand what this does differently than a distro like Mint. There isn't really an explanation beyond "You remain anonymous to the system." All while promoting third-party software that does collect telemetry.
What exactly does this distro offer that others don't?
Why would one want to run this over Ubuntu? So much effort is wasted on producing and maintaining entire distributions when they are just another distro with a preinstalled package list and a skin?
Distros also represent sets of defaults and software choices (e.g. removing snap). Good defaults can make a world of difference and dramatically reduce time to usability on new installs.
Besides that distros also tend to include theming that’s much more complete and versatile (works at odd UI scales and such) than themes you find online, which can also be of value. Trying to assemble all the components and poke configs in all the right places to get a coherent look is frankly a huge pain in the rear.
Could that not be a script you run on a fresh Ubuntu install? I am just thinking in terms of all the heft and maintenance responsibility for maintaining this website, documentation, etc (which is all going to be virtually identical to every other documentation site), building isos, hosting them, doing releases.
When the end result is just install packages a, b, c, remove snap, add this theme, add this wallapaper. that is like a script to me lol.
aka ship a diff instead of shipping an entire asset.
Scripts are fine for the lightest of changes but quickly become ungainly and prone to failure, plus the user has to re-run it to reapply changes after system updates.
flatpack, snap and all thpse docker wanabee solve the right problem the wrong way.
(pseudo)static is a quick & dirty solution to a real problem. really solving it requires skills and time. which are all quite scarse given the new generation appetite for ease of use over efficiency
It looks bad: Security hole in popular library (crate) and you need to update everything (and, probably, wait till authors of software update their dependencies) instead of update one system library.
Hard to recommend Nix now with how deep a hole they've dug for themselves with their leftist politics, banning of users for their political views and forcing the founder to leave the project over politics. Nix logo is now officially LGBTQ colors according to them.
It's a shame how there are so many developers detached from reality now; the amount of people perfectly fine with acting like squabbling children is exhausting for anybody with more than a passing interest in open source software.
I know there have always been people detached from reality but it seems that there are more now than ever before, like this brand of online insanity is a more recent phenomenon.
Oy, that's disappointing, I hadn't heard that (and yep checked the website; the logo's changed... sigh). I guess I can dismiss NixOS from my list of possible linux distros. I thought Nix's approach was an intriguing idea, but the last thing I want with my Linux distros is maintainers sidetracked with politics. It means the distro itself takes second place.
Yet sometimes less is more anyway, and I've been using Void Linux recently. Feels like the linux distros I grew up with, just better.
Cool, glad it works for you, as I said, it is promising.
Others might be turned off before they get started. In any case, it's a distraction, and has no business in any open source project. Inviting politics in (if that is what the Nix team is doing) puts an upper bound on the distro's reach.
Well of course I do. If a project openly states that they will ban me for my political beliefs, even if I talk about them on my personal website or X account, why in the world would I invest my time and energy in learning how to use it and also investing time into improving the project and submitting bug reports? I'm not a masochist and do not support people that openly hate me and my values.
Mint is just as bad as AnduinOS, it's just an Ubuntu clone. NixOS is just Silverblue but worse. Everyone should just be using Debian, or Arch if you want to rice, or Fedora if you use RHEL at work.
11’s design language (Fluent) in itself isn’t bad. Personally I find it preferable over the antialiased Windows 1.x look that reigned from 8 through 10. It also implements dark mode more completely than 10 does which is nice.
What makes 11 bad is all the other stuff, like ads in your start menu, taskbar losing functionality, endless background processes being added, etc.
That said there really should be a DE that has built in settings that produce legally distinct but spiritually aligned XP and 7 clone environments.
Maybe this is pedantic, but with a "No telemetry at all!" headline it's weird to see two telemetry-gathering applications (Youtube, Steam) in the demo screenshots. Unless there's something to mitigate this?
Edit: The headline text changes on each page refresh, most of the time it says something else.
I'd rather OS not fuck with my application settings on its own nor do I want it to install browser plugins for me. I wish I had a dollar for every "ubuntu, but looks like windows".
There is a language picker on the site which seems to give these translations. I'm also not 100% sure if the English version was the original version either, or at least it would explain some of the word choices if it wasn't.
It's static. There's a dropdown near bottom left to switch back to en-US. Looks like most of non-English versions are machine translated, except not all from the same singular version.
I made it half way down the page before I realized this wasn’t “ArduinOS”.
I can’t be the only one.
Same. Now, however: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44955159
Thanks. That's what I was hoping this was as I also mis-read it.
Yeah, very bad name.
Presumably a reference to the river in Lord of the Rings or the WoW character, though the relation to either is somewhat lost on me. It is a cool name though.
Edit: or I'm dumb and the author's name is Anduin.
Same but then I saw "only 2 GB image"
At first I thought it must have been a typo…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arduino_boards_and_com...
Some of them are powerful enough that they could probably run a full desktop Linux comfortably.
The Uno can also run it uncomfortably [0].
[0] https://github.com/raspiduino/arv32-opt
I was confused for a lot longer than I am willing to admit.
First thought: Wow someone is running a full DE on an Arduino! How cool!!
Yeah, I clicked expecting it to be some madman who made a multitasking kernel for Arduino. What I actually got wasn't nearly as exciting.
Arduino is just a fancy HAL that hobbyists like to use. So yeah nothing about it prevent you writting kernel.
In fact, the arduino port on esp32 is just a task of FreeRTOS, a multitasking kernel.
That's what I thought too at first
That’s some mentally-induced bad keming right there.
I think it's more of a parafoveal processing effect in contextual word recognition.
Nope, also on the same boat, quite an unfortunate name.
