Skip to content

v4.1 'Horizon'

Latest
Latest

Choose a tag to compare

View all tags
@AnimatedGTVR AnimatedGTVR released this 03 Oct 17:07
v4.1
7670a81
This commit was created on GitHub.com and signed with GitHub’s verified signature.
GPG key ID: B5690EEEBB952194
Verified
Learn about vigilant mode.

Abora OS v4.1 Horizon

Abora OS v4.1 Horizon

Abora OS v4.1 Horizon is the reliability-focused follow-up to Everest: a safer installer, corrected update and configuration paths, improved diagnostics, built-in community and learning tools, and a smaller ANIX language surface.

Horizon builds on Everest 4.0 and the DENALI 3.14 foundation while expanding how Abora can be installed, configured, updated, and used.

Released: · Tag: v4.1 · Channel: stable

Highlights

Highlights

Horizon includes the Everest feature set and adds:

  • An opt-in Abora Labs installer choice that adds a guarded workspace manager
    without fetching or executing experimental code during system installation.

  • Non-destructive installation onto an existing partition

  • Abora adoption for existing NixOS systems

  • ANIX v2 with pluggable configuration languages

  • GPU driver selection for NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel

  • Abora Gaming as an optional system layer

  • Abora Gaming Welcome as its own GTK application

  • TinyPM rewritten in Rust

  • Linux kernel 7.2

  • MediaTek MT7902 Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth support

  • C# implementations of ANIX and the updater version/channel resolver

  • A partition editor (GParted) right inside the installer

  • Plain-language explanations when an install fails

  • Abora Community: an optional survey, Learn Nix, and reminders

  • GTK feedback and bug-report apps

  • The installed login screen shows your own name

  • Expanded MINT installer support

  • A large audit across scripts, Nix modules, installer flows, and release tooling

All 23 desktop profiles remain available:

GNOME, KDE Plasma, COSMIC, MangoWM, XFCE, Cinnamon, MATE, Budgie, LXQt, Pantheon, Hyprland, Sway, Niri, River, i3, AwesomeWM, Qtile, BSPWM, Herbstluftwm, Openbox, Fluxbox, IceWM, and console-only.

The App Catalog continues to provide seven optional starter bundles:

  • Fan Favorites
  • Essentials
  • Social
  • Creator
  • Developer
  • Gaming
  • System Tools

Every bundle is optional.

What's New

What's New

Abora Labs

Labs is an explicit opt-in in the installer. It adds a guarded workspace manager for trying experimental Abora work. Nothing experimental is downloaded, run, or used for normal system updates during installation, and the updater only touches Labs on releases that ship it.

Abora Community

A new community module brings together an optional survey, a Learn Nix guide, and optional reminders. The survey has its own small GTK app, and everything in it is opt-in.

Feedback and Bug Reports

A new GTK4 app collects feedback and bug reports. Bug reports carry the same redacted diagnostics as abora support-report, so you no longer need the terminal to file a useful report.

Installer: Partition Editor

The TUI installer has an Edit partitions step that opens cfdisk, and the GUI installer has an Open partition editor (GParted) button. GParted ships on every live ISO. Make room for Abora, or set up dual boot, without leaving the installer.

Installer: Clearer Failures

When an install fails, the installer now reads the end of its own log and explains the likely cause in plain language: a signature or key problem, a package that failed to build, a network drop, or a disk that ran out of space. It also checks the system clock before starting, because a wrong clock is a common hidden cause of download and signature failures.

Non-Destructive Installation

The installer now offers Use an existing partition, installing Abora onto a partition you choose without wiping the entire disk. Fixes two failure modes found in testing: the EFI System Partition could be offered as the root target, and existing-partition installs could produce an unbootable system on Legacy BIOS.

Adopt Abora on Existing NixOS

Existing NixOS users can now adopt Abora without reinstalling, via a new interactive adoption wizard and one-command downloader that install Abora tooling — ANIX, abora, Abora configuration tooling, and Abora system integrations — onto a NixOS system you already have.

