Raspberry Pi 5 1GB Variant: Is It Worth $45?

Raspberry Pi just launched the 1GB version of the Pi 5 for $45. At the same time, they've increased prices across the Pi 4 and Pi 5 lineups to offset rising memory costs.

The hikes are significant. The 8GB Pi 5 now costs $95, up from $80. The 16GB variant jumped from $120 to $145. Even the 4GB Pi 4 sees a $5 increase to $60.

According to Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton, the LPDDR4 memory shortage driven by AI infrastructure demand is the culprit. He calls it "painful but ultimately temporary" and promises to roll back prices once the market stabilizes.

The new 1GB Raspberry Pi 5 certainly appears to represent an entry point into the ecosystem. But $45 for 1GB in 2025 raises questions about value, especially seeing that there are competing brands with a better value proposition.

This is nothing new; two years ago, a redditor put out a post asking, "What's the point of a Raspberry Pi above $50?." They argued that rising prices betrayed Raspberry Pi's mission to democratize technology.

Fast-forward to today, and that sentiment is still in the minds of hobbyists and tinkerers.

So, is the $45 Raspberry Pi 5 1GB worth it? Let's explore what other single-board computers (SBCs) that money can get you in 2025.

What Else Can You Get in $45?

The single-board computer market has grown competitive. Several manufacturers offer boards with better specs than the Pi 5 1GB at similar or lower prices.

These alternatives often pack more RAM, faster processors, or even additional features. However, they will probably lack the polish and ecosystem support that a Raspberry Pi provides.

📋

The boards listed below are priced at $45 or less, excluding taxes and shipping. Prices may vary by retailer.

ArmSoM Forge1

At just $23, ArmSoM's Forge1 is the budget option here. It targets industrial and IoT applications rather than general computing. The board uses the Rockchip RK3506J tri-core Cortex-A7 processor with 512MB of DDR3L RAM and 512MB of NAND flash.

It features dual 100 Mbps Ethernet ports, MIPI DSI display support, and RS-485/CAN Bus interfaces. ArmSoM promises 10 years of production support, as this SBC is set to remain in production until at least May 2035.

ArmSom Forge1

ArmSoM’s Forge1 Looks Like A Versatile Solution for Embedded and Multimedia Applications

ArmSoM’s latest offering is an industrial-grade SBC.

It's FOSSSourav Rudra

Radxa ROCK 3A

The Radxa Rock 3A starts at around $30 for the 2GB model. It uses the Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor clocked at 2GHz that is paired with an Arm Mali-G52 GPU.

The board supports M.2 NVMe storage, PCIe 3.0, and includes a 0.8 TOPS NPU. It has HDMI 2.0 output supporting 4K@60fps, 2x USB 3.0 ports, and a Gigabit Ethernet port.

Radxa ROCK 3A

PINE64 ROCK64

The ROCK64 offers 4GB of RAM for $44.95. That's more memory than the Pi 5 1GB at roughly the same price. It is powered by the Rockchip RK3328 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with Arm Mali-450MP2 graphics.

The board includes USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, and 4K digital video output. If you have doubts, then you should know that PINE64 has a strong community and decent software support.

PINE64 ROCK64

Le Potato AML-S905X-CC

The Le Potato costs $45 for the 2GB model. It positions itself as a direct Raspberry Pi 3 hardware replacement.

The board uses the Amlogic S905X quad-core Cortex-A53 at 1.5GHz with Arm Mali-450 graphics. It excels at media playback with hardware decoding for H.265, H.264, and VP9 up to 4K@60fps.

The Raspberry Pi 2/3 Model B/B+ compatible form factor and 40-pin GPIO header make it easy to use with existing Pi accessories.

Le Potato AML-S905X-CC

But, The Raspberry Pi Ecosystem is Unmatched

The alternatives may offer better specs on paper. However, Raspberry Pi's ecosystem provides advantages that raw specifications don't accurately reflect.

Raspberry Pi OS is polished and officially supported. The distribution receives regular updates and includes pre-configured software for common use cases. The Raspberry Pi Imager tool makes setup trivial, even for beginners.

The HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) ecosystem is massive. Hundreds of expansion boards exist for everything from touchscreens to motor controllers. Most work without driver hassles or compatibility issues.

Educational resources are everywhere. Official documentation is comprehensive. Third-party tutorials cover a wide range of projects. The Raspberry Pi community is very welcoming, and the official forum has many helpful users and active moderators.

