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Release Notes

InterGenOS is built from source, on purpose, so that you run a machine you understand, can modify, and can trust. These release notes record what each version actually ships, so you can verify the system in front of you against a written record.

How release notes are structured

Each released version gets one section, organized the same way every time:

  • Highlights — the headline changes that define the release.
  • New components — packages, tools, and subsystems added since the previous version.
  • Breaking changes — anything that changes existing behavior, on-disk layout, signing trust, or upgrade path. Read this section before you upgrade.
  • Other — fixes, documentation, security hardening, and smaller changes that don’t fit the categories above.

Releases are named R001, R002, … for major releases and R001.1, R001.2, … for point releases. A major release is produced by a complete from-source rebuild; a point release rebuilds the changed packages against the proven build substrate of its major release. Both are published only after the resulting image has been installed and evaluated on real hardware. The full rules are in docs/release-policy.md in the main repository.

The release line

The first public release, R001, was published on 2026-08-16 — the first major release of the release line. The authoritative notes for each release, including the current one, are published beside its installation image at repo.intergenos.org/iso; the current release is also always stated in the main repository README.

The installation image, its checksum and signature, and the release public key are linked from the same README; the package mirror is repo.intergenos.org. Check the image against the published checksum before you install it — Verifying your install walks the checks you can run afterwards on the running system.

One naming note, so this page matches what your machine prints: an installed system reports the release its image was built from in /etc/os-release — for example InterGenOS R001.1 (Revival). Systems installed from the original R001 image report InterGenOS 1.0-dev (Revival), that image’s own build identity; upgrading brings the current string as a reviewable configuration update. Either way, the release an image came from is stated in the release notes published beside it.

What the build produces

InterGenOS is assembled by a 21-phase from-source pipeline. The phases run in order:

validate → verify-sources → setup → toolchain → chroot-prep → chroot-tools → core → config → core-extra → base → kernel → desktop → extra → compute → ai → bootloader → image → manifest → squashfs → ukis-verity → iso

A publish step to the binary mirror is optional and runs only on a complete, signed build.

Packages

Packages are organized into seven tiers: toolchain, core, base, desktop, extra, compute, and ai. The tree carries over 1,000 package definitions across those tiers. These counts are derived live from the package set and drift as the build evolves; treat them as a snapshot, not a fixed figure, and derive the current numbers from your own installed system with pkm list.

What ships today

  • Desktop: GNOME 49 on Wayland.
  • Package manager: pkm, the InterGenOS package manager.
  • Installer: Forge, the native InterGenOS installer. See the Forge guide.
  • Trusted boot: a signed Secure Boot chain, dm-verity integrity over the read-only system image, and Unified Kernel Image (UKI) signing.
  • InterGen: a tiered, hardware-detected, offline-first local assistant built on an on-device model. It runs on the machine, with zero telemetry, and selects a model tier based on detected hardware.
  • InterGen Sentinel: a pluggable security scanner. The default configuration uses Local-Rules and a Local-Qwen model, fully on-device. Six cloud providers are available strictly opt-in: Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google), Copilot (Microsoft), ChatGPT (OpenAI), Grok (xAI), and DeepSeek. Routing a scan to a cloud provider is the “Phone-A-Friend” (Frontier/Cloud Escalation) path, and it never engages unless you choose it.

Planned, not yet shipped

The following are on the roadmap and are not part of the current release. They will appear in release notes only once they ship:

  • A KDE/Plasma (Qt6) desktop option and switchable desktops.
  • Curated application campaigns covering tools such as Kdenlive, OBS, Krita, Blender, FreeCAD, GnuCash, and Boxes.

Security and supply chain

R001 removed PyPI from the build path for the maturin and python-cryptography packages in response to a 2026 PyPI supply-chain attack window. Both build from upstream source tarballs through a reproducible cargo-vendor pipeline. Vendored Rust crate archives were standardized on the POSIX pax format to eliminate a class of path-length failures.

How updates reach you

InterGenOS has one supported line: the latest release is the supported release. Installed systems move forward with pkm upgrade from the package mirror, and the installation image is refreshed at each point release. There are no maintenance branches and no backports — a fix reaches you by advancing the line, so every install runs the package set the project evaluates.

Earlier history

Pre-2026 builds from 2015–2016 are archived under the InterGenOS GitHub organization. They are not covered by these release notes. The 2026 work is a from-scratch rewrite and shares no code with the original builds.

See also