A groundbreaking “Pre-RC3” depiction for the Aeon Desktop has been released, advocating for testers to explore the final prototype before its transition into the official Candidate 3 (RC3). The cutting-edge image is readily available for download from the openSUSE development repository.

This trial version, recently presented in the openSUSE Factory, brings forth substantial modifications and enhancements. Notably, the dd backend in the tik installer has been substituted with a new systemd-repart backend. This transformation enables the installation of Aeon with Full Disk Encryption, thereby bolstering the security functionalities of the operating system.

Current users of Aeon RC2 and former iterations will necessitate a fresh installation to capitalize on the impending features slated for RC3. Given the fundamental alternations in partition configurations critical for the integration of novel encryption attributes, an upgrade from RC2 in situ risks compromising data integrity, as per a post on the emerging Aeon Desktop subreddit. Users can employ Aeon’s reinstallation capability, facilitating the backup and reinstatement of user data, provided a suitably capacious USB device is utilized.

Testers executing the prototype image may stumble upon certain packages from the OBS devel project. These can be eliminated by executing transactional-update --interactive dup and selecting remedies that swap devel:microos packages with official ones.

User feedback is strongly encouraged, with testers urged to document any encountered issues during the evaluation phase on the Aeon Desktop bug report platform.

Upcoming Phases

If the prototype garners approval into the Factory, maturing into RC3, Aeon’s development will be in the advanced phases before an official launch. RC3 will act as the groundwork for formulating openQA assessments for Aeon, critical in ensuring the desktop’s steadfastness and operational capabilities.

A prospective RC4 is on the horizon, endeavoring to streamline the installation procedure by embedding the complete Aeon setup within the installer image. This approach could potentially slash the download size by half. If this strategy proves impractical in the immediate future, it may be revisited post-release.

Full Disk Encryption is configured in one of two modes: Default or Fallback. For additional details on this, refer to the Aeon Desktop Introduces Comprehensive Full Disk Encryption piece.