I mean, it can be worse, I read the title and thought "an OS by Anduin Wrynn to help us remove that sword from Silithus".
“Why do I have this horde of zombie processes?”
I saw the spelling, and assumed it was Android on an Arduino.
Even after reading this comment I looked back because I really didn’t know what you were talking about, and only after reading the comment about “Anduin” did I realize there was no r in the name. Crazy.
"An operating system for Arduino boards?" — my first thought.
The authors name is Anduin
ROFL. Yes. count me in
"Hey they're doing a micropyth- oh.."
I really wish people creating a distro, and even more so distro of a distro of a distro should not call it OS. (Debian - Ubuntu . AnduinOS)
I am alwasy happy to look at new operating system projects. It is a major hobby.
Could distros use AnduinDI AnduinUbuntu AnduinLinux. or just Anduin
I dont like getting my hopes up like that.
Technically what people often refer to as "Linux" should more properly be called "GNU slash Linux", or as I've taken to calling it, "GNU plus Linux", GNU being a holistic operating system with multiple kernel...
;)
GNU people would insist so. But Linus Torvalds doesn't use that name and he seems indifferent to the whole GNU thing. The kernel was actually named Linux after Linus by early users and it kind of stuck. The license came later. And the Linux Foundation, the thing that is now probably closest to "owning" Linux (aside from Linus Torvalds) just calls it the "Linux kernel". There is no actual distribution called GNU/Linux. And insisting they all should be called that is a bit weird. None of those actually refer to themselves as GNU/Linux as far as I know.
Aside from that, it's also an inaccurate label these days. Most Linux distributions come with a lot of non GNU licensed software. To the point where these distributions (or any distribution) would be unusable without all that non GNU software. For example xfree86 and its modern replacement wayland are MIT licensed. Some popular window managers are GPL of course. But some aren't.
And some distributions actually replace GNU components on purpose (for stability/memory safety reasons usually). For example libc is now sometimes replaced by a MIT licensed variant called musl. You can now compile Linux with llvm instead of gcc. People commonly use zsh instead of bash. There are rust implementations of commonly used command line tools. Etc.
What does it actually mean to create a distro though? Is it just what software you package in your flavour of debian?
To be an independent distro it should at least have its own package manager.
The last thing the world needs is another Linux package manager. F-Droid uses apt and it could hardly be considered Debian.
It's an interesting question though, that I haven't thought about. At a minimum I'd say that it should have some sort of coherent goals and philosophy, its own package repository, and should not be replicable from its parent distro with a script to install/remove various packages.
The last one is probably the most critical, if it can do something the base distro can't, then it at least has a reason to exist, whether or not you want to call it a "distro" or not.
I feel like I've seen a load of "distros" that are just ubuntu with different packages or a different default DE or something
> F-Droid uses apt
I think you mean termux
Or its own package repositories ! There are many excellent package managers out there :)
Don't loads use apt?
Yeah and they're all Debian derivatives, IMO.
> Could distros use AnduinDI AnduinUbuntu AnduinLinux. or just Anduin
ANAL, but I'm reasonably sure that the answer is no, they could not, because Ubuntu and Linux have trademark policies that would prevent that.
Also, I disagree; a distro, even a respin, is an operating system, they just don't have a unique kernel which sounds like what you want.
I think I can allow it for nixos, which is such a pain in the ass (I say that affectionately) that it merits the accolade. it's an os made of nix the language and nixpkgs the package manager. it happens to use the Linux kernel and a lot of gnu stuff, so maybe it could still be called a distribution, but it's so unlike 99% of what's out there.
This is also a pet peeve of mine.
Names could be trademarked… it’s like if I started a car company called Red, but later marketed it as RedLamborghini
The last thing I'm going to care about comparing distros is whether they used the same naming pattern as Microsoft instead of Apple. To give credit to their author, it sounds like their name really is Anduin Xue and this is their OS, not that they intended for it to sound confusing. Not all that different than how Debian was named, beyond including OS at the end.
https://anduin.aiursoft.cn/page/about
I think the gp is complaining specifically about the "OS" bit; that makes it sound like a new operating system rather than a derivative linux distribution
The points are are the same specific topic. A distro is a superset of the OS bit and the latter is rarely distributed without the additional software, documentation, and configuration that make up a distro so, to me, it's more than fine to me to include OS in the name. Even to switch between one Debian derivative to another it's extraordinarily rare to not reinstall the OS as part of that swap, so why not name the whole solution according to what it includes?
The same naming pattern as Microsoft? Like a distro named Linux for Workgroups Lync 365?
> AnduinOS, a one-man project from a Chinese Microsoft engineer, is quite a new Ubuntu remix that reshapes GNOME in the image of Windows 11.
> it modifies Canonical's current version of GNOME to look strikingly like Windows 11, using a collection of existing extensions and themes
https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/23/anduinos/
ex-Microsoft engineer: https://anduin.aiursoft.cn/page/about#:~:text=I%20chose%20to...
wow that timeline is a bit of a roller coaster:
"In 2022, my project HowToCook became enormously popular on GitHub, causing me to spend significant time maintaining it.
Unfortunately, my relationship with Lily changed. Her arrogance and disrespect led to us breaking up. I learned that people change."
...
"After moving my account and files to Suzhou, I explored GPU computing, built a Boeing 737 simulator in Suzhou Center, and reignited my relationship with Lily, looking forward to our future together."
i must say i'd be slightly offended if my current SO slammed me on their public about page, lol.
I love the history, each year in paragraph or two. Really awesome.
This is Yet Another Example of people just refusing to use Plasma despite Plasma being _so much closer_ to Windows.
Please people! KDE/Plasma gets you to something Windows-like! You don't have to use GNOME!