This ecosystem matters more than specs for many users. A board with 4GB RAM means little if you can't get your project working because documentation is sparse or the community is inactive.

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Swiss Data Protection Group Says US Cloud Giants Can't Meet Privacy Standards

The cloud computing space is dominated by a handful of Big Tech players. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud together control a large portion of the global cloud market.

These hyperscalers have built their empires on data. The more information flows through their systems, the more valuable their platforms become. This business model creates an exploitative relationship where people's privacy is traded for cheap prices.

Switzerland's data protection authorities have now drawn a line (in Deutsch). On November 18, privatim passed a resolution calling on Swiss government agencies to reconsider their use of international cloud services for handling sensitive data.

Outsourcing of Personal Data is Not Okay

Before you ask, privatim is the Conference of Swiss Data Protection Officers. It brings together data protection authorities from across Switzerland. Do keep in mind that the group's resolutions are not laws, but government agencies typically follow them.

The group's position is clear. Outsourcing sensitive or legally confidential personal data to international SaaS solutions (read: the cloud services providers) is unacceptable in most cases. This applies particularly to services from large providers like Microsoft 365.

They outline that public bodies have a special responsibility for citizen data. When they outsource data processing to third parties, data protection and information security must remain intact. The resolution argues that current cloud services fail to meet these standards.

privatim identified five critical problems with international cloud providers:

• Most SaaS solutions lack true end-to-end encryption.
• Global companies offer insufficient transparency for compliance verification.
• Cloud services create significant loss of control over data.
• Legal uncertainty exists for data under confidentiality obligations.
• The US CLOUD Act allows data access regardless of storage location.

They concluded their resolution by calling for international SaaS solutions to be used only if government agencies encrypt the data themselves. The cloud provider must have no access to the encryption keys.

This requirement effectively rules out most current cloud services for government use.

Suggested Read 📖

Self-Hosting is Rising and Linux Users are Leading This Revolution

Self‑hosting isn’t anti‑cloud; it’s pro‑agency. It’s choosing the right locus of control for the things you care about.

It's FOSSTheena Kumaragurunathan

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Linus Torvalds Defends Windows' Blue Screen of Death

We all have seen countless memes and jokes about Microsoft Windows' blue of screen death popularly known as BSOD.

A popular but fake image poking fun at Windows blue screen of death

Microsoft did make changes to handle the criticism and jokes. They changed the blue color to black 😆

So, it is still BSOD, blue or black, doesn't matter. The black screen surely mixes with Linux's very own kernel panic screen. Microsoft is taking notes from Linux, it seems.

The reason I am talking about Blue Screen of Death is that Linux creator Linus Torvalds recently defended Microsoft for these error screens. Well, sort of.

Not entirely a software issue: Torvalds

By now you might have been aware that Linus Torvalds did a non-serious, fun video with Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips. They built a PC together.

In that video, Sebastian discussed Torvalds' fondness for ECC (Error Correction Code). I am using their last name because Linus will be confused with Linus.

This is where Torvalds says this:

I am convinced that all the jokes about how unstable Windows is and blue screening, I guess it's not a blue screen anymore, a big percentage of those were not actually software bugs. A big percentage of those are hardware being not reliable.

Torvalds further mentioned that gamers who overclock get extra unreliability.

Essentially, Torvalds believes that having ECC on the machine makes them more reliable, makes you trust your machine. Without ECC, the memory will go bad, sooner or later.

He thinks that more than software bugs, often it is hardware behind Microsoft's blue screen of death.

I am no hardware expert, and even if I was, I could not disagree with the OG Linus.

The part where Torvalds talks about the Windows blue screen of death starts around 9:37. The ECC part comes is just before that. The embed video below starts at 9:37 for your comfort.

If you have not already, do watch the full video. It is good to see the casual, fun, human side of one of the greatest computing legends alive, Linus Sebastian. Oops, sorry. Linus Torvalds 😀

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Not Every Browser is Built on Chrome: Explore These Firefox-based Options

Chrome is undoubtedly the most popular browser on the market. Backed by Google and coming in default for most Android devices, which have the largest smartphone market share, Chrome checks a lot of boxes and makes it immensely easy to sync your browsing data across devices.

There are, however, some caveats. Even though it is based on open source Chromium project, Chrome has been under fire again and again over the years because of privacy concerns.

The biggest alternative available to us is Firefox. But then not everyone is a fan of Firefox as well. It could be the user interface, it could be the disklike for the Mozilla Foundation (don't be surprised, some people do), it could be some other reason.

