Roadmap

Zainium OS is young. This page lists what comes next, in the order we plan to do it. Plans change, and we will update this page when they do.

Next

• Testing on more hardware. WiFi, sound and graphics reports help the most. Tell us what works and what breaks.
• Bug reports in one place. A clear way to report problems and follow them.
• Multiboot. The installer erases the whole disk it is given. We want an option to install next to another system, and we want other boot loaders to be able to find Zainium OS.
• Disk encryption in the installer. quantra-ramfs can already unlock an encrypted disk, but the installer can not set one up yet.
• BIOS boot from a disc. BIOS works from USB today, and a disc boots with UEFI only.

Stronger layers

• A clear owner for every layer. A written audit of what can touch each layer, and tests for every rule.
• Protecting share too. zex will keep its generated caches in their own place, so the base can win there as well.
• Boot tests in CI. Upgrades, interrupted upgrades and hidden files tested in a VM on every change.

Independent builds

• Building on Zainium's own packages. Packages are built in an Alpine container for now, until enough of our own packages and storage are ready. From then on, every new package will be built on Zainium's own packages.

After that

• Software from other distributions in its own space. A place in /overlayer for packages from systems like Fedora, each set with its own dependencies and a real /usr inside, run from the terminal with no container to manage. zex will handle it, and the base stays untouched.
• Better automatic tests. More of the upgrade and overlay behaviour tested on every change.

Known limits today

• Static and setuid programs that hard-code /usr paths are not covered by path resolution.
• A CPU with AVX2 is required.
• The sealed overlay patch is young and needs review. The folders it protects are hard coded for now.

See how the system protects itself for what the design does and does not promise.