An innovative, immutable filesystem

Conclusions and Outlook

Positives first: rlxos is fun, installs in no time, and also runs fast. The Gnome shell is inviting to work with because it does not follow the Gnome developers' somewhat unrealistic design philosophy. If you have no ideological problems with Flatpak and AppImage, you can work well with rlxos and don't need to be afraid of breaking your system.

The rlxos website used to have its own own AppImage app store, called Bazaar [8], but it only contained four apps, and it appears the store is now missing from the site. You can, however, find plenty of AppImages at AppImageHub [9] and the GitHub store [10]. The integration of Image still needs some fine-tuning. The rlxos developers need to simplify the GRUB update after installing a new image to a single short command or provide integration at the push of a button.

The welcome tour offers a preview of what is to come (Figure 8), including a virtual assistant called rlxbot, the src programming language derived from JavaScript, and a system monitor dubbed health, which keeps an eye on the system's operating status. Judging by the very young age of the distribution, it is in surprisingly good shape, considering that the developers are building rlxos from scratch. If development continues at this brisk pace, we'll definitely be relaxing with rlxos again in a year or two.

Figure 8: The welcome tour offers a preview of imminent changes in rlxos.

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

  • Parcel Service

    The traditional package management systems on Linux are now somewhat outdated, but AppImage, Flatpak, and Snap see some interesting new management systems enter the fray.

  • bauh

    The bauh package manager can cope with Flatpaks, Snaps, AppImages, AUR, and native web apps.

  • Stacer

    Stacer is a handy graphical tool for cleaning up your Linux system.

  • Linux Mint Drops Snap

    Linux Mint has officially dropped their support for Canonical’s snap packages.

  • Chob

    If you are looking for an application in AppImage, Flatpak, or Snap app stores, Chob lets you perform a keyword-based search from the command line.

comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters

Support Our Work

Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

Learn More

News