GPU Driver Support

The Everest foundation added the abora.gpu option with support for:

nouveau
nvidia
nvidia-open
amdgpu
intel
none

The installer detects the GPU vendor using lspci and offers appropriate choices. NVIDIA systems default to nouveau, while nvidia and nvidia-open remain explicit opt-in choices.

GPU configuration can also be changed later:

abora config set gpu nvidia
abora config apply

abora hardware-test can now direct NVIDIA users toward GPU configuration when required.

ANIX v2

ANIX v2 introduces pluggable configuration languages. Supported adapters:

  • ANIX Native (.anix)
  • ModuCPP (.moducpp)

The previously bundled MAKO adapter has been removed. Existing third-party
adapter discovery remains available through ANIX language manifests.

Example:

anix language list
anix language use anix
anix run workstation.moducpp
anix validate-plan plan.json
anix apply-plan plan.json
anix diff-plan workstation.moducpp

Each adapter resolves into the same underlying Plan JSON format. anix diff-plan labels settings as ADD, CHANGE, or SAME.

Examples are available in examples/anix-v2/, and the adapter documentation is available in docs/wiki/ANIX-V2-Languages.md.

Abora Gaming

Abora Gaming is optional and independent of desktop choice. It can provide:

  • Steam with 32-bit graphics support
  • GameMode
  • MangoHud
  • Steam hardware and controller support
  • Vulkan diagnostic tools
  • Common game launchers when available
  • Wine and Winetricks
  • Steam Big Picture launcher
  • Optional fullscreen Gamescope Big Picture session

Commands include:

abora gaming status
abora gaming enable
abora gaming steam on
abora gaming install steam
abora gaming install wine winetricks
abora gaming big-picture
abora gaming gamescope on
abora gaming controllers on
abora gaming mangohud on
abora gaming gamemode on
abora gaming launchers on
abora gaming logs
abora gaming repair-cache
sudo abora update

abora gaming repair-cache clears stale local Nix fetch-cache files after
SQLite disk I/O failures during Gaming app installs.

The same functionality is available through Abora Config and ANIX:

abora config set gaming true
anix enable gaming
anix enable gaming.steam
anix enable gaming.big-picture
anix enable gaming.controllers
anix enable gaming.mangohud
anix enable gaming.gamemode
anix enable gaming.launchers

Abora Gaming Welcome

Abora Gaming Welcome is now a separate GTK application dedicated to gaming setup. Launch it with:

abora gaming welcome

It handles enabling the gaming layer, signing into Steam, and installing Steam, Lutris, Heroic, Bottles, Wine, Winetricks, GameMode, and MangoHud.

TinyPM v0.8

TinyPM has been rewritten from Bash into a Rust crate.

grab firefox
tinypm providers
tinypm doctor

MediaTek MT7902 Support

The Everest foundation moved to Linux kernel 7.2, bringing upstream support for the MediaTek MT7902 Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth chipset via the in-tree mt7921e driver.

Installer Improvements

The GTK installer now includes:

  • Esc as another way to go back
  • Full IANA timezone data with fuzzy search
  • Improved disk filtering
  • Consistent desktop ordering between the GUI and TUI
  • GPU selection alongside identity, desktop, and disk configuration

Horizon continues to include Limine, Plymouth, Abora wallpapers, light desktop defaults, Papirus, Fastfetch on first shell launch, zsh with Spaceship prompt, and Flathub setup after first boot.

Changes

Changes

abora update

Fix abora update with no arguments — the primary documented way to update Abora — being a complete no-op that only printed the usage banner instead of updating.

abora rollback

Fix abora rollback never being wired up to its own already-working rollback logic, so the command did nothing at all.

Update Synchronization

Close a nine-file gap between what the release gate checks and what abora-update.sh actually keeps synchronized, including check-full.sh, installer.sh, setup-launcher.sh, and setup.desktop.

