Hi everyone, I’m excited to share a project I’ve been working on:
I called it openSUSE Aether to be in line with Aeon and Kalpa.
Aether brings System76’s next-generation Rust-based COSMIC Desktop Environment into the reliable, atomic, and immutable world of openSUSE MicroOS, paired with openSUSE’s modern web-based Agama installer.
The goal of Aether is to provide a rock-solid, transactional desktop operating system that feels blazing fast, modern, and visually unified right out of the box.
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What makes openSUSE Aether special?
• Atomic & Immutable Base (openSUSE MicroOS):
Transactional updates (transactional-update / Btrfs snapshots). The base OS is read-only, self-healing, and rolls forward with openSUSE Tumbleweed quality while remaining robust and resilient against broken upgrades.
• Pure Rust Desktop (System76 COSMIC Desktop):
Full Wayland-native session. Fast, fractional-scaling ready, and gesture-driven. Tiling or floating, you decide.
• openSUSE Identity & “Frosted Glass” Theming:
openSUSE Chameleon Green accent theme, dark-mode default with subtle Frosted Glass aesthetics across all COSMIC panel elements, applets, and system interfaces.
• Agama Installer Integration:
Web based and simple installer to get you going fast
• Container & Flatpak First:
Pre-configured Flathub integration with systemd user environment generators so Flatpak apps are instantly discoverable in the COSMIC launcher. Distrobox and Podman are included out of the box for CLI and development workloads.
• Out-of-the-Box Desktop Polish:
- Browser: Mozilla Firefox with openSUSE branding.
- Image Viewer: Loupe (Rust/GTK4), integrated via XDG MIME defaults.
- Archive Integration: file-roller, 7zip, and unzip for right-click archive management in cosmic-files.
- Hardware & Laptops: Pre-configured modern touchpad defaults (tap-to-click, natural scroll, two-finger click) and seamless Polkit policies for NetworkManager Wi-Fi/VPN, power, datetime, and disk management without authorization deadlocks.
- Terminal greeting: Interactive terminal sessions greet you with fastfetch showing the openSUSE Aether identity and system stats.
- Media: Comprehensive GStreamer plugins (good, bad, ugly) for media playback.
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Download & Testing (Build 47)
You can grab the latest (Currently full offline installation only) installer ISO directly from the Open Build Service repository mirror:
• Direct ISO Download:
https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/marus/images/iso/opensuse-aether.x86_64-1.0.0-Build47.1.iso
• SHA256 Checksum:
https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/marus/images/iso/opensuse-aether.x86_64-1.0.0-Build47.1.iso.sha256
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Request for Comments (RFC) & Feedback
I would love to hear thoughts, test reports, and suggestions from the openSUSE community. Especially…
Default Application Set:
What do you consider mandatory for a clean, distraction-free immutable desktop without adding unnecessary bloat?
Installer & First Boot:
How was your installation experience with the Agama GUI? Did your locale/keymap settings transfer smoothly to the installed COSMIC session?
General Look & Feel:
Feedback on the Frosted Glass theme, panel layout, and overall COSMIC integration is very welcome! Feel free to test it in a VM (QEMU/KVM with VirtIO graphics or VirtualBox) or bare metal, and let me know your thoughts! Thanks for testing and sharing your feedback!
Also i would be highly interested in how to get this from a obs playground project, fitting my own need towards a more official one, once people checked it out and maybe like it and provided valuable feedback. I can imagine i’m not the only one who wanted an immutable, hassle free rolling cosmic desktop (I know there’s a fedora atomic cosmic spin, but OpenSUSE tumbleweed / microOS seem to be fitting my needs better in regards to package availability)