RakuOS March 23rd 2026 Release
We are excited to announce the March 23rd 2026 release of RakuOS! This is one of our biggest releases to date and marks a major evolution of the project. New ISOs are available now for KDE and GNOME environments, with both standard and NVIDIA variants for each.
What's New
Terra Repository Integration
RakuOS now ships with the Terra repository from fyraLabs, bringing over 2,000 additional packages that were previously unavailable in Fedora or RPM Fusion. This includes:
- Mesa 26 — Bazzite's optimized Mesa build with gaming-focused patches, giving AMD and Intel GPU users the latest drivers and Vulkan improvements out of the box
- NVIDIA 590 — The latest NVIDIA driver stack, replacing the older RPM Fusion build, with full DKMS module compilation baked into the image
- Controller support — Full out-of-the-box support for Xbox (USB, Bluetooth, and dongle), PlayStation, and other game controllers via Terra's driver stack
- Helium Browser, Feishin, and many more applications now available in the software center
Mesa 32-bit Parity
Both 64-bit and 32-bit Mesa libraries are now pinned to the same Terra build and managed at the image layer. This prevents version drift between the two that could cause Steam and Proton crashes, giving gamers a more stable experience.
Overlay System Improvements
The RakuOS overlay system (which allows native RPM packages to be layered on top of the immutable base image) received several reliability improvements:
- First boot seeding — On a fresh install the overlay is now automatically seeded from the default packages list, guaranteeing the overlay sync runs during initial setup even if the image build seed process falls through
- packages.toml permissions fix — Resolved a crash in
rakuos-overlay-syncwhere DNF5 failed to read the system state file due to incorrect permissions - Automatic version stamping — Groundwork laid for automatic overlay rebuilds when the base Fedora version changes (e.g. F43 → F44)
Software Center Updates
The RakuOS Software Center received significant improvements in this release:
- Terra AppStream data — Apps from all five Terra repositories now appear in the software center with proper names, descriptions, icons, and categories
- Language fix — Resolved a longstanding bug where some app names displayed in incorrect languages (e.g. Shavian alphabet for English users). All app names and descriptions now display correctly for your system locale
- Locale detection — Fixed detection when
LANG=C.UTF-8is set with a regionalLC_TIMEor otherLC_*variable in locale.conf - Updates page — Improved reliability; the page no longer goes blank when
navigating away and back. Package updates now show the current version alongside
the new version (
0.14.0 → 0.15.0) - Category improvements — Science added as a new top-level category. Category trees in both KDE and GNOME editions now reflect real AppStream data counts
- Addon filtering — Addons and non-GUI packages are now correctly excluded from browse listings and search results
ISO Size Reduction
By removing pre-baked Flatpaks from the ISO (they are now handled by the overlay system on first boot instead), ISO sizes have been reduced by approximately 2 GB, making downloads significantly faster.
GNOME Edition
[email protected]is now enabled by default, bringing system tray support out of the box
Download
ISOs are available on SourceForge.
| Edition | Standard | NVIDIA |
|---|---|---|
| KDE Plasma | ✓ | ✓ |
| GNOME | ✓ | ✓ |
What's Coming
- RakuOS Initial Setup — A unified first-boot setup application covering all three desktop environments for user creation, locale, timezone, and keyboard layout configuration. Targeting the Fedora 44 rebase.
- Fedora 44 rebase — Fedora 44 releases next month and RakuOS will rebase shortly after
- HDMI 2.1 support — Investigating inclusion of the out-of-tree amdgpu HDMI 2.1 patch for AMD GPU users
- Nix package support in the software center
- Community image template — A template repository for community members to build and maintain their own RakuOS spins
Also Notable
RakuOS was listed on DistroWatch today! You can find us at distrowatch.com/rakuos.
Thank you to everyone who has recently downloaded and is testing/trying the distro out since our DistroWatch listing. Feedback and contributions are always welcome!
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