LunarXG

In the middle of the hardware crisis, as well as the ensloppification of Windows, (some) people are moving to Linux for gaming and other purposes. And in that very opportunity, people are creating a shitload of 'gaming distros'. So, when there are a lot of good ones like Bazzite, Cachy or PikaOS, why us? To answer this question, I'll do the opposite: why not us? We're still developing, and it's yet to reach semi-stable status LunarXG has been in development since 2024, originating as a derivative of KDE neon. We changed the base twice (KDE neon -> Debian + Cubic -> Debian via live-build).  This is maintained by a solo developer, doing in his free time. And thus very little progress has been made. Our goal is to release a stable version in 2026, but we're not even close to half of it. Most software and tools are missing. There are broken features. So yeah, if you help us, we may be able to remove this. You can install all the dependencies by yourself for le...

This is the news for Jan 2026. From now on every month we'll have a news post for progress update. NVIDIA is coming to LXG NVIDIA will be available in the upcoming #3 release of LXGT, utilizing  nvis . However, there will be no ISO with preinstalled drivers. Reworking how we maintain system sources and tools We're considering updating the system via dpkg. As you may know, we don't have such luxury of having our own Debian repo, and thus need to update the system in other ways.  Most of the time we need to update our tools (nvis and sysu, and some more), sometimes rewriting the repo. So we've been thinking of jamming all the updates to a .deb file, then sysu can check for system updates and download and install if needed. On Open Gaming Collective (OGC) We've received news that our (one-sided) partner PikaOS have joined OGC, an organization aims to make Linux gaming better. OGC have their own kernel, which is based on SteamOS' kernel (I'll talk about this lat...

 Changelog: - sysu is now available - newer packages That's all. Happy holidays! https://sourceforge.net/projects/lunarxg/files/weekly-image/

 It was last month when we last teased about the new ISO release. Now, let's make it reality.  The new LunarXG Rolling ISO will be released between 27-31/12. It will features QoL updates, newer packages as well as some crucial system changes. Also, we're still working on Repologist, albeit not being active. The backend needs to be rewritten, as well as adding the check installed packages function. Proper release will be in Autumn 2026. We also acquired a new workstation: Dell Precision 7550. It's equipped with an i7-10850H, 32GB of RAM, as well as 1.5TB of storage (all M2 NVMe, Linux is on the 512GB drive). It will speed up building of the ISO.

2025 is ending. We have yet to do anything remarkable.  We rewrote LunarXG from scratch (twice!), and use live-build to make the ISO. We resolved a lot of problems.  However... Development slowed down. A lot of goals are not met (weekly images, Repologist,...). There's still a shortage of developer. And so on. We once declared that early 2026 would be our first stable release. And that goal is straying farther from us. So here's our plan: Releasing more ISOs The old ISO can be updated using apt since it's built on generally available APT packages. However, some softwares, such as patched switcheroo and LACT, requires manual updating. This will be resolved once Repologist is available, but it's still a long run. Reconsidering our choice of software  Some preinstalled software can be put in Repologist (we did that with Waydroid) and make them completely optional. And we are still considering what to add. Developing Repologist Repologist is not functional as of now as it...

 Apparently for the past few weeks the updating of system packages did not go well for Debian sid team. A lot of packages threw crucial errors (like libllvm19 and its i386 equivalent), some even prompting to removing important packages for the ISO (e.g. today libmount1 breaks Wine and I need to wait for at least half a week). So for now I won't make any new weekly image until my system's fixing is over.  Also tune in to some important news next week. 

 Changelog: + rebuild from scratch + distro name no longer malfunctions + ntsync on default - LACT not yet available   Download:  SourceForge  

You may have heard that we're finally moving to live-build. Well, today we tried to create a generic build script. It was not very hard as I use Perplexity to ask for things and then change them to my likings.  From now on our image will be built that way. Please note that while being labeled "weekly" images they will not arrive every week, maybe once per 2 weeks as we're working on Repologist. 

You may know that we use Cubic to build images. It takes a Debian ISO for input, then let us change whatever we want then throw out another image. It is neat if you're afraid of chroot and heavy terminaling. But builtin compressing options are terrible. You see, PikaOS, our very generous partner, have everything we aimed to be, but at a low storage cost of 2.85GB for the KDE edition. Meanwhile, it's 4.5GB for us. I've been using best compression algorithm for our image that Cubic has to offer. But to no avail. From the next weekly image we're rebuilding everything from scratch, using live-build. It isn't quite comfortable, but not having to sacrifice a lot of disk space is better for the users. For now you can use the 'legacy' image. It's quite neat. 

