GNOME OS Nightly: Review

18 Jan, 2026

GNOME just created an brand new distro that specifically created for GNOME. Here's my take on the first experience which looked promising.

Software/hardware to run this OS:

• GNOME Boxes (extra/gnome-boxes in pacman)
  • Running on Garuda Linux (kernel: Linux 6.18.5-zen1-1-zen)
• VM Settings:
  • Memory: 2.9 GiB (from 8.0 GiB hardware)
  • Disk Capacity: 32.2GB

Aspects that will be assessed:

• Core
• Installation
• Usage
• UI

Core

Score: 7.5/10: Decent.
Issues: 1, -2.0, Just enough necessary.

Software and update

6.0/10
8.0/10

GNOME OS is an atomic OS, you don't have system package manager like apt, dnf, pacman here. Instead, you can use flatpak, with Flathub as the source, which is quite limited.
The OS is updated via GNOME Software.

Issues

-2.0

GNOME Store is so heavily buggy and slow. For now, you can't see the progress, and you can't simply Cancel to installing app. Instead, just use the flatpak command.

Boot

9.0/10

The boot manager used by default is systemd-boot which is usually faster than common boot manager like grub. There's nothing really groundbreaking, though.

The time booted into the login screen is 12 second.

If you choose to Try GNOME OS and Restart, the boot manager can't find the option.

Installation

Score: 6.0/10: Not enough.
Issues: -4.0, Not yet implemented advanced options for install.

Before anything started, we are immediately given a display to manage users straight after the first boot.

After the setup done, you can just simply using the OS as whole. You will get an Tour like in the GNOME as usual, and you letter welcomed to GNOME OS, you can choose to either just Try GNOME OS, or Install now.

• If you choose to Try GNOME OS before, you can Install it then by the app "GNOME OS proto-installer".

• If you choose to Install now, it will directly install without any options like partitioning. And it's pretty fast, even in a virtual machine with decent computer.

Usage

Score: 9.0/10: Awesome.
Issues: none

The current ISO size (gnome_os_980336-x86_64.iso) is 2.8 GiB, which is average to today's standard.

System usage

Not less, not more.

8.0/10

fastfetch installed via brew.

[w3teal@10 ~]$ fastfetch
        #####            w3teal@10
       #######           ---------
       ##O#O##           OS: GNOME OS Nightly x86_64
       #######           Host: KVM/QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009) (pc-q35-10.1)
     ###########         Kernel: Linux 6.18.2
    #############        Uptime: 1 hour, 3 mins
   ###############       Packages: 5 (flatpak), 2 (brew)
   ################      Shell: bash 5.3.9
  #################      Display (QEMU Monitor): 1366x681 in 25", 75 Hz
#####################    DE: GNOME 50.alpha
#####################    WM: Mutter (Wayland)
  #################      WM Theme: Adwaita
                         Theme: Adwaita [GTK2/3/4]
                         Icons: Adwaita [GTK2/3/4]
                         Font: Adwaita Sans (11pt) [GTK2/3/4]
                         Cursor: Adwaita (24px)
                         Terminal: GNOME Console 50.alpha
                         Terminal Font: Adwaita Mono (11pt)
                         CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770 (8) @ 3.39 GHz
                         GPU: RedHat Virtio 1.0 GPU
                         Memory: 826.38 MiB / 2.72 GiB (30%)
                         Swap: 418.07 MiB / 1.36 GiB (30%)
                         Disk (/): 2.46 GiB / 20.46 GiB (12%) - btrfs
                         Disk (/usr): 2.60 GiB / 2.60 GiB (100%) - erofs [Read-only]
                         Local IP (enp1s0): 10.0.2.15/24
                         Locale: en_US.UTF-8           

Bloatwares

10/10: Perfect.

The software installed by default are mostly important, and some are utilities that will be used frequently. No useless software installed.

Apps installed by default:

• Base: Contacts, Weather, Clocks, Maps, Music, Document Scanner, Settings, Video, Camera, Characters, Console
• Dock: Web, Calendar, Files, Software, Text Editor, Calculator
• Utilities: Audio Player, Connections, Document Viewer, Fonts, Image Viewer
• System: Disk Usage Analytics, Disks, Logs, Parental Controls, System Monitor
• Misc: Tour, Help

Utilities installed by default:

• Software: flatpak
• Misc: podman, toolbox, distrobox

UI

Score: 8.0: Pretty good.
Issues: 2, -2.5, Needs to be fixed.

UX

8.5/10
10/10

GNOME is simply the best example that Open Source projects not needed to only pretty in the code, but also in the UI/UX. The padding and rounding are consistent, with a touch of light shadow. The color schemes are limited, but for small customization, it is works.

The font is being Adwaita Sans based on Inter, and Adwaita Code based on JetBrains Mono. It's fit simply with the sleek GNOME UI which is prioritize readability and comfort. The applications are resizable and responsive.

Issues

-1.5

Flawed app drawer grid, in smaller screen the icon is smaller, and the text is hardly wrapped, the margin and padding is way too large

And also an weird behavior that the icon is smaller if there's more than a page. On smaller screen, the icon is stays smaller.

Accessibility

9.0/10
10/10

There's nothing really crazy about the takes on this one, the black background without blur is ordinary.

Issues

-1.0

The accent color is should be more variative and doesn't look too much alike (e.g. Blue and Teal). And darkened a bit the tone, the "Wired" button is on hovered state, the Red accent is little noticeable in brighter device.

Customization

6.5/10

The customization is still needed to take harder, you needed an external apps like GNOME Tweaks and Extension Manager which it's often breaks after some update. It would be an pleasure to have Tweaks settings implemented into the system.

Conclusion

7.6

A very promising first experience as expected.

Thank you for reading! This is my first time rating a distro, so it's really flawed, I will simply re-editing this post too. Thank you! <3

#distro #en #posts