releases

every Arctic Linux image, newest first, and what changed in each

Alpha 2.1latest

x86_64 · 695 MiB · live image and installer · not fully tested

  • Alpha 2 fixed wireless and then broke it a second way: the supplicant was invoked with -f to capture a log, and -f is compiled in by CONFIG_DEBUG_FILE which this build does not set
  • an unknown option makes wpa_supplicant print its usage and exit without ever touching the radio, so association was never attempted - and the log the failure printed was that usage text
  • the option had been checked with wpa_supplicant -h on the build host, whose build does accept -f; flags are checked against the binary Arctic ships now
  • a supplicant that never started counted as started, because -B forks and the exit status says nothing about whether it survived - the control socket and the process are checked now
  • udhcpc names its script explicitly rather than relying on a compiled-in default, and its output goes to a log instead of /dev/null
  • everything from Alpha 2 is still here: the wpa_passphrase fix, the missing ctrl_interface, the regulatory database, and root=UUID= which is what lets an installed system boot at all
Download a2.1
sha256 cadf9cb207973d8f57a71bafeb6d425b843959ab5275a49ae97bf13bd65a547f

Alpha 2

x86_64 · 695 MiB · live image and installer · not fully tested

  • wireless could never have associated on any network - wpa_passphrase reading from a pipe exits 1 without writing anything, so the config had no network block in it at all and the 30s timeout blamed a passphrase that was always correct
  • nothing wrote a ctrl_interface, so wpa_cli could never connect and the error told you to run a command that could not work
  • no installed system could boot: the installer wrote root=PARTUUID= and busybox findfs implements LABEL= and UUID= only, so every install finished, reported success, and stopped in the initramfs shell
  • fstab had the same problem, which is why /boot would not mount either; both are UUID= now and the initramfs falls back to LABEL=arctic-root so older installs come up
  • the image carries a regulatory database - without one the kernel sits in world domain 00 where most 5 GHz channels are receive-only, so an access point shows in a scan and the card may not transmit to it
  • the firewall had no package at all: nftables fell back to compiling inside the target and failed, and the install reported success anyway
  • the boot was right-aligned against column 80 of a 240-column console, and every service reported t=0.0s
  • the live session prints how to install Arctic instead of a hardware inventory
Download a2
sha256 b4972b233eda64f30717d8271f2787b752f3315a326d40f2836f6e56491fdf2b

Alpha 1.24

x86_64 · 695 MiB · live image and installer

  • a boot partition that failed to mount was ignored - the bootloader went into a directory on the root filesystem and the machine did not boot
  • the compiler is on the image: clang and lld, no download first
  • alpm speaks one language - add installs, rem removes, repo add adds a repository; ins and del are gone
  • llvm shipped llvm-lit's count and not, which toybox owns, so anything needing mesa stopped on a conflict
  • mesa and vulkan-loader install; graphics failed entirely before
  • wireless waits for the link before asking for an address, and retries the lease
  • the network you install over is carried into the installed system, beside the wired one
  • arcticfetch is off the login, zsh loads autosuggestions only, and the boot banner is a rule rather than a row of punctuation
Download a1.24
sha256 180f4c03859c661cb22aad750a0e92e0e61dbae7319c110032594b8a309504a9

Alpha 1.23

x86_64 · 695 MiB · live image and installer

  • the compiler is on the image - clang and lld, so it can build without downloading one first
  • alpm speaks one language: add installs, rem removes, repo add adds a repository - ins and del are gone
  • llvm shipped llvm-lit's count and not, which toybox owns, so installing anything needing mesa stopped dead
  • mesa and vulkan-loader install now; graphics failed entirely before
  • wireless waits for the link before asking for an address - a correct passphrase used to end in DHCP failed
  • the network you install over is carried into the installed system, beside the wired one
  • arcticfetch is off the login, and zsh loads autosuggestions and nothing else
  • the boot banner is a rule and a title rather than a full-width row of punctuation
Download a1.23
sha256 996af053e5033c08202434468bc3fe104a2ac01107c9c8e29343267605f6d353

Alpha 1.21

x86_64 · 492 MiB · live image and installer

  • alpm add installs and alpm rem removes
  • alpm rem -a takes what the package left behind, -d its dependencies, -f forces it
  • repositories are alpm repo add <url>
  • mesa installed its drivers into /usr/lib64, which does not exist here - nothing could load them
  • vulkan-loader is packaged; the drivers are of no use without it
  • mesa declares the Vulkan and VA drivers it contains, so asking for vulkan-radeon resolves
  • choosing nvidia says the proprietary driver is not packaged instead of installing nothing silently
  • the old verbs - ins, del - still work
Download a1.21
sha256 1a5309744ac26354a913cff811cc98346e23d6d5e6acf48e4791d605c4300fea

Alpha 1.2

x86_64 · 383 MiB · live image and installer

  • an installed machine had an address and a route but no resolver, so every lookup failed
  • wifi-connect scans, lists what is in range and takes the passphrase masked
  • iw is on the image - nothing there could list a network before
  • mesa 26.0.2 with the Intel drivers, which were missing entirely
  • the Xfce 4.20 desktop, openbox and icewm are packaged
  • initialization, the fork of nitro, is the default init
  • the installer asks before writing a bootloader and names the partition
  • nvidia and nouveau are configured, with a reboot notice
Download a1.2
sha256 387c84d9b22199c1b3e1e481c1e280f29c7077bc940b970566989c6fd427a1d9

Alpha 1.1

x86_64 · 382 MiB · live image and installer

  • the install runs end to end from the network repositories
  • the live session could come up with no network at all
  • lzo shipped no shared library, so mkfs.btrfs could not start
  • the repository indexes were weeks out of date behind a CDN
  • alpm system upgrade and alpm system fix
  • toybox claimed 27 commands other packages own - the install stopped at /usr/bin/blkid
  • wpa_supplicant pulled OpenSSL in beside libressl, leaving no curl and no NetworkManager
  • the live image's wget was toybox's, which cannot speak https
Download a1.1
sha256 89735185b8d203fbafbb7d90ddf6edc84b1f62f174959f6121a0502ac2c917d3

writing one

dd if=Arctic-linux-a2.1.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

it is a hybrid image — it boots on BIOS and UEFI, from a disc or a USB stick, with nothing needed to write it.