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melon 0.4 “Dudaim”

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@xbfj xbfj released this 09 Oct 03:41
· 109 commits to 97431086c87d8ffe27e57e2490b56a691370ebc6 since this release
v0.4
6b87e16

Superseded by melon 0.5 “Esfahan”.

melon 0.4 “Dudaim”: the console installer's new name, look and sound, and 0.3's faster startup for existing installs (9 October 2026). melon releases are named after melon varieties, in alphabetical order.

Which file? Most people want melon-desktop-20261009-x86_64.iso (KDE Plasma on Wayland, live session and installer). Write it to a USB stick (Rufus, balenaEtcher, Ventoy or dd) and boot it. melon-20261009-x86_64.iso is the console-only edition. Check your download against SHA256SUMS.

What's new since 0.3

  • The quick console installer has a new name, a new theme song and a new intro. It is still hidden: if you know its name, type it in the live session's shell. The old name no longer works. Its intro draws a melon rolling off a cliff at dusk, in true colour on terminals that support it and in the 16 console colours on a plain Linux console. The new song also plays under the graphical installer.
  • For existing installs: the online package repository now has melon-base 0.1-r36 (the new installer, and 0.3's startup that no longer waits for every device to be probed, plus melon-boottime), melon-sounds 1.0-r1 (the new song) and eudev 3.2.14-r2, which that startup needs. Run doas apk upgrade, then restart. The new kernel, GRUB, runit and breeze packages are not online yet, so the faster reading of the live image, the hidden one-second boot menu, runit's faster service checks and the smaller GRUB and wallpaper still only come with these ISOs.
  • Updated packages: melon-base 0.1-r36, melon-sounds 1.0-r1 and eudev 3.2.14-r2 (online and on the ISOs); linux-melon 7.0.0-r5, runit 2.3.0-r1, grub 2.14-r3 and breeze 6.6.4-r1 (on the ISOs only, from 0.3).
  • A little smaller: the desktop ISO is 794 MB (803 MB in 0.3) and the console ISO 380 MB (385 MB). The new song file is a third of the old one's size.

How it was tested

Built and tested on the same Windows 10 laptop as 0.3 (WSL2, Ubuntu 24.04), where QEMU has no hardware virtualization, so every VM ran in software emulation. All packages, the repository index and the ISOs' package repositories are signed with the melon key.

Passed, on the console ISO:

  • qemu-test.py live: boot the ISO and run the unattended console install (BIOS); the sound card's output during the install is the new song;
  • qemu-test.py disk and disk --uefi: boot the installed system with BIOS and with UEFI;
  • the installer started on the VM's screen (the real Linux console, 16 colours), answered through the virtual keyboard: the new intro draws correctly and the install finishes.

On the desktop ISO:

  • it boots and logs in on the serial console, and the console installer installs from it (qemu-test.py live).
  • Not run: the Plasma tests (desktop, desktop-install). Plasma doesn't finish starting under software emulation; they need a machine with hardware virtualization. Plasma itself is unchanged since 0.3, which the owner booted on a real PC.

Not run without KVM: the --luks, dualboot, --offline and --vmware variants.

Problems?

If hardware doesn't work, run sudo melon-hwreport and attach the file it writes to an issue.

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