We're delighted to present you the newest release of LunarXG, Rolling Tidal. This release added many new features. Tidal also marks LunarXG changes from continuous release to snapshot-based release. A new snapshot will be produced biweekly, which updates packages and adding/removing features. Download:  SourceForge (4.4GB) Changelogs: - Rebased to Debian sid, with components in Debian experimental. - Adding support for GCC 15, G++ 15 and newer runtimes from experimental repos - Installing  MESA drivers - Browser changed to Firefox ESR - Pretty much everything is listed  here   Issues: A lot. See the spreadsheet above Further notices: May move to Docker to build ISO since that's neater 

 So basically Debian team announced that in early August Trixie will finally detach from sid. And that's a good news since it will speed up our development progress. All of you are welcome to help out. Thanks for reading this PSA. 

 For now LunarXG's development, especially the "Tidal" release, will be indefinitely postponed. We're rebasing to Debian sid, which has more modern package than KDE neon. The development process will return whenever GCC 15 and libstdc++15 made their way to sid (since they're currently on experimental). Another thing to notice is we now are rolling out an updater for our very own apps (e.g. apx, pikman,...). It would be available somewhere into Tidal release.

 The next release for LunarXG is called Tidal (or, to be precise, LunarXG Rolling Tidal). It would be released somewhere next week. The very next release of LunarXG is called Whirlwind.  Tidal would feature a new kernel version, containerization support, a hardware optimizer and a kernel manager.

 Since the distro is not currently developed (and updates taking longer time to consider), let's gather here and talk about containerization on LunarXG. You already know that LunarXG utilize a set of containerization softwares: distrobox and apx (v1, which wrapper is Pikman). I've been using Pikman on my development machine the moment I know about PikaOS, and I've come to a few conclusions: - Containerization is a must for outdated systems such as LunarXG. Since LunarXG is still relied on deb packages and KDE neon repository, softwares are always outdated. If you try to tinker with something newer the system would crash (happened to me; that's why I switched to Debian).  - Containerization is still not enforced on LunarXG, which is a clear disadvantage - apx v1 is unupdated and has some critical error (export command), and pikman bring some of them on itself. But since the project is in its earliest stage, there is no reason to try and experiment with containerization t...

 I've recently moved to Debian for the sake of convenience (mainly for Hyprland). However until further notice LunarXG will still be based on KDE neon. Also, we plan to move our source code somewhere other than GitHub. I'd love to use Worktree (reskinned Gitea), or changing to fully selfhosting (I'm planning to build an ARM server). But that's a long way to go. Anyway, please expect the next release of LunarXG rolling to be in next week. The release will features QOL fixes and a ton of new softwares. 

Thanks to the PikaOS team , we successfully built pikman and apx. Those are two key components which helps us to achieve our goal - containerization. But somehow, that isn't enough... We aim to be a second Bazzite - a system with security (isolation) mixed with customisablity (free-to-install native packages) as well as empowering gaming powerhouses. Currently, we have achieved 40% of our aim. A lot of time (2+ years) will be needed to complete 40% more (if no one else contributes to the project), and some more time is needed for us to reach 100%, and beyond that.  We are committed to develop and maintain this project - our first, and most anticipated piece of software. We will keep all of our promises and deliver them to you as soon as possible. At least, for now, do not anticipate anything fancy, only precompiled packages from our friends at PikaOS. We are trying to bring an unified update solution for our distro. But it takes time for it to be stable. Thank you, for everything. ...

 Thank you for testing LunarXG. Until after June 7, development will be paused, particularly because of my upcoming SAT test. Development during 2025-26 will also be slower than usual, due to my studies. Thank you for acknowledging.

Download:   SourceForge Changelog: Dual kernel: Liquorix and PikaOS. The former is better at multitasking (audioworks and imageworks), while the latter is better at gaming. You can set your own kernel version using GRUB or any GUI tools you want. (although we would remove this feature next release as this was an accident) Installed 2 apt helpers: nala and Pacstall Removed openrazer for being incompatitable with the new kernel Fixed issues with distro name Bumped system packages version Make kitty the default terminal Issues: xone openrazer ISO file size

 Our new kernel, which is based on  PikaOS kernel , is successfully build. It took us 2 and a half hours to build on our only machine, a 2021 HP laptop.  The kernel features patches to improve performances. See more:  https://git.pika-os.com/kernel-packages/linux-pikaos-6.14.5/src/branch/main/patches . Meanwhile, we are trying to build the ISO. It would arrive somewhere near next wednesday (May 7 2025) with patches and upgrades. Also we are moving to Oracle Cloud for building packages. The build size

 If everything goes according to plan, our next release would be available at this weekend. We will try to install the custom kernel, as well as fixing issues such as xone and neofetch. For users who have been testing our distro on a VM, please reinstall to update everything. Cheers!