AnduinOS
anduinos.com
anduinos.com
I can’t be the only one.
Some of them are powerful enough that they could probably run a full desktop Linux comfortably.
In fact, the arduino port on esp32 is just a task of FreeRTOS, a multitasking kernel.
Edit: or I'm dumb and the author's name is Anduin.
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.
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.
;)
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.
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 you mean termux
> it modifies Canonical's current version of GNOME to look strikingly like Windows 11, using a collection of existing extensions and themes
"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 unintentionally released Windows 11 screenshots before its GA, which caused significant discomfort and impacted my career.
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.
Please people! KDE/Plasma gets you to something Windows-like! You don't have to use GNOME!
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.
Others can just run a distro for people who believe in open source software.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The most formalized and principled original one, was unfortunately named "free software". (Where RMS expects to be able to explain that it doesn't mean "you don't have to pay money for it" like everyone already thought, but he wants it to actually means "free as in freedom". And he imagines having this conversation, and people being intrigued by the wordplay, etc.)
Of course what happened is that everyone wanted stuff without paying money for it, which is fine, but most people never learned the principles behind the various philosophies, nor why they are that way. Installing a Linux-based software distro is the same as downloading a freebie "community version" of software decidedly not in the same spirit, is the same as downloading a cracked version -- it's all just "free".
A related thing happened with the Internet, in a sense. The early people tended to be egalitarian and principled, and actively onboarded new people into the culture, etc. But when the dotcom gold rush happened, most of that was quickly swept aside. And most of what was already known and taught about cooperative online behavior was never even learned.
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.
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.
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.
All "Linux forks" (MacOS, iOS, Android, Playstation OSes) all solve the installer problem and have offline installers.
Linux is the outlier.
Not quite as straight forward as you are suggesting.
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.
Oh, and it's a rolling release so my install doesn't break every 2 years with the new LTS upgrade.
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.
The reputation that things are always breaking just doesn't have merit anymore.
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).
Its packages are generally pretty up to date, like Arch, but every update/rebuild snapshots the current system.
I find this pretty wonderful; if I am mucking around with packages or boot parameters or whatever, it’s way less scary; if I break something I simply reboot and choose an older generation.
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).
The Linux way, the maintainers will archive your DEB or one of its dependencies and it will disappear - your business-critical machine now no longer works. You will not be able to reinstall it when travelling without an internet connection. The developer of another program might be Russian and now for political reasons his server is blocked/censored, so you can no longer install his software. Another developer changes the EULA and implements AI and mandatory telemetry and backdoors to the Five Eyes - your Linux system auto-updates and now you're pwned. You install a rolling release Linux and it updates endlessly until your CPU performance is compromised (see how Win10/11/iOS updates); you try to roll back and your software and dependencies all break (unfixable because APT installed them God-knows-where all over your system); when fixed, you find that because of the rolling release, you can't find the specific "last-good-version" of that one tool.
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.
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.
There's a reason why projects like Homebrew exist for Mac.
Linux is not a single target.
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.
But there's no breakdown of what other major things are different, or why to pick it over Ubuntu or [other popular distro].
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.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/vz1gse/allegedly_wps...
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
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.
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.
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.
Best messaging and explanation wins, not best distribution.
I’m still finding it pretty remarkable this is so small, but I shouldn’t be.
- 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.
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.
Maybe you're the one who is sidetracked with politics.
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...
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 a wild generalization. "Fish is just chicken but tastes worse"
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
> .. 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...
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.
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.
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 :)
I’d say this is a good middle ground compromise for people who want the privacy of QubesOS but with an Ubuntu experience underneath
What exactly does this distro offer that others don't?
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.
This is aNduinos, unrelated to aRduino.
Edit: The headline text changes on each page refresh, most of the time it says something else.
Steam is opt-in for metrics, all it does is collects hardware report. Unless I'm missing something?
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.
> 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".
This, plus a few orders of magnitude.
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.
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.
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,...
Purism’s laptops appear to be well-supported and to hold up well over time.
System76’s too.
Additionally, how many posts from online forums do you want with counter-examples from them?
https://frame.work/es/en/linux
EDIT: I hadn't seen the "without ordering online"
You just check what models/chipsets are supported when you are in the shops
You don't expect MacOS to work on an ACER laptop you buy at the nearest Mediamarkt right? Nor do you expect to be able to plug a windows installer memory stick and install it on an apple silicon macbook air right ?
With only a couple minutes of research it is fairly trivial to find laptops compatible with linux, especially if you stick to business line of laptops such as the thinkpads, dell latitude. I could install and use Fedora on the last 3 professional laptops I have been given by my employers, as in all personal computers I have bought.
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!
Too many people busy fighting among themselves instead of a common goal.
Divide and conquer.
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.
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.
I wonder if this is a weird tasting the waters for an eventual MS Azure Linux Desktop Edition...
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
0_o
(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
If Rust continues to take over we will end up with (truly)static everything, which doesn't look too bad.
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...
https://robert.kra.hn/posts/2022-09-09-speeding-up-increment... https://davidlattimore.github.io/posts/2024/08/27/rust-dylib...
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?