risiOS 38 Release
After a few delays, risiOS 38 is now available for wide use. This release comes with a lot of new features, improvements and bug fixes. Let’s dive into them!
New First Boot Experience
One of the most prominent features of risiOS 38 is the new first boot experience. With our re imagined Quick Setup tool, setting up risiOS is now quicker and more efficient, with a much simpler interface. This allows you to easily set up third-party drivers and repositories, as well as install any applications you may need. In addition, risiOS 38 features a complete redesign of risiWelcome, now with Libadwaita.
risiTweaks
risiTweaks has undergone a complete redesign. It now features a clean UI with a brand new look and feel. The previous extensions tool built into risiTweaks has been removed, and stock GNOME extensions is now shipped instead. This change has allowed for a more stable and streamlined experience for users.
rTheme
rTheme has been released in version 1.0. The API is now stable and there have been significant improvements to GNOME Shell support. The plugin system has also been improved, and several bugs have been fixed. This allows users to customize their desktop with ease, giving them more control over the look and feel of their system.
Additionally, we have changed the default theme to be closer to stock Adwaita, only with support for accent colors and GNOME Shell theme changes. Stock Adwaita with no shell changes is also togglable with risiTweaks, and the old theme is also still available, but rebranded to “classic”. Additionally our nord theme was renamed to “solarized”.
Finally, we have introduced more accent colors including Teal, Pink, and Grey, as well as changed the accent colors to match GNOME’s new accent color perposal: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/merge_requests/2715
Removal of risiScript
The half-baked concept of risi-script has been removed. It saw little use, and version 2.0 was stuck in development hell for two releases. The removal of risi-script has allowed us to focus more on other developments of the OS such as rTheme and Quick Setup.
We Added Caffeine
Our developers all drink an unhealthy amount of Red Bull. So it only makes since that the Caffeine GNOME extension is now preinstalled which allows you to easily disable auto-suspend/sleep mode on your computer. This is useful for instances where you may have something running (remote desktop, downloads, code compiling, etc).
Changes in Defaults
We have had some changes with the default apps. For one, the stock GNOME Extensions app is now shipped, as well as Timeshift. Additionally, for a better video experience, we replaced Totem with Celluloid. This improves compatibility and performance thanks to the MPV backend.
Additionally, we are unable to use Firefox for legal reasons (we need to modify Firefox but can’t without permission from Mozilla or a rebrand). Because of this, we have been shipping Chromium as our default browser. However, people do not seem to like this default. So, as a compromise, we are moving to shipping GNOME Web as the main browser, and than allowing Quick Setup to install additional browsers very easily.
Downstream additions
We have our updated our base to Fedora 38, which adds newer packages including kernel 6.3, and GNOME 44. GNOME 44 itself adds a new user interface for background apps, as well as a new Bluetooth quick settings ui. All of these ensures that you are running the latest and greatest software and you can run risiOS on the latest hardware.
New Website
Finally, we have a redesign of our website. We did this to save money on hosting, and because the project we were using for our website before (Microweber) was somewhat buggy and hard to work with when updating the site.
Known issues
- Quick Setup cannot detect errors (due to downstream bug in VTE)
Upgrading
If you are currently running risiOS 37, you can upgrade with the following commands
sudo dnf upgrade --refresh
sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=38
sudo dnf system-upgrade rebootIf you experience issues, try replacing the 2nd line with sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=38 ‐‐allowerasing
We hope you enjoy the new features and improvements in risiOS 38. If you encounter any issues or bugs, please report them to our forums.