Yet, if you want a browser that is not Chromium based and it is not the stock Firefox, how about trying some Firefox-based browsers? Let me list the best available options for you.

1. LibreWolf

LibreWolf takes up the ambitious goal of removing all sorts of security issues from the usual Firefox. It does so first off by removing all telemetry, including all experimental data surveys. It provides privacy-oriented search engines by default, like DuckDuckGo, Searx and Qwant.

LibreWolf also includes uBlock Origin by default as well, to block ads and tracking. Other than that, it also disables Firefox Sync as some people don't want cloud based sync as well.

Altogether, you get a more Free Software Foundation styled open source version of Firefox. Meaning it is more towards the core principles of open source.

LibreWolf Browser

2. Waterfox

A similar option to LibreWolf, Waterfox offers extra privacy features. It comes with tracking protection by default, with things like Oblivious DNS, which makes it harder for the ISP to track online activity.

It allows you to open private tabs within the window of the regular tabs, making it easier to access the non-recording privacy measures. Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think Firefox has this option, at least by default. Telemetry, obviously, is disabled except for the bare minimum necessary for browser updates. It also provides clean link sharing, stripping it of the tracking parameters, along with privacy-friendly defaults for search engine.

Other than the privacy features, Waterfox offers ease-of-usage features such as smooth import from existing Firefox accounts, vertical tabs, container tabs for tab grouping and so on. Waterfox is beautifully designed, highly customizable, and delivers on its privacy promises, for which reasons it has been quite well reviewed.

Waterfox Browser

3. Zen Browser

Zen Browser has gained quite some popularity in the last couple of years, and for good reason. It features an iconic vertical tab sidebar, with workspace support and compact mode for lesser visual hassle. Talking about cosmetic changes, it gives you heavy customizability for the browser themes, with gradients, textures and colors. It even offers community themes via the Themes Store.

For easier access to different tabs, it offers a split view, in which you can split the browser window to include multiple tabs side-by-side for multitasking. You'll love it if you have an ultrawide monitor.

Other than that, it also has privacy features with minimal telemetry, and offers a "calm" internet experience. I've used Zen personally for a stretch of time, and I had no complaints with it except for a slightly longer start-up time, which might not necessarily be the case for you (because my teammates at It's FOSS disagree).

Zen Browser

4. Tor Browser

Tor Browser has its root in the privacy business, with the onion routing protocol. It was started off in the Naval Research Lab, which was designed primarily for isolated secure transmission of data. In simple words, onion routing protocol works like layers of an onion, where data is sent through network nodes called "onion routers", each of which peels away a single layer, revealing the next destination of the data, essentially making it harder to track where the data is coming from or going to, next. Each intermediary knows only the location of the next router, and no more.

Coming to the actual browser, it is pretty much a Firefox clone with multiple security levels, fingerprinting protection, and censorship circumvention using ".onion" sites. The security is so good that it has been historically used for whistleblowing purposes and anonymously published journalism such as WikiLeaks.

Due to the intricate protocol, however, it also tends to be quite slow. A number of convenience features, especially ones that require geolocation tend to work unwell on Tor.

Basically, use Tor browser when you need extra privacy, but it may not be suitable for your regular day-to-day web browsing activity.

Tor Browser

5. Mullvad Browser

Mullvad is essentially being described as Tor without the Tor protocol. It has proper private browsing by default, and has an interesting and strong anti-fingerprinting policy. Mullvad makes all the users seem the exact same in terms of any identification parameters such as window sizes, fonts and so on to prevent special identification of any one user. Mullvad also has built in ad and telemetry blocking.

Mullvad insists on using a VPN service to pair with the browser, even offering one themselves (which is not free, but is affordable at $5-6 a month). It is configured with DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) by default, which reduces the chances of DNS-leaking and improves privacy. Some UI changes make it a little inconvenient, such as locked window-sizes, but otherwise, it seems identical to Firefox and works just as well.

Mullvad Browser

6. Floorp Browser

Floorp browser has a major selling point at customization. The top bar can be moved, the title bar can be hidden, vertical-style and tree-style tabs are available, and it offers a wide array of UI themes. Floorp offers many more interesting, unique features. Some of those are containerized workspaces, where in different workspaces, different login information and settings can be configured.

It also offers split tabs and custom mouse gestures. You can also use web apps on an internal Floorp Hub. It offers built-in note-making integration, which can be really useful for productivity work.

Because of the unique set of features, Floorp can be really great for productive work, and the customization options further helps the cause. If you're looking for a Vivaldi like option but in Firefox land, Floorp is a good option.

