Linux-powered Serpent OS reaches its first major development milestone -- download it now!
The team behind Serpent OS has announced its Linux distro has entered alpha. The operating system, built by industry veterans with decades of experience, is a heavily engineering-led project that seeks to redefine how Linux is distributed. In the team's own words, it "represents the next evolution in Linux distributions". It offers a stateless design and atomic updates, ensuring that system changes either complete fully or roll back seamlessly if issues arise, which should guarantee reliability and stability.
The new alpha release is tailored for UEFI systems only, with secure boot support planned for future updates. For now, x86_64-v2 builds are available with GNOME and COSMIC desktop environments.
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The alpha release offers expanded hardware compatibility, including for ASUS and Surface devices, as well as support for Nvidia GPUs via prebuilt open-gpu-kernel-modules. Gamers also benefit, as Steam is now available in the repositories, supported by multilib drivers like mesa-32bit and Nvidia-graphics-driver-32bit.
Tooling updates are central to this release. The project’s package manager, “moss,” offers a solid atomic upgrade process by swapping out the entire /usr directory during updates. Recent improvements to moss address edge cases like ext4 hardlink limits and boot partition space issues, potentially paving the way for smoother system management. The “blsforme” boot manager has gained support for drop-in kernel parameter snippets, making customization easier and enabling features like early KMS for Nvidia users.
Serpent OS also integrates Rust-based tools and legacy utilities have been replaced with modern equivalents like “sudo-rs” and “uutils-coreutils.” Applications such as “starship” and “loupe” are included by default on the GNOME ISO.
The alpha release also includes updates to the distribution’s package repositories, which have seen over 1,600 commits since the prealpha stage. Highlights include Linux 6.12.6, GNOME 47.2, Firefox 133.0.3, and COSMIC 1.0.0_alpha4. Users can expect an overall smoother experience thanks to improvements in the installer, “Lichen,” which now allows for filesystem choices such as xfs, ext4, and f2fs.
While this release is a step in the right direction, it’s still only an alpha so you probably won't want to use it as your daily driver. Some known issues include reduced performance in virtual machines, incomplete Nvidia driver functionality on certain systems, and GNOME Shell not immediately detecting new applications post-installation without a reboot. The team says it is working to address these problems, with fixes already in development. Immediate priorities for Serpent OS include improving documentation and expanding its contributor base and community.
Serpent OS Alpha One is available to download here now.