The AerynOS team released AerynOS 2025.10 today as the latest development ISO snapshot of this independent distribution created by ex-Solus maker Ikey Doherty.

AerynOS 2025.10 ships with the latest GNOME 49.1 desktop environment by default on the live ISO, along with the latest KDE Plasma 6.5 desktop environment for those who want to install AerynOS with KDE Plasma instead, or with System76’s COSMIC Beta desktop environment.

I should mention the fact that the KDE Plasma offering is new in AerynOS, introduced with the AerynOS 2025.08 snapshot. The KDE Plasma 6.5.1 release is included in the AerynOS 2025.10 ISO, along with the recently released KDE Frameworks 6.19 and KDE Gear 25.08.2 software suites.

Under the hood, AerynOS 2025.10 is powered by Linux kernel 6.16.12, which reached end of life, so we should probably see a Linux 6.17 kernel update in the coming weeks via the distro’s repositories. This release also ships with the Mesa 25.2.5 graphics stack and switches back to GNU libstdc++ from LLVM libcxx.

“This has resulted in us having to carry fewer patches across the stack, and has resolved a few bugs as a bonus. In particular, this has squashed an annoying bug related to the Firefox Widevine DRM plugin that in turn previously made certain video conferencing tools crash,” said the devs in the release announcement.

Other updated components in AerynOS 2025.10 include LLVM 21.1.4, uutils-coreutils 0.3.0, sudo-rs 0.2.9, FFmpeg 8.0, PipeWire 1.4.9, Wine 10.17, Node.js 22.21.0, Zed 0.206.6, virt-manager 5.1.0, GNU Bash 5.3.3, scx-scheds 1.0.16, Vim 9.1.1829, systemd 257.10, uv 0.9.5, perl-module-build 0.4234, libdovi 3.3.2, and OpenConnect 9.12.

As previously mentioned, AerynOS devs are still working on features like automating package updates, easier management of rollbacks, disk handling with Rust, fractional scaling enabled by default, a revamped system installer with support for full-disk wipe and dynamic disk partitioning schemes, and other features.

If you want to take AerynOS for a test drive on your personal computer, you can download the AerynOS 2025.10 release right now from the official website. However, please try to keep in mind that AerynOS is currently considered of alpha quality, so don’t install or use it in a production environment.