Release

Shani OS 2026.04.15 — Release Notes

Shrinivas Vishnu Kumbhar · 2026-04-15 · 8 min

Shani OS 2026.04.15 is now available — two refreshed ISO images, a fixed UEFI installer, and significantly improved shani-deploy reliability across interrupted downloads and edge-case boot sequences.

🗓️ Release Date: April 15, 2026

🧱 Base: Arch Linux (rolling) with a read-only root filesystem

🔁 Update model: Atomic blue/green updates via shani-deploy

New to Shani OS? Start with Why Your OS Update Should Never Break Your Computer for context on the design philosophy, then The Architecture Behind Shani OS for the technical detail. For everyday usage and use-case guidance, see Shani OS for Everyone. Full documentation lives at wiki.shani.dev.

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Available Images

| Edition | Size | Best for | |---|---|---| | 🟢 GNOME Edition | ~5.4 GB | Work, study, Windows/macOS switchers, OEM deployments | | 🔵 KDE Plasma Edition | ~7.6 GB | Gaming, power users — full gaming stack pre-installed |

Both ISOs are SHA256 checksummed and GPG signed with key 7B927BFFD4A9EAAA8B666B77DE217F3DA8014792. See the installation instructions at wiki.shani.dev for the full verification walkthrough.

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What Changed in This Release

Installer

The most significant fix in this release is a corrected UEFI installation flow. Previous releases had inconsistent behaviour on certain UEFI implementations — particularly around ESP partition detection and Shim enrollment on some OEM firmware. This release resolves those issues across the tested hardware matrix.

Installation time is now approximately 10–15 minutes from USB boot to first login. The installer creates all Btrfs subvolumes, extracts the system image into @blue, snapshots it to @green, builds both Unified Kernel Images via gen-efi, and registers the UEFI boot entry — all without requiring any post-install configuration.

shani-deploy

Several reliability issues in the update and rollback pipeline have been resolved:

  • Interrupted downloads now resume correctly via aria2c rather than restarting from zero
  • The boot-count verification step — which confirms a new slot booted successfully before committing it as default — is more robust against edge-case timing
  • --rollback path handles the case where the inactive slot has no prior snapshot more gracefully
  • shani-deploy --storage-info now reports accurate compressed sizes using compsize
  • shani-update background notification service (user-level systemd service) now more reliably detects new images and sends desktop notifications

shani-health

  • shani-health new CLI for checking the health of a running Shani OS system — slot state, subvolume storage, service status, and filesystem integrity. Full reference: shani-health Reference.

Hardware Support

Firmware packages updated to 20260309-1 (AMD and Intel microcode included). GPU compatibility improvements cover recent AMD RDNA 3 and Intel Arc cards. Bluetooth and audio handling improvements target common laptop hardware — specifically Intel DSP audio via updated sof-firmware.

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Core System Versions

Base

| Component | Version | |---|---| | Linux Kernel | 6.19.11.arch1-1 | | systemd | 260.1-1 | | glibc | 2.43+r5+g856c426a7534-1 | | Linux Firmware | 20260309-1 | | AMD Microcode | 20260309-1 | | Intel Microcode | 20260227-1 |

GNOME Edition

| Component | Version | |---|---| | GNOME Shell | 50.1-1 | | GTK 4 | 4.22.2-1 | | libadwaita | 1.9.0-1 | | Nautilus | 50.1-1 | | GDM | 50.0-1 |

KDE Plasma Edition

| Component | Version | |---|---| | KDE Plasma | 6.6.4-1 | | KDE Frameworks | 6.25.0-1 | | Qt 6 | 6.11.0-2 | | KWin | 6.6.4-1 | | Dolphin | 25.12.3-1 |

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Application Runtimes

Shani OS uses a multi-runtime model. Applications run entirely outside the base OS in dedicated Btrfs subvolumes, so they survive every update and rollback untouched. The @nix subvolume is shared between both OS slots — Nix packages installed while running @blue are equally available when running @green.

| Runtime | Version | Purpose | |---|---|---| | Flatpak | 1.16.6-1 | Primary GUI apps — auto-updates every 12 hours | | Snap | 2.74.1-2 | Optional sandboxed apps | | Nix | 2.34.6-1 | Reproducible dev environments (@nix subvolume, shared across slots) | | Distrobox | 1.8.2.4-1 | Full mutable Linux containers (Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora) | | Podman | 5.8.1-2 | Rootless containers — Docker-compatible | | AppImage | - | Portable apps via Gear Lever |

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Shani OS Core Packages

| Package | Version | Role | |---|---|---| | shani-core | 1.2-13 | Core system integration layer | | shani-deploy | 0.0.1-54 | Atomic update and rollback tool | | shani-settings | 0.0.5-37 | System configuration helpers | | shani-desktop-gnome | 1.2-23 | GNOME edition metapackage | | shani-desktop-plasma | 1.0-25 | KDE Plasma edition metapackage |