Floorp Browser

7. Pale Moon

Pale Moon browser is one of the earliest forks of Firefox. They replaced the Gecko engine with a fork called Goanna. It has the interface of the traditional Firefox, which works well but surely looks dated. Of course, you can customize almost every aspect of the browser. It claims no data collection and telemetry, making it grea choice for privacy as well.

Another unique point here is that Pale Moon supports some obsolete web technologies and legacy Firefox plugins.

If you have to use legacy plugins or you are nostalgic about Firefox before the Quantum shift.

Pale Moon Browser

Conclusion

All in all, there are several Firefox-based browsers, and each of them offers something special, something different. Zen and Floorp have been creating quite a bit of buzz recently due to their interesting features, often being considered better than Firefox for both productivity as well as privacy.

Let us know in the comments which Firefox-based browser is your favorite. Cheers!

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ONLYOFFICE Docs 9.2 Release Brings AI Grammar Checks to the Free Office Suite

ONLYOFFICE continues to offer a compelling alternative to proprietary suites like Microsoft Office, with strong document format compatibility and a privacy-respecting approach.

The open source suite has successfully built a reputation for combining professional features with user data protection. Now, the developers have released ONLYOFFICE Docs 9.2, building on the work of the earlier release.

Let's dig in! 🤓

🆕 ONLYOFFICE Docs 9.2: What's New?

It is now possible to customize keyboard shortcuts to suit your workflow needs. To do that, open the File tab and head into the Advanced Settings, where you will find options to reconfigure the shortcuts.

This should come in really handy if you are someone who has spent years on a certain office suite and want to replicate your workflow on ONLYOFFICE. Power users who rely heavily on keyboard navigation also benefit from this.

Next up is the new macro recording feature, which helps automate repetitive tasks that slow down your workflow. Head to the View tab and click "Record macro" to start capturing your actions.

Left to right: custom keyboard shortcuts, macro recording, and AI spell check.

With this, the editor records your sequence of steps, whether you are applying consistent formatting across multiple sections, performing data manipulation, or executing any other routine operation. Once saved, you can replay the macro whenever needed.

Grammar and spelling checks get an AI upgrade through the ONLYOFFICE AI plugin. With the plugin set up, you can trigger the feature from the AI tab in the toolbar or via the right-click context menu.

The tool scans your text and offers correction suggestions, typically including explanations for the recommendations. You have the option to check your full document or just selected portions. Every suggestion appears for individual review, so you decide which corrections to implement.

Left to right: form field role assignment and colored PDF redactions.

The Form Editor gets usability improvements in this release. You can now add descriptive text labels to checkboxes and radio buttons, making it clearer what each option represents when someone fills out your form.

Additionally, when you are inserting new fields into a form, you can assign specific roles to them during the creation process. This is useful for collaborative environments where different team members need to fill in different parts of the same form.

📥 Download ONLYOFFICE Docs 9.2

Self-hosting users of ONLYOFFICE can get the latest packages from the official website. For the rest of us, the desktop editors will be receiving this update very soon.

The changelog is also a handy resource if you want to learn more about this release.

ONLYOFFICE Docs 9.2

Suggested Read 📖

6 Best Open Source Alternatives to Microsoft Office for Linux

Looking for Microsoft Office on Linux? Here are the best free and open-source alternatives to Microsoft Office for Linux.

It's FOSSAbhishek Prakash

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Upgrade Your DevOps Skills Cheap: Linux Foundation Cyber Week Brings 65% Off Certifications

The Linux Foundation has been a major driving force in the Linux and open source space. Beyond their work on the Linux kernel and hosting critical projects like Kubernetes, they run one of the most comprehensive technology training and certification programs around.

Their courses cover Linux system administration, cloud native development, and cybersecurity. If you have been eyeing their certifications, then their annual sales are the best time to grab them.

And, as it happens, the Linux Foundation's Cyber Week 2025 sale is here with the biggest discounts of the year.

Linux Foundation Cyber Week Sale

⏲️ The last date for the sale is December 9, 2025.

📋

This article contains affiliate links. Please read our affiliate policy for more information.

Cyber Week 2025 Deal

The sale has already begun from today, with no extensions planned. You can expect discounts up to 65% depending on whichever bundle, certification, or course you opt for.

For instance, certification and subscription bundles are 65% off. These pair popular certifications like CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator), CKAD (Certified Kubernetes Application Developer), CKS (Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist), and LFCS (Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator) with the THRIVE-ONE annual subscription.