Yeah but Plasma is buggy and doesn't have a comparable ecosystem of apps like GNOME does.
When was the last time you tried it ? What do you mean by "a comparable ecosystem of apps" ? Which apps would you miss on a KDE install ?
I would argue GNOME doesn't have a comparable ecosystem of apps to KDE...
> AnduinOS has more than just cosmetic changes, though. It removes Canonical's controversial Snap packaging format and its supporting tools. It replaces it with Flatpak and the GNOME Software app store configured to show only Flatpak apps. AnduinOS uses native .deb packages throughout, including for Mozilla Firefox; it comes with no Flatpaks installed at all.
Sounds like a big win for those of us frustrated by Snap. Are there any other good Debian-derivatives with Flatpak? I suppose you can always add Flatpak on vanilla Debian.
This actually looks pretty neat, particularly the integration with Flatpak.
One thing that confused me when I first went to Linux a million years ago was the difference in how you install stuff. With Windows you download an exe file, double click it, next next next finish, and you have your app installed.
With Linux, every distro is slightly different and it's almost never quite as straightforward to people. I think Flatpak has the potential to bring that kind of Windows-style of installation to the masses, and it always kind of annoyed me that Ubuntu doesn't embrace Flatpak outta the box.
I feel the Mac way is preferable, if possible.
Download a package (disk image) - macOS automatically extracts to the desktop. Drag and drop the application from the disk image into the /Applications directory. Done.
This is the way, I believe, most software should be installed. I understand some stuff might need to touch system files and for that, perhaps a wizard makes sense.
The Mac way kind of depends on how you get your application. Sometimes applications come from the app store, sometimes they're ZIP'ed files that get auto-extracted, sometimes they're in DMGs that are mounted but not extracted, and sometimes they open some kind of install wizard.
Some of them you can open by right-clicking them and hitting open. Others just open directly. There are also apps that throw up an error when you try to open them and you need to go to the security settings to hit an oddly-placed button to open them. Whether or not you've managed to run the program at least once also seems to influence whether or not an app in the applications folder actually shows up in Launchpad.
Windows does half of this too these days, but these days every OS is confusing and needs specific know-how when you just want to run the tool you downloaded.
It's neat enough, but I still prefer to not have to download stuff, and instead have the available software in a central repository.
There's a reason why projects like Homebrew exist for Mac.
Honestly, the fact that to install software you have to go on a site, download an installer, and run it, is one of the reasons why I don't like Windows.
Not only that thing is time consuming and cannot be easily automated, but it's error prone, you are likely to find in the first Google results not the official website of the software but some other site like Softonic that with the software also installs bloatware/malware/toolbars/etc. Of course an expert user can distinguish the official site from a scam, but usually the average computer user can't.
What I like about Linux is just that you type in a terminal (or you use one of the many GUI that exist) `sudo apt install <software name>` and a version of that software, along with its dependencies, it is installed. And not only installed, but packaged, if needed patched, and tested to work along with other software in the distribution. When I install Windows I spend at least 1 hours going to every website of software that I need, download the installer, run the installer, click next, next, next, and repeat. With Linux I can just type in a single command every software that I need, let it run and install it, while I do other things.
And when you need to uninstall a software? On Windows you need the uninstaller, that if it was not created correctly, or created at all, will leave a lot of stuff on the system, files, registry keys, broken links, cache files, etc that you need to remove either manually or with some "cleaner" programs that do more harm than good, for that reason an installation of Windows needs to be formatted every X years cause of the accumulated crap.
From a developer point of view, and I've done many times, writing an installer for Windows, even using open source frameworks like NSIS, is a manual operation that is time consuming, can induce in errors, you need to learn a specific scripting language, etc, while making a package for Ubuntu/Debian (for example) is a simple operation, as simple as put the files of your software in a directory, put in a metadata file, and launch a command to produce the package. Most build systems (automake, cmake) already can create deb packages automatically with commonly used plugins.
Anecdote: Most of the software I use isn't available in `apt`, or the version there is dated. I prefer to get software from its official source, not a third party I don't know will have the current or any versions. And, there is more to software than free/OSS.
I switched to an Arch based distribution and it's night and day. Almost everything is available through the AUR, you even have the choice to rebuild a package or to use a pre-compiled one. I'll never go back to Ubuntu and apt.
Oh, and it's a rolling release so my install doesn't break every 2 years with the new LTS upgrade.
The AUR really is night and day compared to other package managers. Official packages get updates FAST, user packages typically not much slower.
Issues with new versions get immediate solutions on the forums, so breaking changes hardly impact you if you just check the front page of the forums when they do happen.
Arch has the reputation of being the hardcore distro, but really its so user friendly to manage after the initial setup (and I think they have an "easy" setup process if you don't want to manually configure everything now).
I want to be able rely an an arch distro enough to be my main but it just seems like it needs too much maintenance and I'm afraid of some parts of my system breaking in some updates.
Meanwhile, on Ubuntu/Debian-based systems I can just install locally or use a third party repository for the things that need to be more up to date.
Since I've started daily driving Arch on my personal machine I've had two instances that I can recall of a breaking change, both related to an NVIDIA driver update relying on some package that for whatever reason couldn't be bundled with the NVIDIA driver package. On the front page of the forums the fix was immediately available.
The reputation that things are always breaking just doesn't have merit anymore.
I was scared too and found out that it's actually the opposite !
I'm using Manjaro (derived from Arch), so I can't talk for Arch itself but so far (2 years) it's been way more friendly to me than Ubuntu (which I used for 7 years before).
