Arctic Linux 2026.07.30
Update (2026-07-30, later build): the ISO on this release was replaced. The
first boot of the original image found lsblk/cfdisk/sfdisk/wipefs and
the rest of the disk toolkit either doing nothing or printing "This is a
wrapper script", and iwctl failing with a missing shared library error. Both
were native-build library-linking bugs (host libtool wrapper scripts copied
instead of the real binaries, then those binaries linking the build host's GNU
ncurses/readline instead of Arctic's own netbsd-curses/libedit) - fixed and
verified by booting the rebuilt image and running each tool for real. See
docs/STATUS.md in the repo for the full writeup. The image is now 665 MiB,
up from 282 MiB, since it also carries firmware and the full disk-partitioning
toolkit that the first build was missing.
One image, boots to a TTY running zsh. No desktop, no display manager, and no bash anywhere in the tree — /bin/sh is busybox ash.
Arctic-minimal · hybrid BIOS + UEFI · 665 MiB · boots from a disc or a USB stick written with dd.
glibc 2.44 · toybox 0.8.14 (static, 0BSD) · busybox 1.38.0 · zsh 5.9.2
doas · netbsd-curses · bmake · byacc · one true awk · mandoc
Limine · kernel 7.1.3-arctic-base · alpm
NVIDIA proprietary works
Verified by resolving the real driver against Arctic's libraries — nothing missing:
libnvidia-api.so.1 missing=0 (takes libstdc++.so.6 from Arctic)
libnvidia-rtcore.so missing=0 (takes libgcc_s.so.1 from Arctic)
libnvidia-glcore.so missing=0
nvidia-smi missing=0
That needs three GNU pieces and no more: gcc-libs (libstdc++ and libgcc_s, runtime only — not the compiler), gmake for kbuild, and libglvnd so NVIDIA GL and mesa coexist. /usr/bin/make is still bmake and the userland is unchanged.
Installing the driver asks first: Let alpm auto configure this driver or leave it be? N/y
Profile packages
New profile repo — install one and get a configured desktop, not a bare component. alpm warns before it touches anything.
niri-dms · arctic-kde · arctic-xfce · apiwow-dwm
Packages
arctic-repo-2026.07.30.tar holds 33 packages that passed verification — each one installed into a clean root, every claimed file checked present, checksums confirmed, every ELF resolved, and removed cleanly again. base-devel is deliberately absent: LLVM and cmake are not built yet.
The ISO carries these repositories on the medium, so it installs a complete system with no network:
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt
arctic-strap /mnt
mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/boot
arctic-strap boot /mnt/boot
Try it: qemu-system-x86_64 -m 4096 -smp 4 -cdrom Arctic-minimal-2026.07.30-x86_64.iso -boot d