Hi everyone, Vanilla OS developer here. Thank you all for taking the time to share your thoughts! Your interest and and feedback mean a lot to us.
Vanilla OS has always prioritized simplicity, security and stability, which sometimes means that progress isn't always immediately visible on the surface. In fact, we spent the last two months redesigning the root filesystem structure to address some compatibility issues with GNOME 49, while also ensuring seamless upgrades from older versions. We're committed to refining and improving the system gradually, rather than reinventing everything.
Regarding custom images, I still believe our Vib is one of the easiest ways to build your own OS, since all you need is a simple recipe file to build an OCI image. A fundamental improvement in latest version is our move to a new package repository synced with Debian snapshot archive, which ensures every custom image remains reproducible and usable over time, solving the earlier issue where custom images could become unable to install additional packages if they fell behind our official builds. We are also considering the idea of a web gallery to make discovering custom images easier, though we want to carefully establish audit mechanisms to help users avoid potential security risks when running third-party images (we'd love to hear your thoughts on this).
We're still deeply passionate about this project, but I have to admit we are in urgent need of more contributors. Upcoming priorities include ARM64 support, Android app integration, migrating system tools to the new Vanilla OS SDK, and improving documentation. If you'd like to see Vanilla OS grow and improve, we'd be thrilled to have you join us!