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Pre-Installed Flatpaks

GNOME Edition

The GNOME edition ships with a focused set of apps covering everyday computing needs:

Productivity & Utilities: Vivaldi Browser, OnlyOffice Desktop Editors, GNOME Text Editor, GNOME Calculator, GNOME Calendar, GNOME Clocks, GNOME Maps, GNOME Contacts, GNOME Notes (Gnote), Papers (PDF viewer), Loupe (image viewer), Snapshot (camera), Simple Scan, Sound Recorder, Font Viewer, Characters, Weather

Media: Decibels (audio player), Showtime (video player)

System Tools: Warehouse (Flatpak manager), Flatseal (Flatpak permissions), Pods (Podman GUI), BoxBuddy (Distrobox GUI), Gear Lever (AppImage manager), Impression (USB writer), Extension Manager, Seahorse (key manager), Secrets (password manager), GNOME Boxes (VM management), gSmartControl (disk health)

Connectivity: GNOME Connections (remote desktop client), Network Displays, Meld (diff tool)

Games: Nibbles, Mahjongg, Chess, Aisleriot, Quadrapassel, Sudoku

Graphics: Drawing (simple drawing app), Fragments (torrent client), Shortwave (internet radio)

KDE Plasma Edition

The KDE Plasma edition ships the GNOME system tools (Warehouse, Flatseal, Pods, BoxBuddy, Gear Lever) plus a complete gaming and productivity stack:

Gaming: Steam, Heroic Games Launcher (Epic/GOG/Amazon), Lutris, RetroArch, Bottles (Windows apps), GOverlay (MangoHud configurator), Oversteer (racing wheel configuration), AntiMicroX (gamepad mapper), OpenRGB (RGB lighting), Piper (gaming mouse configuration)

KDE Apps: Okular (documents), Gwenview (images), Elisa (music), Haruna (video), Kate (text editor), KolourPaint, Kompare (diff tool), Kamoso (camera), KRDC (remote desktop), ISO Image Writer, KGet, KTorrent, KCalc, Skanlite (scanner)

Games: KPatience, Knights (chess), KBlocks, KSnakeDuel, KMahjongg, Kapman, KSudoku

VM Tools: virt-manager, QEMU extension

Theming: Kvantum style engine

Vivaldi Browser and OnlyOffice Desktop Editors are included on both editions.

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Security Stack

All of the following are active from first boot, by default:

  • Six simultaneous Linux Security Modules: landlock, lockdown, yama, integrity (IMA/EVM), apparmor, bpf
  • LUKS2 full-disk encryption with argon2id key derivation — opt-in at install
  • TPM2 auto-unlock — enroll with sudo gen-efi enroll-tpm2 on first boot
  • Secure Boot via Shim + MOK-signed Unified Kernel Images, one per slot
  • Signed system images — SHA256 + GPG verified before every deployment
  • Zero telemetry — no usage data, crash reports, or analytics
  • Intel ME disabled by default (mei, mei_me kernel modules blacklisted)
  • firewalld active from first boot

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Atomic Update Model

Shani OS always maintains two complete, independently bootable system images:

shanios-blue  → @blue subvolume   (active slot)
shanios-green → @green subvolume  (standby slot)

Update flow: download to inactive slot → verify checksum + signature → snapshot old slot → extract new image → generate signed UKI → switch bootloader default → reboot → 15-second startup check confirms success. If the new slot fails to boot three times, systemd-boot automatically falls back.

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Download

Or visit shani.dev for links, torrent files, and verification instructions.

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Verify

# 1. Verify checksum
sha256sum -c signed_shanios-gnome-2026.04.15-x86_64.iso.sha256

# 2. Import the Shani OS signing key (once)
gpg --keyserver keys.openpgp.org --recv-keys 7B927BFFD4A9EAAA8B666B77DE217F3DA8014792

# 3. Verify GPG signature
gpg --verify signed_shanios-gnome-2026.04.15-x86_64.iso.asc signed_shanios-gnome-2026.04.15-x86_64.iso

Write the ISO to a USB drive (minimum 8 GB) using Balena Etcher or Rufus (DD mode). Do not use Ventoy — it conflicts with the Shani OS bootloader.

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First Steps After Install

# Firmware updates (BIOS, Thunderbolt, storage peripherals)
fwupdmgr refresh && fwupdmgr update

# Add a Nix channel before installing any Nix packages (once, on fresh install)
nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable nixpkgs
nix-channel --update

# Enroll TPM2 for automatic LUKS unlock (if you enabled encryption)
sudo gen-efi enroll-tpm2

# Update the system
sudo shani-deploy

# Check which slot you're running
cat /data/current-slot

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Documentation & Community

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Resources

Built in India 🇮🇳 · Immutable · Atomic · Zero Telemetry

Shani OS 2026.04.15 — Reliable by design, consistent by default.