AerynOS

Reader supplied reviews for AerynOS Average rating 7.0 from 13 review(s) Please specify which version of the distribtion you are reviewing. Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on AerynOS? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 2025.12 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 2025.10 Rating: 7 Date: 2025-11-19 Votes: 2 I tried AerynOS just to play around and see if this can be a replacement for my daily which is CachyOS. While this is a really good effort for an Alpha release, I have had some issues with this install: 1. During the live session I have configured a keyboard layout to be Dvorak. Usually when I do this with other OSs this setting carries over to the installed OS but it didn't with Aeryn. This is not a huge deal, but makes it challenging to log in for the first time since the keyboard layout of my laptop does not match the OS. 2. WiFi settings do not carry over to the installed OS either. I feel like most distros do that by default. 3. GParted in the live session did not gave me an ability to set the partition flags. Thankfully there's a Disks application that does this and I was able to use it to create my partition. Otherwise you'd have to use fdisk terminal program. Overall this is a really good effort though and I'll be paying attention to this distro as it gets fleshed out more. I'm always looking for an indy immutable distro and this can fit my bill. I don't really like that it almost forces you to use flatpaks for most software but I understand the reasoning behind it. Flatpaks are generally slower and take much more disk space than the original software in the binary form. This OS as it stands today is not for the beginners since you have to define your partitions manually and the GUI partition manager mentioned in the instructions does not give you the ability to do that properly. It is however a solid and fast OS and a great effort for an Alpha build. Well done, AerynOS devs! Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 2025.10 Rating: 9 Date: 2025-11-08 Votes: 23 I tried out AerynOS for the first time back in mid-August. I liked it so much that I started contributing and became the COSMIC DE package maintainer. I've used it as a daily driver for personal and "work" related tasks for 3 months now, and it's been rock solid. Even though it's in Alpha status, I recommend that everyone who knows enough to install it do so. Maybe you'll fall in love with it enough to decide to give back; like I did. Also, the installer being the way that it is, having to pre-format the disk, is for a reason. The devs want to keep the user base to those who can either learn to do this or who can already do it because there is little manpower for support on top of doing the development. If you have the drive to learn the technical bits, or already know them, and want to try this distro out; I believe you won't want to leave. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 2025.10 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-11-07 Votes: 42 Installed the alpha to kick the tires 3 weeks ago and can't see myself ever leaving, I've run a lot of distros but I've never had a functional KDE Plasma desktop from boot in such a short time. Aeryn got an update to Plasma 6.5.2 the same day it was released. I say this to counter another comment that the packages are 'stale.' While Aeryn doesn't aim for bleeding edge packages, it does aim to be fairly up-to-date. Again, this is alpha software so I give them some grace if some other packages are not particularly up-to-date. Even at current alpha status I've found it rock solid and the built in boot time rollback system gives me the confidence to update without fear. On the negative side, yes you do have to create your partitions manually (clearly documented) and yes the package set is limited at this stage. This is intentional in case any sweeping changes are made that require recompiling the whole repository, allowing it to be done in a reasonable time. The deficit can, for now, be made up with Flatpaks. Notably, native packages exist for Thunderbird, Firefox and Steam and I find them more snappy to launch than the Flatpak versions. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 13 reader reviews of AerynOS...