Serpent OS Enters Alpha Release
In a recent announcement, Serpent OS presented the first alpha release of the distribution, utilizing its own package manager Moss and adopting the atomic model of system update. The developers of Serpent OS position it as the next phase in the evolution of Linux distributions. The project is spearheaded by the former team behind Solus distribution development, including Aiki Dorty, the creator of Solus, and Joshua Strobl, the key developer of the Budgie desktop environment. Assemblies are available for architecture x86_64-v2 and come equipped with the Gnome desktop and Cosmic theme.
The Moss package manager employs its own package format called Stone, offering tools for system state control. Updates are executed in atomic mode with the replacement of /USR contents. Serpent OS prioritizes system integrity – in the event of a failed update installation, the system reverts to its previous working state. Changes, aside from the kernel and some systemic components, are applied on-the-fly without necessitating a system reboot. Deduplication with hard links is utilized to conserve disk space when storing multiple versions of packages.
In addition to the distribution, the project is developing various tools such as the installer Lichen, assembly system Boulder, control panel Summit, download manager BLSForMe, and containers system Moss Container. The package manager and low-level utilities are coded in Rust. Most packages, including the Linux kernel, are compiled using the Clang compiler. For C++ applications, the standard library LIBC++ from the LLVM project is employed.
Key Features of the Alpha Version of Serpent OS:
- Additional patches are included for ASUS and Microsoft Surface devices. A NVIDIA GPU driver has been added to the repository (recovered modules open-gpu-cernel-modules).
- A package for installing the Steam gaming client is now available, along with Mesa-32BIT and NVIDIA-Graphics-Driver-32BIT for running 32-bit applications in a 64-bit environment.
- System components in Rust: Gnu Coreutils utilities are replaced by Uutils, SUDO is swapped with Sudo-RS, and NTPD-RS is used for precise time synchronization instead of NTPD. Curl is compiled with Rustls and Hyper for HTTP.