An interesting anecdote for you about just how much an exe/dmg equivalent may be the missing link to mass adoption:
My older brother needed a new laptop. A little bit of background about him, he is not technically inclined at all and doesn't want to be. He uses Siri to operate things like alarms and reminders on his iPhone because he doesn't know how to use them. I even offered to show him, he doesn't want to know. This is someone for who an alarm clock app is too technical to get involved in.
So anyway, he needed a new laptop, and I of course had a fair collection of Thinkpads so gave him one of them; loaded up with Fedora (Gnome as the DE). I installed the basics he uses, pretty much just Chrome and the Spotify Desktop app.
He's been using that for a few years now and far less than having difficulty with it, he actually loves it, and says (I suppose mostly due to the speed of it) that he wouldn't want to go back to Windows.
Now obviously Flatpak can install everything he uses there, but I think for most people, that being an option rather than a requirement is scary. Windows doesn't have the option of using .exe, thats just how you install things, like it or not (*yes I know there's winget and whatnot, but you've gotta be pretty in the weeds to even be aware that exists). And if you want to install some non-free software, you can find yourself in a difficult position.
Clearly from my brothers case, Linux is now at a point where anyone can use it, I do think the last missing link is a unified executable/installer, that works across distros (in his mind, he's not using Fedora, he's using linux) and works in the same way as exe and dmg. And not just as another option either (see xkcd 927), but as a core requirement of shipping on Linux, and that's a far more difficult problem to solve.
It has been years most distros allows you to install apps through tools like Gnome Software or KDE <whichever its name is> which look exactly like an app store regardless if you are using flatpak or regular packages.
If you’re gonna install everything as a flatpak, run Debian stable.
You can also download an MSI file ... or execute a Powershell script ... or install via chocolatey ... or install via myget ... or install via winget ... or the Windows Store
Not quite as straight forward as you are suggesting.
It used to be that simple but Microsoft (and others) are intent on copying Linux here. That would probably be fine on Windows as well as Linux if there was just one standard.
MSI files are still basically the same experience as the exe. The rest are pretty developer-centric, except the Windows Store, which I agree is more analogous.
On your mobile phone you install software like in linux, by looking it up in the store. Windows is the outlier
Outlier are the people that stick to old ways,
https://apps.microsoft.com
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/wi...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/msi/windows-...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/overview
I've seen many times in Linux, the version in app store is different from its website(usually outdated).
Yes, this makes sense, since most distros use a "standard release" system. The intention behind it is to keep your OS stable and only apply security patches at some point. If you want to have a system with always the newest software, you need to use a "rolling release " system. I think Arch Linux is the most popular (arch user btw). This is much more fun, if you know what you are doing. Otherwise you will end up with a broken system pretty fast. Ofc you can fix it, but depending on experience and skill something like Ubuntu is the better choice.
I think this is a conflation of the OS with the software a user is running on it.
Unless you're looking for dev tools, then we are back to downloading an exe in the form of curl | bash taking over everywhere.
Sure, but it's a big outlier.
It's one of those things, I think younger people would adapt to Linux just fine because of the reason you stated, but I think people my age (or my parents' age) would have the most trouble with it. When I learned how to use a computer, outside of the Commodore 64 that I broke as a little kid, I learned to download .exe files and next next next finish to install, as did my parents.
Flatpak is great for people who wish they were running Microsoft.
Others can just run a distro for people who believe in open source software.
> Others can just run a distro for people who believe in open source software.
What about Flatpak is contrary to open source software as you seem imply? Flatpak itself is free software, so is most of the software packaged with it. There are quite a few good reasons to use Flatpak, especially for developers who want to make their software available on different distributions without wanting to worry about packaging separately themselves. There are valid criticisms of it, but being somehow against open source software or being somehow related to Microsoft is not one of them.
In the spirit of conversation I will give you my take on this.
Things I hate: Flatpak, Snaps, Docker containers, SystemD (different I know, but worth a mention due to the strong emotions nonetheless). Obviously too big a topic to talk about everything, but one common theme in all of them is they are often presented as the only way to do things by the developers that use them. The projects that use them tend to be harder to customize than they should be - sometimes much harder. Some of them, like Snaps and SystemD, get shoved down my throat so I hate them with a smouldering hate! And I won't use Ubuntu or derivatives any more. If you want to make a derivative distro, use Debian, use Arch, use openSuse, use RedHat.
I don't love it when I see so many projects on github where the project is a docker image or a flatpak - instead of writing an app that I can directly install on at least some flavor of Linux, with an optional wrapper / container / package. Of course I understand why its done, but it does feel a bit antithetical to the spirit of open source if I have to do a ton of arcane work to decouple your project from these containers (all of which have obvious downsides as well as upsides) just to use it directly in an OS - which is ultimately where all this type of software runs.
Why write beautiful or useful software, and lock it in a box? Technically, of course it remains open source. Yes, I can probably laboriously take it out of the box. No, locking it in the box in the first place is not as effectively open as if it had never been placed only there in the first place. Developers who want to do this are totally free to do so - just it will rub me wrong and I won't appreciate their work nearly as much. That is a trade off I presume they know they are making for many users, so to each his own.
Practically? I have opted to avoid all flatpaks and snaps, and to only use appimages - to avoid having a variety of these tools with their variety of performance, maintenance, and security concerns to deal with on my system. I chose appimage because snaps are terrible and I much prefer the fuller inclusion of dependencies in an appimage compared to flatpaks just duplicating what a repository already does - and sharing dependencies between apps. I only use appimage if I really need a piece of software and there is no other packaging available. Similarly, I only use docker off my main device, but there are a few projects that require me to use it. I will always prefer an LXC or a VM first if I can.
That's my own little world. I know it doesn't matter. But I would guess it fits pretty close to the sentiment and practice of a lot of people.
