If you can provide one without any DE that would be nice
this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2026
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That's planned! Initially I actually planned to have a desktop selection in Calamares with KDE Plasma, GNOME and no DE, but while I was drafting the package lists for that I decided to push that back for a later release. This first one is more or less supposed to be a proof of concept so features like that are definitely in the works, but deemed overkill for the first version.
I was just finishing this quarter's distro-hop frenzy, but seeing as you are apparently using Lemmy as your network platform as opposed to fucking discord or similar crap, I think I'll give this a shot for sure. Thanks, we need more devs with this train of thought.
Yeah, Linux distros using something like Discord always seemed very odd to me. I mean okay, if you cater to gamers then I guess it makes sense, but you won't catch me doing that. Lemmy is the only social media I have anymore, the rest is just braindead and bot-infested.
How similar is this to CachyOS? Can the experience essentially be like CachyOS but atomic?
My plan is to have it on par, if not better than them. Currently I "only" (this is the biggest factor by far) provide the CachyOS kernel compiled by myself but I already differenciate myself by also compiling it for -v2 CPUs. All five microarchitectures have their dedicated repos up and working and I plan to ship all the packages that will boost speed by being compiled microarchitecture-specific.
I'm already building the server needed for that so compiling them automatically will be possible even while I'm on vacation next week.
not that anything stands a chance anymore but lol, another project that doesn't care about ever being found by search engine. right up there with "matrix" and "riot"
"peee-ewwww".
why is it that open source folks have such a difficult time naming things?
You are right, I thought about that too late, but if you search it together with "linux" it already shows up!
I really like the idea behind this project, I don't usually try random distros but this caught my eye, I might put it on my laptop.
Also good job not supporting big tech AI and vibe-coding :)
Haha, I feel honored to hear that! It's still rough around the edges, so only use it if this isn't your only PC. That said, I already use it on my Thinkpad and the only issue I myself encountered so far is that I had to use vscodium-electron-bin instead of vscodium-bin since it wanted to make a systemlink that caused the install to interrupt, otherwise it's been smooth sailing so far.
Ayy, cachyos kernel with ostree atomic model, and minimal LLM involvement? Sounds like the next distro I will try :D Thanks for the works!
Thank you! I was wondering why noone has tried that yet and now I know why, but hey, it works now. I hope you will have fun with it!
A distro in just 300 hours? is it artisan coded or sloppadoppadoo?
Well, it were four 80 hour weeks and I "only" reverse-engineered the way Fedora makes their distro atomic with ostree but adapted to Arch. I did try to stay true to the Arch philosophy of keeping it minimal otherwise so it wasn't that big of a project!
Edit: Sometimes I had to spin up Qwen 3.8 27B because the error codes the installer threw out were literally humanly unreadable so I had no clue what even went wrong but other than that it was by hand lmao
LLMs are good for a few things. One of them is parsing human unreadable errors. I approve of this.
I don't like black and white thinking and while I fucking hate LLMs in general, as 95% of times they are used for all the wrong reasons, I do have an Intel B70 for cases like these where current search engines just lead to nothing.
Incredible lol
How are you measuring the performance boost? In what areas does it apply?
There are a lot of benchmarks for the CachyOS kernel and it's mostly single digit performance increases for "normal" tasks but a noticeably more snappy feeling. The mayor increases come in compiling or rendering workloads, there it can easily get into double digits. For example on my 270K, compiling this kernel takes 23 min with the stock linux kernel, 20 minutes with the linux-cachyos kernel in -v3.
Apologizes, not sure if I followed, what makes it atomic?
To put it in simple terms: when you update your system, you will have two deployments. One deployment stays exactly the same, the copy will be updated. Until you restart you stay on the original. When you restart, the system automatically attempts to boot the updated copy. If it fails, it automatically loads the original again.
That way the updates are atomic in the sense that you either boot into a fully updated system or simply back into the untouched original, nothing in between.
Edit: if you look up how Fedora Silverblue works, it's pretty much the same, just applied to Arch!
The part that I'm a bit confused is this paragraph:
Unlike immutable distributions that lock you out of the native package manager and force you into sandboxes, Plutonium-239 keeps the core Arch experience intact. You still get the bleeding-edge Arch repositories and the power of the AUR but all of that with a 5-20% performance boost from a heavily optimized kernel and the peace of mind of an unbreakable safety net underneath.
And then the follow up:
Edit: if you look up how Fedora Silverblue works, it's pretty much the same, just applied to Arch!
It sounds a bit contradictory. Can we think about Plutonium-239 as of SteamOS that is classic atomic distro and based on Arch or this is more of a case to something like the RakuOS?
Yeah, you are right, I'm not the best at explaining things, I'm sorry. I look at it like literally Arch but the updates are atomic. You can choose to install or uninstall whatever you want, but it gets written with an A/B system during updates so you can always have a fallback. It does come preconfigured from the start, because that was easier to develop for now, but you can treat this like any other Arch install, just with safer updates.
Looks cool! Why was it called plutonium?
Thank you! In a perfect world I would have loved to name it "Arch Atomic", but I'm not affiliated with them so I went for a wordplay on atomic with my favorite isotope!
Finally! I know what I'll try over the weekend after I made backups 😇
Hell yeah, let me know how it goes!
This is pretty cool!
No, you are pretty cool!
Looks cool, I'll drop this on my Thinkpad tonight when I get home from work.
I'm excited to hear your feedback! Keep in mind, some things might be buggy, but please notify me and they will be taken care of.
Will do!
Does it come with KDE preinstalled or is that just for the screenshot?
I'd love to give it a try on my secondary laptop as it sounds just great, but I really can't stand KDE.
Edit: KDE is the only desktop available, but if I understand that correctly alternatives are on the roadmap?
Yes, it does come preinstalled with KDE as implementing a proper desktop selection is planned but would take even more time. This is Arch however, you can uninstall everything you want. Throw KDE out and install whatever desktop enviornment you want, you still keep the kernel and the ostree update model, that's what's so cool about it!