Kubestronaut bundles are 50% off, where the standard Kubestronaut bundle includes five certifications (KCNA, KCSA, CKA, CKAD, CKS), while the Golden Kubestronaut packs a full 16 certifications total.

IT Professional Programs are 60% off. The Cloud Engineer IT Professional Program includes five courses plus LFCS and CKA certifications. There is also a new DevOps & GitOps IT Professional Program with five courses plus CAPA and CGOA certifications.

THRIVE-ONE subscriptions are also discounted. The annual subscription drops from $360 to $252 (30% off for first year), and monthly goes from $35 to $25 (30% off for first three months). You will get unlimited access to the Linux Foundation's entire course catalog with this.

Plus, every Cyber Week 2025 purchase gets you a $100 gift voucher for future training purchases between January 1 and October 31, 2026.

What more are you waiting for? Grab the deal before it goes away!

Get The Deal

We also have a detailed list of Black Friday deals for Linux users. You can check it out to grab some really good bargains on popular tools and services.

Black Friday Deals for Linux Users 2025 [Continually Updated With New Entries]

Save big on cloud storage, privacy tools, VPN services, courses, and Linux hardware.

It's FOSSAbhishek Prakash

💬 Have you grabbed any Linux Foundation certifications or courses before? Planning to take advantage of this sale? Let me know below!

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ObsidianOS Review: A New, Innovative Linux Distro Built Around A/B Partitioning

Most new Linux distributions tend to follow a familiar formula: take a well-known base, add a desktop environment, sprinkle in some theming, and call it a day.

Sometimes it works; sometimes the distro disappears in six months. What you don’t often see, however, is a distro trying to rethink how updates, rollbacks, and system integrity fundamentally work.

ObsidianOS is one of those unusual projects that immediately caught my attention for exactly that reason. It’s Arch-based, yes, but the defining feature isn’t Arch at all; it’s the implementation of an A/B partitioning layout using good old ext4, not btrfs, snapshots, or any of the usual suspects.

I’ll admit, when I first heard about ObsidianOS, I had the same confused grin many Reddit users did: “Wait… A/B partitions? On a traditional Linux desktop? Without btrfs?” But after digging into the documentation, installing it on a virtual machine, and exploring it for a bit, I walked away genuinely impressed! ✨

Let’s break things down.

ObsidianOS: Doing things a bit differently

At its core, ObsidianOS is a UEFI‑only, systemd‑based operating system for x86_64 systems, designed with an A/B partition layout for reliability. The A/B partition scheme means your root filesystem exists twice, partition A and partition B. When you update, the system writes to the inactive slot. If something goes wrong, you reboot into the previously working one.

So, no complex snapshot rolling, no broken bootloaders, no “reinstall Arch because Pacman broke at 2 AM.” Just a simple flip back to the other partition. It’s very similar to how ChromeOS, Android, and some embedded systems work, but brought to the broader Linux desktop.

The project originally launched with a single edition, but now it offers:

• Base Edition (minimal, TUI installer)
• KDE Edition (the recommended one)
• COSMIC Edition (beta, but functional)
• Void Edition (for experts who want a Void base with Obsidian’s tooling)

This is already more variety than I expected for a distro still considered “early.”

Minimum system requirements

From my experience and the project’s own documentation, ObsidianOS is quite modest in its hardware needs but add more than what it says.

• 2 GB RAM (yeah. we definitely need more)
• 20+ GB storage
• UEFI firmware
• 64-bit CPU

🚧

ObsidiaOS is in the early stages of development. I would consider it experimental. For this reason, either try it in a virtual machine or spare test system. Don't replace your stable Ubuntu/Debian/Mint/Fedora with Obsidian yet.

Installing ObsidianOS

Installation depends on the edition. The Base Edition sticks to a TUI installer, which is a bit old-school, and familiar to anyone who has installed Arch Linux.

The KDE and COSMIC editions, on the other hand, come with a Qt6 + Python GUI installer built by the project itself. I tested the KDE version, and honestly, it’s refreshing to see an independent project ship its own installer instead of relying on Calamares.

It walks you through:

Selecting the target disk.

Setting up the A/B partitions automatically.

Selecting System Image.

Selecting Timezone.

Selecting Keyboard layout.

Bootloader setup.

The layout still feels young, a few dialogs could be clearer, but it works, and more importantly, it handles the A/B scheme seamlessly without throwing technical jargon at the user.