Huh. I'm sure there's some projects that release exclusively via docker or snap/flatpak, but in my experience that's pretty uncommon. Far more often I see a release page with a dozen or more options. Binaries for Arm, AMD64, flatpak, snap, a few flavors of Mac, dockerfile, and of course the venerable tarball. The advanced will have deb and rpm as well. I see these options as very much aligning with the spirit of free or open source software: everyone can pick what's best for themselves.
Obviously when the choices are removed and there's cramming down throats, that's a problem. And I'm sure being forced to shuck software from a container would leave a bad taste. However I don't see the popularity of the formats you dislike as causing a broad decline of those you do.
I agree! I think the easy/simple thing to move towards is more compatible ABIs, and just... running standalone executribles, unless the program triggers a certain complexity threshold most don't.
.deb should be fine too. It can convert to appimages pretty easily.
People don’t seem to understand the world doesn’t have to accept a solely form of packaging - theirs.
Flatpak might not be for me, it certainly helps get some beginners to Linux going. If they outgrow it, that’s great, or maybe they never need to.
Calling it (edit: using the term) "free software" is a great example of utterly failing to promote your own principles, and stabbing the entire mission in the face.
Let's try to repurpose an incredibly widely used pre-existing term, that means almost the opposite of the essence of our entire mission, to mean our mission. And every time people tell us that's moronic, we double down. As we continue to watch people somehow totally miss the point of the mission, but surely the fact that we're mind-bogglingly self-sabotaging at advocacy can't have anything to do with that. We should totally keep stabbing ourselves in the face.
IMHO, it is one of the most shameful failures of marketing of the last century.
Flatpak is unambiguously and undeniably free and open source software and the fact that you think it isn't demonstrates that you have been misinformed. The Flatpak project is licensed with the LGPL. Furthermore, the vast majority of software packaged with Flatpak is free and open source software.
https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak
No, I'm saying that you are making the advocacy mistake of using the term "free software".
I don't understand this. The software is free. But calling it "free software" is a mistake?
And I don't understand the advocacy angle. Is any reference to "free" or "open" in any tech-related conversation automatically advocacy (even if the author did not intend to be an advocate for it)?
Genuinely curious. Apologies if it doesn't read like genuine curiosity, I am genuinely curious.
Maybe they're confusing it with snaps?
It's the opposite. Windows users don't procure their software from centralized stores, they install them from each of their individual installers downloaded from their respective websites.
I run NixOS so I have my own opinions on the best way to package software. I'm just saying that I think Flatpak is, if nothing else, good for people who want to transition away from Microsoft.
My parents are both pretty smart people but I genuinely doubt that I would be successful in converting over to Linux if they have to type `sudo apt search my_package` and then `sudo apt install my_package` all the time. For people like them, who have been on windows for the last thirty years, I think that Flatpak is great.
> if they have to type `sudo apt search my_package` and then `sudo apt install my_package` all the time.
As opposed to the much easier `flatpak install com.fqdn.app.name`? Don't confuse underlying package format with CLI/GUI; Synaptic, GNOME Software, Plasma Discover, etc. are fine ways to install normal packages.
I've had it set up so you can just double-click the Flatpak files, not too dissimilar to an exe download.
You don't have to be non-technical to prefer a simple, non-memorize-text way to install things.
Agreed.
Also the majority of people like to do things with a computer other than, or rather than work on the operating system.
I like customizing my OS. But it shouldn’t be a barrier or gatekeep beginners out.
I'm not really sure after reading through the front page why it's different from Ubuntu, it mentions flatpaks so that's one aspect.
But there's no breakdown of what other major things are different, or why to pick it over Ubuntu or [other popular distro].
The key differences are: Windows 11-like UI via GNOME extensions, Flatpak-first approach instead of Snap, removal of Ubuntu telemetry, and pre-configured extensions that would otherwise require manual setup.
Or mint, which is a much more popular Ubuntu derivative which uses flatpaks
It is emphatic about no telemetry, so I wondered if that was in contrast to Ubuntu (been forever since I've used Ubuntu so I don't know, unless package repository interaction counts as telemetry). But it might just mean that in contrast to Windows or even just a general sense that distinguishes it even from apps which for many are one of the bigger sources of telemetry concerns.
Yeah I saw that too, but since it doesn't say how Ubuntu compares I assumed it was just a random fact they picked to put there.
For comparison the Bazzite website is fantastic for making me interested in it because it explains a lot about what it does to make my life easier!
It's good to have facts about things, but explaining how something helps the user is important too, the open source community definitely benefits from having marketing-style info IMO.
It wants to specifically target Windows 11 users, which is strange because Windows 11 itself isn't done with targeting its own users yet.
I read this as Arduino OS. :sad_face:
Yes, this naming is really unfortunate. It appears to be inspired by a fictional river from the LOTR-iverse:
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Anduin
It appears to be the lead developer's name: https://github.com/Anduin2017
That's what got me to click.
you're not alone it seems..
Seeing the screenshot on the site with WPS Office seem like a huge red flag to me, while the distro might not be affiliated with WPS Office, I'll just put the link here to raise attention that WPS Office DOES NOT worth anyone's trust.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/vz1gse/allegedly_wps...
It's a Chinese distro, so it's not that surprising that they package a Chinese office solution.
Ain't nobody outside China using WPS cloud, you don't have much to worry about from a functional point of view.
I prefer OnlyOffice myself. The Russians made such a good MS Office clone even UNESCO is using it apparently: https://www.onlyoffice.com/customers.aspx?from=default
Considering we already have Linux Mint which is Ubuntu based with the shite parts removed and where flatpacks are well supported, I wish it would say more about about the unique selling point of AnduinOS.
