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RAKUOS RELEASE NOTES: 2026.09.29

September 29, 2026 · Announcements

Covers: 22 August to 28 September 2026 · 707 commits across 32 repositories

Full commit list: see the full changelog post · Source: https://gitlab.com/rakuos

Headliner: RakuOS is now 100% bootc

Every RakuOS image is now built on Fedora's official bootc base (fedora-bootc-minimal) instead of the old rpm-ostree desktop base. rpm-ostree is no longer shipped on RakuOS images.

What this means for you:

  • One way to manage the system. Installs, updates, rollbacks and switching between editions all go through bootc, which is the tool Fedora is standardizing on for image-based systems.
  • The installer uses bootc too. The RakuOS Installer now installs directly with bootc install, with a much more reliable progress display, better handling of custom partition layouts and a separate /home, and correct EFI and BIOS detection.
  • A leaner, cleaner base. Starting from the minimal bootc image means we only ship what RakuOS actually needs. Images now also clean up leftover build state (/run, /tmp) before they're published, as part of ongoing work toward bootc container lint compliance.
  • Your installed apps come with you. rum detects the new base and installs anything your packages used to get from the old image, so nothing breaks when you upgrade.

Note: Because RakuOS is now fully bootc-based, we no longer officially support rebasing to RakuOS from other distributions. Please do a fresh install from a RakuOS ISO.

Staging is moving to Fedora 45

The staging channel will be moving over to a Fedora 45 base over the coming week. Our packages, including the kernels, rum, rakuos-core, Mesa and more, are already being built for the Fedora 45 repos in preparation. Stable stays on Fedora 44 for now until offical 45 release.

If you're on staging, expect some churn while the move happens. If you want a quiet life, stay on stable.

What's new

New app: RakuOS System

System management now has its own app, separate from the Software Center. It has GTK, Qt and COSMIC versions and opens the one that matches your desktop. You can use it to:

  • update your system and roll back to a previous version
  • switch desktop images and choose the stable or staging channel
  • choose your CPU optimization level (v2, v3 or v4) and your kernel (RakuOS or P03)
  • reset your installed apps, change kernel parameters and adjust zram
  • export and import your app list (packages.list) to back up your installed apps or move them to another machine

Switching only the kernel no longer triggers a full reset of your installed apps. Rollbacks and image switches also report success and failure correctly.

P03 kernel images

Images built on the P03 kernel are available, maintained by CatPieLeaf on our team. P03 is a Fedora kernel with a curated set of CachyOS, TKG, XanMod, BORE and ADIOS performance patches, built for each CPU level (v3 and v4), including NVIDIA variants.

P03 is temporarily not the default kernel. Some users ran into issues with it, so new installs and updates use the RakuOS kernel for now. P03 will become the default again once those issues are resolved. Until then you can still switch to the P03 images yourself from RakuOS System.

Software Center

  • New repository management.
  • Update notifications now open System, and there's a notification when a newer NVIDIA driver image is available.
  • The tray icon and background service are now optional.
  • Much lower CPU use in the background service.
  • Flatpak "User" sources only appear when the user remote is actually enabled.
  • Fixes for Niri, COSMIC tray startup, GTK update reloading, and a leftover "reboot required" notice.

rum (package manager)

  • Faster and more reliable downloads, now using librepo with batch downloading.
  • Transactions now go through librpm, with several crash fixes.
  • New: a full history command, proxy and client-certificate support, GPG verification of repository metadata, and config-manager addrepo --from-repofile.
  • system-upgrade now updates your Flatpaks as well.
  • Resolver fixes, plus protection against 32-bit packages overwriting 64-bit system binary files.
  • makecache no longer freezes the system while it runs, and rum runs at lower CPU and I/O priority.
  • Apps that installed to /opt now go to /usr/lib/opt, which works properly on an image-based system. Leftovers are cleaned up automatically.

Look and feel

  • New GRUB and Plymouth boot themes in RakuOS colors. The GRUB theme now works with Secure Boot.
  • New icon themes across the desktops, and new wallpapers contributed by the community.

Desktop editions

  • Niri: updated for DMS 1.6, a new command to switch greeters, IBus input support, and fixes for installing KDE apps.
  • KDE, GNOME, Niri and COSMIC: icon theme updates, and the RakuOS System app is included.
  • Terra is now disabled by default. The Welcome app has a new page for turning on third-party repositories if you want them.

Installer and ISOs

  • The GRUB theme is applied to every ISO.
  • Btrfs uses noatime by default.

New and updated packages

  • New: Ollama (local AI) packaged by RakuOS, our own Mesa build, GoOverlay, fastfetch (updates automatically with each new upstream release), cpak, v4l2loopback, CUPS printing and nano.
  • NVIDIA images now include the CUDA and driver libraries.
  • lsfg-vk has been removed. Its source is still public, but it is no longer free and open source.

Download at https://rakuos.org/download.