First impressions of ObsidianOS

Booting into ObsidianOS for the first time feels much like entering a polished Arch environment. KDE is clean and mostly vanilla, without unnecessary patches or wild theming choices.

The application launcher provides quick access to system settings, utilities, and installed applications, keeping everything organized and easily reachable. It feels intuitive, responsive, and minimalistic, much like what you’d expect from a well-curated Arch-based environment, no clutter, just efficiency at your fingertips.

But the interesting parts aren’t immediately visible. They show up once you open the ObsidianOS Control Center, a Qt6 GUI frontend for the obsidianctl command-line tool. This is where the distro starts to feel like its own thing rather than “Arch with an unusual partition setup.”

The Control Center shows you:

• Which slot (A or B) you’re currently running
• Available updates
• Rollback options
• Logs and system information

For a project its size, the amount of infrastructure built around these tools is impressive. 😎

User-Mode Overlays: Probably the most intriguing feature

This is where ObsidianOS goes beyond just A/B partitions.

The distro introduces user-mode overlays, an experimental system written in Rust that intercepts libc calls to create layered filesystem behavior, without touching kernel modules or requiring special filesystems.

📝 To simplify: it adds an overlay on top of the root filesystem, but entirely in user space.

This gives you:

• Layered modifications
• Reversible changes
• A “sandboxed” feel for certain operations
• No risk to the base system unless you commit changes

It’s clever, experimental, and absolutely the kind of thing that appeals to tinkerers. The overlay mechanism also powers another new component.

opm: Overlaid packages

opm is the ObsidianOS Package Manager, also written in Rust, that works alongside pacman. When you install a package with opm:

• It downloads the package from pacman.
• It creates an overlay image of that package.
• The overlay is applied on top of the system.

This is miles away from how most distros handle packaging, and while it’s still experimental, it hints at a future where package changes have a much smaller chance of trashing your root system.

Arch fans might raise eyebrows, but power users will probably be curious. 😎

ObsidianOS Plugins

This is another Rust-powered system that lets scripts respond to system events, like:

• battery changes
• connection/disconnection events
• hardware triggers

Not entirely new in the Linux world, but ObsidianOS wraps it in a clean, unified framework instead of leaving users to dig through systemd units and acpi handlers.

Daily usage and performance

Being Arch-based, the performance story is exactly what you’d expect:

• Fast boot times
• Responsive KDE experience
• Recent kernels
• Access to the entire Arch repository

The difference is that ObsidianOS doesn’t try to be flashier or heavier than necessary. It stays lean, even in the KDE edition. The COSMIC edition is still in beta, so I’ll reserve judgment until the desktop hits maturity.

The only thing I noticed is that some experimental components, overlays and opm are still evolving. They work, but occasionally feel like tools intended for people who enjoy digging into logs and understanding what’s happening under the hood. That’s not a criticism; it’s simply the current reality of the project. 🤷

Too much reliance on experiments?

To keep things realistic, it’s important to mention some concerns that other people (and I) have:

Small team and young project: Several users on Reddit said they avoid distros with very small maintainer counts. It’s a fair point, longevity matters.

Experimental components: The overlays, opm, and plugin system are fascinating, but still in the “early tech demo but highly functional” stage.

A/B partitioning is unusual for the desktop: Not bad, just unfamiliar. Some users will love it; others may feel unsure.

But none of these are dealbreakers if you know what you’re walking into.

Final Thoughts

ObsidianOS is one of the rare Arch-based distributions that genuinely tries to solve a long-standing problem instead of repackaging Arch with a new desktop theme. The A/B partitioning approach makes system updates dramatically safer, and the Rust-based overlay tools point toward a future where system state is much more predictable and much less prone to accidental breakage.

Is it ready for absolute beginners? Probably not yet.

Is it suitable for people who install Arch manually for fun? Absolutely.

And for users who love the idea of transactional updates but don’t want to commit to NixOS, Fedora Silverblue, or OpenSUSE MicroOS, ObsidianOS hits a very interesting middle ground.

It’s ambitious, clever, and while still young, it’s doing something bold that most distros simply don’t attempt. I’ll be keeping an eye on how it develops and if the team keeps pushing features like overlays and opm, it might end up becoming one of the more innovative Linux projects to come out of the Arch ecosystem in a while.

🏅

These are the reasons why ObsidianOS is It's FOSS's Distro of the Month.

What do you think of bringing A/B partitioning to desktop Linux and other unusual features in ObsidianOS? I’m curious to hear other experiences.

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