There's currently a large amount of non-technical Windows users who are being told Windows 10 is going to be no longer supported, and the only way for them to switch to Windows 11 is to buy a brand new device.
Anecdotally these people are less resistant to moving to Linux instead than you'd think, and having a distro which looks exactly like windows would be useful. Although I've just been recommending Kubuntu - KDE Plasma is already pretty close to Windows, and likely to be supported for a long time unlike this.
Getting off topic now, but I think this forced sunsetting of hardware by MS is a huge misstep - desktop/laptop PCs are no longer the necessity they used to be, I feel like a large proportion of people are going to choose to switch to just using their phone/tablet full time instead of buying a new Windows PC or installing Linux. Combined with their seemingly intentional devaluing of the xbox brand they seem to be hellbent on destroying everything that gives them mindshare with regular people.
Yeah but for these people Linux Mint is the clear recommendation. Cinnamon is pretty close to the traditional Desktop they know.
For non-technical users you want something mainstream with a big community. Sure, for me AnduinOS not being very popular would not be an issue because of the Ubuntu base and me knowing what to search for but for beginners it is better to stick something where it is easy to get help for.
> they seem to be hellbent on destroying everything that gives them mindshare with regular people
I agree. MS is making Win11 hard to swallow while at the same time devaluing the Xbox brand.
But Windows market share is remarkably resilient - especially PC gaming. They can afford to lose some tiny % market share if it will benefit them elsewhere. I don't see the benefit, but maybe someone in MS does?
Would I like to see PC gamers suddenly flip to desktop linux? Sure, I'd be pleasantly surprised. But history suggests that's not the way to bet.
Come November, maybe Windows will go from 95% on the Steam hardware listings to 94%. Although I guess change starts somewhere and that 1% is not to be discounted.
I doubt many people will switch to Linux because of the forced switch. Most people will putter along on Windows 10 until they can upgrade. It's still too much of a disruption to swith to Linux, especially for non-technical users.
For sure - the people I mentioned anecdotally willing to switch were only willing because I was there to go through the rigmarole of making a bootable usb, changing bios boot settings and giving them a rundown of the differences in UX.
Windows 11 theme. That's it.
I love mint, but Linux is about choice.
Best messaging and explanation wins, not best distribution.
I’m still finding it pretty remarkable this is so small, but I shouldn’t be.
I have in the past used solutions like these to move elderly people to Linux that cannot emotionally handle a change in icons or where they exist on screen, and would never research technical problems on their own.
Generally a bad call for anyone else who will be unable to apply online advice for linux because the OS they have in front of them which is meant to imitate windows.
The Ghost of Lindows.
it's pretty straightforward to change: a makefile, some preset variables in a .sh, then it iterates through https://github.com/Anduin2017/AnduinOS/tree/5bbd94d9c4fa455e... - the tree also points at the gnome-extensions it uses to create and mod the global menu.
can't be too hard to rebase onto Debian (the superior .deb distribution). I put it on 2 endof10 laptops as whatever I do every few years, kde just doesn't stick
This approach is something I wonder about versus the freedom to fragment with a thousand full distros, each with their own maintenance staff (and burden of supporting what they release if they want to be taken seriously) and experimenting with something. I think there's value in experimenting and exploring new directions, but it would be overall beneficial if there were efforts to consolidate or make it an easy to enable option if those branches prove valuable and compatible with the parent distro
addressing that concern, the dev blog roadmap[1] lays out the plan to commonize in the 1.4 version cycle with completion in v1.5 to
> .. establish our own apt software repository, managing all changes directly via dpkg. [..] This also allows other Linux distributions like Debian to install AnduinOS's customizations easily
[1]: https://news.anduinos.com/post/2025/5/21/anduinos-future-dev...
Kinda cute and reminds me of KDE back in the early 2000s, just with the start menu in the middle.
No ARM builds either, despite being based on Ubuntu, so I'm not even going to bother trying it out since I expect poor experience on an emulated x86.
The desktop background reminds me of some screens that MEPIS OS used [0] back when I was first getting into Linux in high school and the idea of live distributions blew my mind. I assume it's a coincidence people just like pyramids I guess.
[0] - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mepis.png
Ah, one of these again. At the end of the day it comes down to:
1. No average Windows user would ever switch to Linux even if it looks similar
2. No Linux user would put themselves through a simulated Windows experience
"The ISO is only 2GB"
0_o
Have you ever seen the size of modern OS installs?
It's fun to see new waves of Linux UI polish attempts (like DHH's Ubuntu/Arch scripts, or this project). The Linux desktop could use some care -- and it's the kind of work a single (talented) person can actually do.
The harder problem is the underlying drivers and app ecosystem. Will some third-party package actually run, or will it require qt-2 and then crash on launch? Why is the laptop's webcam upside down, or why is wi-fi dropping every 11 minutes?
One-man distros rarely fix this (unless the person actually has same trouble). It takes a company, that would be willing to invest the sheer human-hours. We had Red Hat, Ubuntu -- companies that did a lot, but eventually capped their investment in the desktop. We need a new one. Until then, we'll keep getting the same experience under a new label.
Is this the distro created by a MS employee?
I wonder if this is a weird tasting the waters for an eventual MS Azure Linux Desktop Edition...
Only 2 GB iso! Smaller than Ubuntu! ... I remember when Ubuntu 14.04 was 1 GB ISOs... oh that was a decade ago :(
For a long time, Ubuntu ISOs fit on a CD-ROM. Once that barrier was broken, the sizes inflated pretty rapidly IIRC.
They used to send you free CDs to hand out if you asked!
I hope I didn't throw away the ones I had!
