AerynOS 2026.02 was an Alpha ISO with updates to COSMIC, GNOME, KDE Plasma and core system packages. Its February report also described faster moss hardlink updates in a narrowly defined filesystem transaction test—not a general measure of operating-system or drive performance. AerynOS announced a newer 2026.08 ISO in August 2026, so 2026.02 is a historical snapshot, not the latest release.
What was AerynOS 2026.02?
AerynOS described 2026.02 as its newest Alpha ISO in its February 28, 2026 project update. It was a Live GNOME image that served as a delivery vehicle for the Alpha/proof-of-concept lichen installer. Installation required an internet connection because the installer downloaded the latest package sets during setup. AerynOS February 2026 update
The February ISO should not be confused with a stable, offline installer or with the project’s current release. AerynOS later announced the 2026.08 ISO on August 2, 2026. AerynOS August 2026 update
Which desktop environments and packages changed?
The February report listed updates across multiple desktop environments, graphics, audio, kernel and application packages. These are the versions reported for the 2026.02 snapshot, not claims about versions available today.
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| Component | Version in the February 2026 report |
|---|---|
| COSMIC | 1.0.8 |
| GNOME | 49.4 |
| KDE Frameworks | 6.23.0 |
| KDE Gear | 25.12.2 |
| KDE Plasma | 6.6.1 |
| Linux kernel | 6.18.15 |
| Mesa | 26.0.1 |
| PipeWire | 1.6.0 |
| Firefox | 148 |
The report also covered other package updates. Its package list is a dated snapshot; check the project’s current release information before relying on any of these versions as current. AerynOS February 2026 update
What did the moss speed figures measure?
moss is AerynOS’s package and system transaction tool. In the February report, the team measured rates of hardlink updates in dentries while moss created hardlinked filesystem /usr transactions. The figures are operations per second for that specific task; they are not boot-time, installation-time, application, drive-throughput or whole-system benchmarks.
AerynOS ran the test on February 16, 2026, using AerynOS 2026.01, COSMIC 1.0.6 and kernel 6.18.9-126.desktop. The system contained an Intel i7-13700T, 16 GB Samsung DDR5-4800 memory, a Seagate 1 TB SATA HDD, a SanDisk 2 TB SATA SSD and a Western Digital 512 GB Gen4 NVMe drive. It tested F2FS, ext4 and xfs, with cold and hot transaction states. Selected results reported by AerynOS in 2026 were:
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| Drive and filesystem | Cold transaction | Hot transaction |
|---|---|---|
| SATA HDD, ext4 | 0.3k hardlink updates/s | 33.4k hardlink updates/s |
| SATA HDD, xfs | 3.1k hardlink updates/s | not stated in the selected figures (AerynOS, 2026) |
| SATA SSD, ext4 | 66.7k hardlink updates/s | 805.1k hardlink updates/s |
| Gen4 NVMe, xfs | 428.4k hardlink updates/s | 683.1k hardlink updates/s |
These values come from AerynOS’s own test report, not an independent study. The project cautioned: “The numbers should not be taken to indicate any general measure of performance.” AerynOS February 2026 update
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AerynOS explained that the first transaction warms the kernel’s VFS inode and dentry caches. Later transactions can reuse that cached information, so their hardlink-update rates may be much higher. That cold-to-hot difference is why a hot result should not be presented as the speed a user will always see.
The report estimated that a fresh install involves around 65,000 files and said an SSD result near 65,000 updates per second would mean about one second for that operation after a cold boot. This is an estimate tied to the measured blitting operation, not a claim that an AerynOS installation completes in one second.
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What remained slow, and what was being investigated?
Moss blitting was only one part of the transaction work. AerynOS reported that trigger execution—the work performed by package triggers—could take up to seven minutes in its slowest SATA HDD case and about two seconds on Gen4 NVMe. The team said it was investigating parallelizing and/or coalescing trigger actions; the February report did not present those approaches as a delivered improvement. AerynOS February 2026 update
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What changed in Boulder and moss tooling?
The February update also covered developer-facing changes to Boulder, AerynOS’s package build tool. Recipe version fields are now quoted so YAML does not interpret decimal-looking versions such as 0.010 as 0.01. The project also described caching upstreams fetched by recipe creation and update commands, plus continuous-integration checks for quoted version fields. AerynOS February 2026 update
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In a separate February 11 discussion, the project reported that moss gained package fetching for mirroring and extraction to a chosen output directory for inspection. AerynOS February 11 moss discussion
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What direction did the project outline?
AerynOS said it was entering a soft freeze on new package additions, preferring additions with few or no reverse-dependency rebuild chains while packaging and infrastructure matured. It also reported completing the overall design for a moss-format upgrade process. That design included a repository root index intended to let older moss clients update themselves and user systems as repository and package formats change.
The project framed this work as part of a long-term “install once, update forever” goal. The February report described an ongoing direction, not a finished, user-facing capability. AerynOS February 2026 update
