AerynOS (pronounced "AIR-in" meaning "Ireland" in Irish Gaelic) [1] is an independent, innovative, rolling-release Linux distro with a number of new tools and features. Formerly known as Serpent OS, AerynOS features atomic updates and a stateless architecture design that delivers safety and reliability (see Table 1 for a project details). Currently in "an alpha 'technical preview' stage," AerynOS is not ready for production-grade systems. However, if you want to explore a system that is a little different and offers some unique and sensible new features, AerynOS might be worth a look.

Features

Atomic updates are an important feature of AerynOS. The main partition, often called rootfs, supports different system states. For example, if a system upgrade fails, you can restore your system to the old state prior to the upgrade. This is very different from classic DEB and RPM package management, where users need to install previous versions of packages. AerynOS isn't the only Linux distro offering atomic updates, but the developers take a unique approach.

AerynOS also has its own native .stone package format, which features YAML configuration and zstd compression for optimal size. To manage these .stone packages, AerynOS provides two Rust-based tools [2]: Boulder, which builds packages using containers and intelligent sub-package splitting, and Moss, its atomic package manager.

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