The last time I installed Ubuntu, it was from a CD. ;)
This feels like a lot to run on an arduino. Even the arm ones arn't hitting 100mhz.
> a lot to run on an arduino
This is aNduinos, unrelated to aRduino.
It's Anduin as in the fictional river from LotR
Is this meant to be a Windows 11 clone on Ubuntu?
Why do people keep doing this?
Because instead of trying to improve GNU/Linux to be a solid alternative to Apple, Google and Microsoft offerings, we have politics with everyone doing their own little village.
It was one of the reasons I eventually went back to Windows as main driver, yes it sucks for some things, there is M$ and all that, yet when one of my devices breaks down, I can get a replacement on the same day, without dealing with whatever snowflake hardware I need to order online that hopefully will actually support 100% of its capabilities.
VMWare Workstation, and WSL nowadays, take care of whatever needs I might have on GNU/Linux related development.
On Cloud side, we use whatever is the provider's custom distro, with customisations that most likely never end upstream.
> yet when one of my devices breaks down, I can get a replacement on the same day,
How many times has it happened in your life?
Anyone who uses a computer professionally has a backup ready at all time anyway. These days it is not like it is hard to find a computer with its baseline compatible with linux anyway. An incompatible network chip issue is easily solved with a know USB compatible wifi card. Usually only people buying brand new uncommon tech/features or gaming experience issues.
I use computers since 1986, UNIX in various flavours since 1992, GNU/Linux since 1995 starting with Slackware 2.0 (kernel 1.0.9, first ELF support), and to this day that is the usual answer in Linux forums.
Yet, other than the Netbooks glory days, I am yet to buy a Laptop, even from Linux shops, where everything is 100% supported, or eventually doesn't get broken in some kernel update.
I rather use the Linux kernel in the shape of Android/Linux, WebOS/Linux, or device specific ones like Raspberry or Cloud vendors sponsored distros, which they have to maintain themselves for their hardware.
Best of all, it all works on whatever I can get on Media Markt, Saturn, FNAC, Cool Blue, Conrad, Publico, Dixons,...
> Yet, other than the Netbooks glory days, I am yet to buy a Laptop, even from Linux shops, where everything is 100% supported, or eventually doesn't get broken in some kernel update.
Purism’s laptops appear to be well-supported and to hold up well over time.
System76’s too.
Where can I buy them in Europe, without ordering online?
Additionally, how many posts from online forums do you want with counter-examples from them?
> Because instead of trying to improve GNU/Linux to be a solid alternative to Apple, Google and Microsoft offerings, we have politics with everyone doing their own little village.
The politics are required by the fact that we don’t all agree on what improves GNU and Linux versus what makes them worse.
But at least with GNU/Linux we have the freedom to disagree and ‘[do] our own village.’ On Windows, Microsoft decides and users comply. Don’t like Windows 11? Tough! Don’t like some (mis)features of Windows 11? Tough!
And that is why the likes of Microsoft, Apple and Google win the hearts of consumers, and developers that are't into FOSS dogmas.
Too many people busy fighting among themselves instead of a common goal.
Divide and conquer.
This freedom is a comfort of toothless and powerless. FOSS crowd do not have a power to enact a real change and really liberate computer users, so they comfort themselves by escaping to their small digital fiefdoms.
because hackers gonna hack?
https://xkcd.com/927/
This, plus a few orders of magnitude.
It’s sad that it seems some of the comments are asking “Why?”…
I’d say this is a good middle ground compromise for people who want the privacy of QubesOS but with an Ubuntu experience underneath
The reason I ask "why" is I don't understand what this does differently than a distro like Mint. There isn't really an explanation beyond "You remain anonymous to the system." All while promoting third-party software that does collect telemetry.
What exactly does this distro offer that others don't?
It looks like Windows 11. Sounds inconsequential, but a different basic look and feel are a major problem for many people when they first try Linux.
Why would one want to run this over Ubuntu? So much effort is wasted on producing and maintaining entire distributions when they are just another distro with a preinstalled package list and a skin?
Distros also represent sets of defaults and software choices (e.g. removing snap). Good defaults can make a world of difference and dramatically reduce time to usability on new installs.
Besides that distros also tend to include theming that’s much more complete and versatile (works at odd UI scales and such) than themes you find online, which can also be of value. Trying to assemble all the components and poke configs in all the right places to get a coherent look is frankly a huge pain in the rear.
Could that not be a script you run on a fresh Ubuntu install? I am just thinking in terms of all the heft and maintenance responsibility for maintaining this website, documentation, etc (which is all going to be virtually identical to every other documentation site), building isos, hosting them, doing releases.
When the end result is just install packages a, b, c, remove snap, add this theme, add this wallapaper. that is like a script to me lol.
aka ship a diff instead of shipping an entire asset.
> Could that not be a script you run on a fresh Ubuntu install?
It would be amazing if you could just download the combo of the script and image so you don't have to spend time configuring it :)
Scripts are fine for the lightest of changes but quickly become ungainly and prone to failure, plus the user has to re-run it to reapply changes after system updates.
similar to Omarchy by DHH. Just run a script after a fresh install of Arch, and it will pre-configure your Hyprland desktop
So it's just another Linux distribution? A Flatpack-based spinoff of Ubuntu?
flatpack, snap and all thpse docker wanabee solve the right problem the wrong way.
(pseudo)static is a quick & dirty solution to a real problem. really solving it requires skills and time. which are all quite scarse given the new generation appetite for ease of use over efficiency
What is the right way to solve this problem in your view?
If Rust continues to take over we will end up with (truly)static everything, which doesn't look too bad.
