AnduinOS 2.0 Released: A Declarative Rebuild of the Linux Desktop

[Anduin2017]

Today, AIURSOFT LIMITED is announcing the general availability of AnduinOS 2.0.0. The project is now officially maintained by AIURSOFT LIMITED (Hong Kong), marking its transition from a solo-maintained effort to an internationally backed ecosystem.

When we started this project, like many downstream Linux distributions, we used to relied on a series of complex imperative Bash scripts to modify an existing system image. While functional, it was fragile and difficult to maintain and upgrade. For version 2.0, we took a step back and rebuilt the entire foundation from the ground up.

AnduinOS 2.0 is no longer a simple "remaster." It is now assembled entirely from scratch using a clean debootstrap and chroot pipeline, driven by our custom-built, declarative packaging toolchain (aosproj & apkg). The OS core has been meticulously modularized into 56 standard .deb packages across three tiers: Hard Replacements (e.g., overriding ubuntu-desktop), Soft Overrides (e.g., apt-config), and Branding/Capability extensions. Our entire source code and packaging pipelines are fully open — explore them at AnduinOS-2, AnduinOS-Packages, and Apkg.

We have also officially retired all custom update scripts. System maintenance is now handled purely by standard apt update && apt upgrade. All APT repositories are served through our global CDN at packages.anduinos.com, powered by Cloudflare load balancing across US, Europe, and Asia nodes. This is a return to packaging sanity, ensuring 100% native compatibility with the broader Debian/Ubuntu ecosystem.

A Clean Foundation, Without the Bloat

Under the hood, AnduinOS 2.0 is built on the cutting-edge Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute) base and powered by Linux Kernel 7. We ship with a desktop-optimized kernel profile — including BBR congestion control, vm.swappiness=10, and raised fs.inotify limits — to deliver a noticeably more responsive desktop experience under heavy workloads. Intel SOF audio firmware is also preloaded for the latest hardware, without breaking Secure Boot. Dracut is fully supported as an alternative initramfs framework for users who prefer it.

We maintain a strict stance on system bloat and user privacy. Our CI pipeline is now configured to hard-fail if packages like snapd or upstream telemetry services are detected during the build process. We've also completely replaced Ubuntu's default fonts with an elegant typographic stack: Cascadia Code, Noto Sans/Serif, Nerd Fonts Symbols, and Twemoji COLRv1 for modern color emoji. You get the stability of an LTS base, without the parts you didn't ask for.

To keep the ISO lean at ~2.5GB, we swapped legacy applications for their modern, lightweight GTK4/libadwaita counterparts — Celluloid (with ffmpeg and yt-dlp for broad format and streaming support) replaces Showtime for video, Loupe replaces Shotwell for images, Amberol replaces Rhythmbox and GNOME Music for audio, Resources replaces GNOME System Monitor, and Geary serves as the default email client. Developer tools like build-essential, gdb, and git are no longer pre-installed to save space, but remain one apt install away. We also introduced anduinos-ufwall-gtk, a first-party GTK4 GUI for UFW to manage firewall rules without touching the terminal.

On the localization front, all 28 officially supported languages — including newly added Danish, Ukrainian, Indonesian, Finnish, Hindi, and Greek — now ship in a single ISO. Users can select their native language directly from a fully Unicode-aware GRUB boot menu. Keyboard layouts dynamically adapt to the chosen language, and Chinese users get a clean anduinos-rime input experience via the dpkg-divert mechanism — without pulling in 20+ unrelated legacy input method packages from upstream.

A Desktop That Feels Yours

AnduinOS 2.0 introduces our first-party AnduinOS Appearance settings app — a GTK4/libadwaita control panel with full 28-language i18n. It lets you switch between 11-style centered taskbar icons and classic left-aligned layouts, reposition the taskbar to any screen edge, and tweak grouping behavior, all from one clean interface.

The login screen gets the same attention. Our built-in GDM wallpaper picker with image preview is backed by a Fluent theming engine that surgically injects the complete Fluent CSS + SVG assets into GDM — including perfectly rounded accessibility buttons — auto-regenerating on every package upgrade to stay consistent with your desktop. We are proud to officially sponsor @vinceliuice for the stunning Fluent GTK and Icon themes that power our entire interface.

Rounding out the experience: Dash-to-Panel renders crisp 1px Fluent-style panel borders, the taskbar isolates monitors and workspaces for multi-display setups by default, and right-click menus across Dash-to-Panel, DING, and ArcMenu are deeply localized via .mo injection across all supported languages. Four new wallpaper pairs (New Mountain, New Bubbles, 11, AnduinOS) are included, with New Bubbles as the new default.

Out-of-the-Box Conveniences

We've pre-configured the system so you can get to work immediately. AppImages run out of the box with libfuse2t64 and OpenGL libraries preloaded. policykit-desktop-privileges is integrated for passwordless prompts on standard desktop actions like mounting drives. A custom deskmon.service automatically allows executing .desktop files from the ~/Desktop directory — just drop a shortcut and double-click. Printing (cups, system-config-printer) and scanning (sane-airscan) utilities are pre-installed and ready for your hardware.

Is AnduinOS 2.0 for you?

We engineered AnduinOS 2.0 for developers and daily users who want the hardware compatibility of an Ubuntu LTS, but prefer a cleaner, more traditional package management philosophy.

If you are looking for a Linux distribution that checks the following boxes:

• A familiar, highly refined UX — customizable taskbar, Fluent-themed login screen, and first-party Appearance settings
• Strictly Telemetry-free
• Compact ~2.5GB ISO with Live Boot
• Long-Term Support (Ubuntu 26.04 base) & Linux Kernel 7
• Nice performance for desktop users
• Seamless NVIDIA graphics & Secure Boot support
• Modern GNOME desktop, Wayland, and HDR ready
• 28 languages in a single ISO, with native-quality CJK, Arabic, and Thai input
• 100% Native APT ecosystem — no custom updaters, just apt

Then AnduinOS 2.0 is just built for you.

Get Started

• Download the ISO: https://www.anduinos.com/
• Release Notes: Read the full technical changelog at docs.anduinos.com/CHANGELOG.
• Source Code: Explore our declarative build tools and package sources on GitHub.

All AnduinOS 2 projects, packages, and shell extensions are open-source and proudly licensed under the GPL-v3. Apkg is licensed under the MIT License. We welcome contributions from the community and encourage developers to fork, modify, and improve our tools.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

AnduinOS 2.0 would not exist without the incredible work of the open-source community — from the Linux Kernel and Ubuntu foundations, to the GNOME desktop, to the Rust ecosystem powering our native tools. We encourage everyone to review our comprehensive Third-Party Open Source Software Acknowledgements for the full list of upstream projects and licenses that make AnduinOS possible.