v4.2 Solstice

Abora OS v4.2 Solstice

A safer, simpler Abora: one command instead of two, system changes that undo themselves when they fail, a
doctor that explains and repairs, and an installer that says exactly what went wrong.

Released: 2026-11-01 · Tag: v4.2 · Channel: stable

Highlights

• anix is the one command. Everything abora did is now anix <command>: anix update,
  anix doctor, anix apps, anix gaming, anix recovery. abora still works as its old name, so
  abora update and anix update are the same thing.
• Safe system changes (ASA). anix apply, anix config apply, anix apps and anix update run as
  transactions: checked, snapshotted, applied, verified, and rolled back to the previous generation and
  config if anything fails, including a service that newly fails. anix history lists them; anix undo <id>
  reverses one, and anix undo --keep-edits <id> brings back the edits a failed change rolled back. See ASA.
• anix doctor checks the bootloader, Nix, the ANIX config, the update channel, the desktop and login
  screen, the GPU driver, network and DNS, disk space and a read-only root, failed services and Flatpak,
  explains each problem in plain language, and fixes what it safely can (anix doctor repair).
  anix doctor --json is for bug reports, and support reports include it.
• Packages without a rebuild. anix package install <pkg> installs any nixpkgs package right away,
  from the exact nixpkgs your system is pinned to, without touching flake.nix. anix package keep makes
  it part of the system. TinyPM is removed; see Packages for the mapping.
• Installer failures you can act on. Three kinds of "hash mismatch" are told apart (a damaged USB
  stick or RAM, a changed download, an installer bug), a What failed block names the failed build, the
  path and both hashes, and Save logs to a USB drive keeps the log through a reboot.
• A clearer timezone question: UTC or Region/City in any case, and a city on its own lists matches.
• ModuCPP, MAKO and the bundled Modularity are removed. ANIX Native (.anix files) is the language ANIX
  ships. Software outside nixpkgs, Modularity included, installs from its GitHub flake with
  anix package install github:owner/repo; abora apps custom is gone.
• Two update channels. demo and dev are gone; there is stable and edge. A system still
  saved on one of the old names (or on unstable) follows edge and says so. anix channel set stable for tagged releases.
• Less to keep. The zenity dialogs, anix ringtone and the login sound, and unused images are removed.
• One installer. The terminal installer, drawn with gum, is the only one. MINT and the GTK installer are
  removed, and the live ISO is an installer only, with no live desktop session. One ISO, no editions:
  you pick the desktop (COSMIC, GNOME, KDE Plasma, XFCE, Hyprland, Cinnamon, or none) while installing.
• A Minimal install. One switch keeps the system lean (no duplicate terminals or browsers, no extras)
  and offers a small desktop: IceWM, LXQt, Lumina, Niri, Sway, Fluxbox, Openbox, or your own.
• Bring your own NixOS flake. The installer can install your flake with Abora's hardware and disk
  layout wrapped around it, and abora adopt-nixos brings an existing NixOS system to Abora by adding
  Abora as a flake input (nixosModules.default) instead of editing your flake.nix.
• Choose your NixOS release. Follow stable (nixos-26.05) or unstable, at install time or later with
  anix nixos [stable|unstable]. The updater keeps your choice.
• grab. A standalone app installer that finds a program in Nix, Lix, Flatpak or Snap and installs it:
  grab zen-browser. grab info <app> says where it would come from first.
• Zen replaces Firefox as the default browser, installed from Flathub on first boot.
• Passwords stay out of the Nix store. Password hashes are kept in /var/lib/abora/secrets, not in
  /etc/nixos, which is copied into the world-readable store on every rebuild.
• A boot splash that shows. The Abora logo appears while the system loads.
• A smaller installer, written to be tested. The disk, flake and configuration steps run in a Rust
  engine, with every value escaped for Nix in one place; the Bash screens call it. No .NET tools remain.
  See How the installer works.
• abora-trailer, an all-ASCII animation of the Abora logo and the release name, for videos and demos.

What's New

The highlights above cover the main changes in Solstice, including the unified installer, ANIX tools, transactional system changes, and package management.

Fixed from DistroWatch's 4.0 review

Thanks to Jesse Smith of DistroWatch for testing Abora OS 4.0 across several attempts and publishing
direct, constructive criticism.

Issue	Status
Confusing release and version information	4.1 aligned the names; 4.2 makes every shipped file derive its release name from one place and fails the build when one doesn't
Manual partitioning	fixed in 4.1.1
Install failures with hash mismatches	diagnosis and logs improved (above); the 4.0 failure itself is not yet reproduced
Timezone entry unclear	fixed (above)
Live ISO layout (desktop editions boot to a TUI installer)	by design: Abora's live image is an installer, not a live desktop. Documented in Installation

Changes

The 4.2 release consolidates earlier updater and installer work, removes TinyPM, MINT, GTK installation paths, bundled Modularity and legacy ANIX adapters, and introduces the Rust-backed installer engine.

Upgrading

sudo anix update

• On 4.1: run this once instead:

  sudo env ABORA_UPDATE_RESOLVER_BIN=abora-update-resolver abora update
  

  The 4.1 updater picks the wrong internal helper (its own abora-update command) and stops before
  changing anything. The variable points it at the helper 4.1 already ships. After that it hands over to
  4.2's updater, and later updates are plain sudo anix update.

• On 4.0: run sudo abora update twice. The 4.0 updater can't hand over mid-update, so the first run
  installs the newer updater and the second uses it.

Release files, once published: the universal abora-<stamp>-x86_64-v4.2.iso, with
SHA256SUMS-v4.2.txt. Check the ISO against it before writing the USB stick.

Known limitations

• 4.1 systems need the one-time command above for their first update to 4.2; a plain abora update stops safely
  before changing anything.
• Tested in virtual machines only. Every desktop was installed and booted (BIOS; COSMIC and GNOME on UEFI too),
  and the update from 4.1, rollbacks, anix doctor repairs and failed-install handling were run. Not tested on
  real hardware: the NVIDIA, AMD and Intel driver choices (each builds and switches, but no real card was used)
  and VirtualBox. Reports from real machines are welcome.
• NVIDIA systems (nvidia or nvidia-open) run the long-term Linux 6.18 kernel; every other system runs the newest
  kernel (7.3). NVIDIA's current driver does not build against Linux 7.3 yet.
• Installing Abora twice on one computer, sharing its EFI partition, breaks the first install's boot entry: both
  use the same bootloader folder. Dual-booting with another operating system was not tested.
• Updating straight from 4.0 was not tested (a fresh 4.0 install no longer builds with current nixpkgs).
• ABT can't protect a first install: there's no earlier generation to go back to.
• The description line under a boot-menu entry (and bootctl) still names the NixOS release you follow, for example
  "Abora OS Yarara 4.2 (Linux 6.x)". nixpkgs builds that text from a read-only option, so Abora cannot change it;
  /etc/os-release and /etc/lsb-release say Abora's own name.

Download

One universal installer ISO for x86_64. There are no separate COSMIC, GNOME, KDE, Hyprland or Other ISO editions in v4.2. Choose a desktop or minimal installation during setup.

Release asset	Description
abora-<stamp>-x86_64-v4.2.iso	Universal installer ISO (one edition)
SHA256SUMS-v4.2.txt	SHA-256 checksums for verifying downloads

Download from the Abora OS GitHub releases. Confirm the files are published before sharing direct download links.

One ISO. Your desktop. Safer changes. Welcome to Solstice.