Rust supports dynamic linking btw.
https://robert.kra.hn/posts/2022-09-09-speeding-up-increment... https://davidlattimore.github.io/posts/2024/08/27/rust-dylib...
Dynamic linking is much better in the long run. As you can proxy things more easily if changes are needed.
But it needs more ABI hygiene, and maintaing that compatibility proxy layer.
Yet, I agrew that unfortunatly, it feels much more effective at first to just "freeze the whole stack in amber".
Context: https://debconf25.debconf.org/talks/78-static-linking-pitfal...
Looks terrible to me. Huge waste of disk,RAM and a thousand gaping security holes waiting to happen.
It looks bad: Security hole in popular library (crate) and you need to update everything (and, probably, wait till authors of software update their dependencies) instead of update one system library.
I have been distro-hopping since probably around 2004, whenever now someone is asking me what to recommend as a Linux, it’s as follow:
- Entry level and everything you will ever need, stable, etc: Mint
- Feeling adventures: go with arch or some of its arch-based distros.
- Used linux before: NixOS.
Hard to recommend Nix now with how deep a hole they've dug for themselves with their leftist politics, banning of users for their political views and forcing the founder to leave the project over politics. Nix logo is now officially LGBTQ colors according to them.
It's a shame how there are so many developers detached from reality now; the amount of people perfectly fine with acting like squabbling children is exhausting for anybody with more than a passing interest in open source software.
I know there have always been people detached from reality but it seems that there are more now than ever before, like this brand of online insanity is a more recent phenomenon.
What's leftist about supporting the LGBTQ community?
Oy, that's disappointing, I hadn't heard that (and yep checked the website; the logo's changed... sigh). I guess I can dismiss NixOS from my list of possible linux distros. I thought Nix's approach was an intriguing idea, but the last thing I want with my Linux distros is maintainers sidetracked with politics. It means the distro itself takes second place.
Yet sometimes less is more anyway, and I've been using Void Linux recently. Feels like the linux distros I grew up with, just better.
After a few years using nix for my projects, everything else feels flimsy. They can make the logo be a pile of poo for all I care.
Maybe you're the one who is sidetracked with politics.
Cool, glad it works for you, as I said, it is promising.
Others might be turned off before they get started. In any case, it's a distraction, and has no business in any open source project. Inviting politics in (if that is what the Nix team is doing) puts an upper bound on the distro's reach.
I got curious about it, and yeah, doesn't appear a great community, at least a year ago: https://shealevy.com/blog/2024/05/08/broken-promises-the-nix...
Well of course I do. If a project openly states that they will ban me for my political beliefs, even if I talk about them on my personal website or X account, why in the world would I invest my time and energy in learning how to use it and also investing time into improving the project and submitting bug reports? I'm not a masochist and do not support people that openly hate me and my values.
Mint is just as bad as AnduinOS, it's just an Ubuntu clone. NixOS is just Silverblue but worse. Everyone should just be using Debian, or Arch if you want to rice, or Fedora if you use RHEL at work.
Manjaro definitely has Mint vibes.
Is windows 11 really the GUI that we want to be emulating?
11’s design language (Fluent) in itself isn’t bad. Personally I find it preferable over the antialiased Windows 1.x look that reigned from 8 through 10. It also implements dark mode more completely than 10 does which is nice.
What makes 11 bad is all the other stuff, like ads in your start menu, taskbar losing functionality, endless background processes being added, etc.
That said there really should be a DE that has built in settings that produce legally distinct but spiritually aligned XP and 7 clone environments.
right my first reaction was 'cool a more macos like linux experience, let's take a look'
[dead]
Maybe this is pedantic, but with a "No telemetry at all!" headline it's weird to see two telemetry-gathering applications (Youtube, Steam) in the demo screenshots. Unless there's something to mitigate this?
Edit: The headline text changes on each page refresh, most of the time it says something else.
Well, YouTube isn't an application is a webpage, install plugins to block tracking there.
Steam is opt-in for metrics, all it does is collects hardware report. Unless I'm missing something?
It still logs rather a lot by default, like which applications you launch and how long you use them for.
Which is fine, all laid out in their privacy policy etc., but it's not clear to me where Anduin's "No telemetry at all!" promise starts and ends.
Maybe "no added telemetry" would be more pedantically-correct.
I don't know, I understood it as "No OS level telemetry or telemetry in first-party apps".
> It still logs rather a lot by default, like which applications you launch and how long you use them for.
If you're talking about Steam, those are social features that can be disabled if you want to hide the fact you're playing a hentai game (NSFW) https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1ie66ix/nsfw_show_me...
I'd rather OS not fuck with my application settings on its own nor do I want it to install browser plugins for me. I wish I had a dollar for every "ubuntu, but looks like windows".
Aaaaaargh a fucking AI did translate this from English to German when I look at it. Horrible translation.
Eine freundliche Distribution. Ok, fuck yes, if it is friendly, does it say good morning and good night? And ask me how I am?
"Es ist eine perfekte Kombination aus Erfahrung und Ökologie." Ok, it's about ecology, so something about trees and nature and owls and bunnies?
"AnduinOS ist Ihre finale Linux-Distribution!". Wait, you'll think I DIE if I use this?
There's a language dropdown at the bottom of the page. The English version seems mostly fine.
I think your user agent is doing the translation, but "ecology" is a weird word choice in the original(?) English version too.
There is a language picker on the site which seems to give these translations. I'm also not 100% sure if the English version was the original version either, or at least it would explain some of the word choices if it wasn't.
It's static. There's a dropdown near bottom left to switch back to en-US. Looks like most of non-English versions are machine translated, except not all from the same singular version.
It's AI translated to danish as well, and it's not good. It gets basic grammar wrong, and it just reads weird and clunky.