Changes since April 15, 2026
This release is focused on polish, reliability, and making installs and updates behave much more cleanly across the board. A lot of work in this cycle went into reducing first-boot pain, improving GitLab-based infrastructure, and tightening up recovery behavior so systems stay usable even when a branch is having a rough day.
Highlights
Much better first-boot behavior
One of the biggest changes in this release is how the initial package overlay is handled.
Instead of depending so heavily on a full first-boot network install, RakuOS Linux now prebakes the default application overlay into the image and seeds it into place on deployment. On first boot, the system now finalizes that initial overlay from the baked cache instead of rebuilding everything from scratch over the network.
This should significantly improve:
- fresh installs
- first boot without internet
- reset behavior
- consistency between installed systems and the shipped default app set
Overlay reset behavior was also updated so resets can reseed from the baked factory state and follow the same finalization flow, rather than falling back to the older repo-first behavior.
Better resilience when networking is missing
Several fixes landed around cases where networking is unavailable during boot or setup.
RakuOS Linux now handles no-internet situations more gracefully in places where it previously could stall or fail harder than it should. That includes overlay-related flows and live environment behavior, where the goal is now to get the user to a usable desktop instead of trapping them in a broken startup path.
GitLab migration and release pipeline improvements
A lot of infrastructure work landed in this cycle.
RakuOS Linux image and ISO build flows have been moved further onto GitLab, including:
- branch-aware image/ISO pipelines
- working ISO pipelines for KDE, GNOME, and COSMIC
- direct release to SourceForge
- cleaner branch handling for
main,staging,rawhide, and future work
The ISO pipeline stack is now much more production-ready than it was a week ago.
Live environment and installer cleanup
The live environment was simplified so it behaves more like a clean live session and less like a half-installed system.
Changes here include:
- default apps being baked into the live environment
- skipping unnecessary overlay install behavior in live sessions
- cleaning up live-session overlay state before install testing
- desktop-specific ISO config cleanup
- disabling unwanted first-run apps in the live session where appropriate
Update and migration fixes
The update path got several important fixes, especially around the GitHub/GHCR to GitLab transition and branch-aware image handling.
Fixes include:
- better GitLab migration behavior
- branch-aware image selection
- correct handling for dated tags and branch tags
- improved update checking logic
- better handling of Rawhide versioning
- fixes to updater behavior during branch and image transitions
Flatpak and first-boot setup fixes
The setup path also saw a set of cleanup fixes:
- system setup fixes for first boot
- more reliable Flathub remote setup behavior
- fixes around missing
$HOME/ install-user home creation - tighter marker handling so one-shot setup tasks behave more predictably
Software center improvements
RakuOS Linux Software gained:
- improved branch handling
- Rawhide branch support in the UI
- clearer branch switching behavior
- improved warning behavior around unstable branches
Performance and system polish
This cycle also included a handful of lower-level quality improvements:
- switched SSD/NVMe I/O scheduler behavior toward
adios - fixed sudoers permissions
- added custom Fastfetch branding config
- fixed stale DNF plugin config handling with overlay maintaince
- cleaned up service behavior and script organization
Branch Notes
Stable
Stable is the recommended branch for normal use and for the refreshed ISOs associated with this release.
Staging
staging remains useful for testing upcoming work, but it should be treated as a development branch. Breakage is possible, especially around major Fedora transition periods.
Rawhide
rawhide is available for forward testing, but users should expect frequent breakage. Overlay-related breakage is especially possible there because the branch moves quickly and underlying package behavior can change often.
Rawhide is not intended to provide a polished daily-driver experience.
Summary
This release is mostly about making RakuOS Linux feel less fragile:
- smoother first boot
- better reset and recovery behavior
- better offline tolerance
- cleaner ISO infrastructure
- stronger GitLab-based release flow
- improved update and migration handling
That should make both new installs and day-to-day use much less painful than they were before.