Vanilla OS 3 “Reunion” was released on August 24, built on Debian with Linux kernel 7.1 and a Wayland-only GNOME 50 desktop.

Reproducible builds

The more interesting of the two headline features is that most Vanilla OS system images can now be rebuilt from the same source and settings to produce bit-for-bit identical output.

Reproducible builds answer a question that is otherwise unanswerable: does the image you downloaded correspond to the source code it claims to be built from? Without reproducibility, you are trusting the build machine and everyone with access to it. With it, anyone can rebuild independently and compare hashes.

For an immutable distribution this is a particularly good fit, since the whole model is built on shipping and verifying complete system images rather than individual packages. It also lands in a week where a Rust supply-chain attack turned on compromised publishing credentials, which is exactly the class of problem reproducibility makes detectable.

ARM64

Vanilla OS now offers images for both x86_64 and ARM64.

ARM64 desktop Linux has gone from a curiosity to something people actually want, driven by Apple Silicon via Asahi, by Snapdragon laptops, and by the general improvement in ARM server and developer hardware. A distribution shipping official ARM64 images rather than community builds is a meaningful commitment.

The desktop

GNOME 50, Wayland-only, with a refreshed set of defaults:

• Ptyxis as the terminal emulator
• Papers as the document viewer
• Resources as the system monitor

All three are the newer GTK4 replacements for older GNOME applications, and choosing them as defaults rather than shipping the legacy versions is a reasonable statement of intent about where the project is aiming.

Apx and VSO

Vanilla OS 3 introduces new Apx and VSO (Vanilla System Operator) subsystems, along with a new update mode in the First Setup wizard that lets you install and remove applications during initial configuration.

Apx is the piece that makes Vanilla OS’s approach workable. On an immutable system you cannot simply apt install things into the root filesystem, so Apx manages containerized subsystems where you can install packages from Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, or others, with the applications integrating into your desktop. It is conceptually similar to Distrobox and solves the same problem: an immutable base with an escape hatch that does not compromise it.

Where it fits

The immutable desktop category is getting crowded, with Fedora Silverblue, the Universal Blue images including Bazzite, openSUSE Aeon, and NixOS all approaching the same goal differently. Vanilla OS’s distinguishing choice is a Debian base plus multi-distribution container support, which is a reasonable niche if you want atomic updates without committing to Fedora’s ecosystem.