Ventoy Booting

Fix Ventoy-flashed USB drives failing to boot: the live initrd was missing busybox, which Ventoy's own udev hook depends on (grep, sed, awk, cut, blkid) to bridge the ISO into a kernel-visible block device.

thermald

Fix anix.power.thermald defaulting to enabled — on unsupported desktop hardware it exits nonzero, which nixos-rebuild switch treats as a failed activation, breaking every rebuild including abora update. Now opt-in.

VirtualBox Guest Additions

VirtualBox Guest Additions are no longer force-built into the live ISO — the out-of-tree kernel module's incompatibility with new kernels was blocking unrelated Abora kernel updates. Still available as an opt-in on installed systems through abora config.

Installer Fixes

Fixed:

  • /dev/zram0 appearing as an install target
  • Hotplug-disk filtering not actually filtering
  • Pantheon missing from the GUI desktop list
  • Different desktop ordering between GUI and TUI
  • Hardware-readiness checks counting zram as real storage

Installer Reliability (issues #32 and #33)

Fixed:

  • Japanese and other non-US keyboards: the console keymap (for example jp106) was passed straight to the graphical session, which needs jp. Console names are now mapped to the right desktop layout.
  • User passwords: password hashing could fail silently on some live environments. It now uses a hardened openssl path with fallbacks, and refuses an empty password instead of hashing it.
  • target-flake.lock failing with a nixpkgs mismatch: the bundled nixpkgs symlink is now resolved before it is checked against the lock.
  • Installs stalling for a long time at the .NET build step: the Native AOT tools now have a fixed source name, so the install reuses the already-built tools instead of rebuilding them.
  • Flathub setup now keeps retrying after first boot instead of giving up silently when the network is not ready yet.
  • The login screen showed every account as "Abora User", which looked like a leftover live account. The display name now defaults to your username and can be changed with abora.user.fullName.

Abora Welcome on KDE Plasma

Fix the Abora Welcome app not opening on first login under KDE Plasma (it worked when launched by hand). It now starts once the Plasma panel is ready.

Start Abora

Fix the .desktop launcher showing Install Abora OS on systems that were already installed — the launcher itself already detected live vs. installed correctly, only the static label was wrong. Relabeled to Start Abora.

ANIX Fixes

Fixed:

  • anix run --language with no value silently crashing
  • Broken anix switch nix <fam> README examples
  • Native .anix plan values being truncated at spaces
  • CRLF endings leaking into plan values
  • Gaming warnings firing when gaming was already enabled
  • Plan-tool fields accepting control characters

MINT

The Go TUI installer now includes Root Account setup, ANIX toggle, Gaming Layer configuration, dotfiles importing (including for the Other edition), and starter application bundles. Two real MINT bugs were fixed, and automated build, vet, and test coverage was added.

Diagnostics and Support

Fixed:

  • redact_stream mangling timestamps
  • abora-support-report leaving its staging directory behind
  • abora-custom-packages leaking temporary files and directories
  • abora bug-report --github crashing before gh ran

Security

Fixed:

  • Support reports and full checks redact Wi-Fi PSKs written as multi-line Nix strings, plus Authorization headers of every kind (Bearer, Basic, Token, Digest).
  • The Abora adoption downloader refuses a hard reset over untracked or modified local work unless you explicitly force it.
  • abora build fails closed when it cannot verify the checkout ref.
  • CI no longer keeps its GitHub token in the checkout.

Less Shell in the Core

The support and release tooling has moved from Bash to Python, continuing the work to remove shell scripts from Abora's core. Commands and output stay the same.

Audit Pass

A dedicated audit across Abora uncovered:

  • 12 real bugs in a full scripts/ sweep
  • 6 more in the nix/ modules
  • 3 more during an end-to-end live installation test
  • 2 release blockers found when check-desktops ran against a working Nix daemon

Additional fixes included:

  • Missing word boundary in check-desktops
  • .NET build artifacts leaking into check-all
  • Two ineffective duplicate tests in check-scripts.sh
  • Incorrect UI library variable in the standalone ANIX wrapper
  • rebuild-vm.sh ignoring the requested branch
  • abora build --from-source --ref ignoring the requested ref on existing checkouts
  • A flake.nix issue breaking flake evaluation

Validation for Horizon includes:

make check
make check-desktops
make preflight
make iso-all

Along with:

  • QEMU fresh installation
  • Installed-disk boot testing
  • ANIX v1 and v2 runtime tests
  • GPU option evaluation
  • Abora Gaming configuration testing
  • TinyPM v0.8 package smoke testing
  • Release manifest generation
  • Checksum generation

Known Issues

Known Issues

xone-dongle-firmware

A nixos-rebuild / abora update failure involving xone-dongle-firmware has been reported, but has not yet been reproduced. Current builds complete successfully on our end.

If you encounter this issue, include the complete:

builder for '...' failed

line when reporting it.

VirtualBox Guest Additions

VirtualBox Guest Additions are now opt-in rather than default-on for the live ISO. If your live-ISO testing workflow relies on Guest Additions, enable them manually.

VirtualBox Installs

Installing inside VirtualBox (issue #33) has not been fully validated yet. If an install fails there, try disabling 3D acceleration and attach /tmp/abora-install.log to your report.

Limine Message on UEFI

On UEFI installs Limine may print device_cache_block(): set_pos(): Invalid argument while installing its BIOS stages. It is harmless: the install completes and the system boots. On a shared EFI partition, Limine also installs to the fallback path \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI; other operating systems keep their own boot entries.

Current Limits

  • Horizon ISOs are larger than older releases because of broader firmware and hardware support.
  • Flatpak and app bundle installation requires network access after first boot.
  • Steam and gaming launchers require network access.
  • Some gaming packages may require unfree package permission through normal NixOS/nixpkgs configuration.
  • Modularity requires the Developer bundle or can be installed later with:
grab modularity
  • COSMIC Greeter manages its own session, so GNOME auto-login settings do not apply to COSMIC.
  • nvidia and nvidia-open require accepting NVIDIA's license through normal NixOS unfree-package configuration.
  • Hardware support ultimately depends on Linux kernel support for the specific device.

For networking problems:

abora network

For support reports:

abora support-report

For installer logs:

abora logs --lines 200

If installation fails before reboot, preserve:

/tmp/abora-install.log
/tmp/abora-config.log

before powering off.

Download

Download

Horizon ships in five editions:

Release Asset Edition
abora-cosmic-<date>-x86_64-v4.1.iso COSMIC
abora-hyprland-<date>-x86_64-v4.1.iso Hyprland
abora-gnome-<date>-x86_64-v4.1.iso GNOME
abora-kde-<date>-x86_64-v4.1.iso KDE Plasma
abora-other-<date>-x86_64-v4.1.iso Other

Additional release assets:

File Description
tinypm-v0.8-abora-v4.1.tar.gz TinyPM v0.8
anix-*-abora-v4.1.tar.gz ANIX standalone package
SHA256SUMS-v4.1.txt Checksums
RELEASE_MANIFEST-v4.1.txt Release manifest

Existing Abora installations can update with:

sudo abora update

Everest 4.0 systems can update in place with the command above. As with any major update, keep a backup, and remember abora rollback returns you to the previous generation if something goes wrong.

Five editions. 23 desktop profiles. ANIX v2. Abora Gaming. Community tools. A safer installer and update path.

Help Improve Abora

If you have a few minutes, please fill out the Abora OS Survey.

You can find the Survey app included with Abora OS. Your feedback helps us understand what people are using, what needs work, and what we should focus on next.

If you can’t access the app, you can also fill it out here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScOIRi77uuS2dxvtlI-_8g8mWaTrlMfIeot7X6C6pn1NFsPJQ/viewform?usp=dialog

The survey is completely optional.

Welcome to Horizon.

Assets 8
Loading