ArashOS 2026.11.1

What’s new

This is the first release of ArashOS, a Linux system based on Arch Linux. It has a desktop of its own, drawn from Persian stories.

• An installer that puts ArashOS on a whole disk, in free space beside another system, or in place of a partition. Windows and other Linux systems stay in the menu shown at startup.
• The whole system is encrypted. One passphrase, asked once when the computer starts, unlocks it.
• A snapshot (a saved copy of the system) is taken before every update. If the desktop doesn’t start after one, pick “ArashOS snapshots” in the startup menu to go back.
• Kaman, the desktop: a bar, Tir to find and open apps, notifications, a lock screen, screenshots, Settings, and 13 themes, with Lajvard (dark) and Kaghaz (light) the defaults.
• App Center installs and updates apps, and Update now updates the whole computer. If an update changes something big, such as the desktop, the core of the system or the graphics driver, a warning comes first.
• A welcome on first start offers to turn on Secure Boot with your own keys, and to make a recovery key for the encryption in case you forget the passphrase.
• Rakhsh checks the computer’s security and health once a day and says what it found in plain words.
• AI, all optional and off until you choose it: apps that do tasks for you, AI models that run on your own computer, dictation, and Simorgh, who answers by voice.

Known not to work

• The USB stick starts only with Secure Boot turned off in the computer’s startup (BIOS or UEFI) settings. Once ArashOS is installed, the welcome can turn it on with your own keys.
• The installer can’t yet split a disk the way you choose: ArashOS takes the whole disk, the free space or the partition you choose.
• The installer on this USB stick has been tried in virtual machines only. ArashOS runs every day on three computers: an Intel laptop, an NVIDIA laptop and a desktop with two NVIDIA cards and three screens. On other hardware it may not work. Back up your files first, and tell us what happens: hello@arashos.org.

Tested

Before it was published, this ISO was installed in a virtual machine, and the installed system started and updated. All 29 of those checks passed (tests/vm/m5-iso.sh).

Checking the download

Download the installer file arashos-2026.11.1-x86_64.iso, with arashos-2026.11.1-x86_64.iso.sha256, arashos-2026.11.1-x86_64.iso.sig and arashos-release.asc, into one folder. To check that the download arrived whole:

sha256sum -c arashos-2026.11.1-x86_64.iso.sha256

That doesn’t show who made the file: someone who swapped the ISO could swap its checksum too. The signature does. First check the key:

gpg --show-keys arashos-release.asc

Its fingerprint must be 443060AB26BEE9F9FAB94C19ED4DC6181E2F40E7, the same one keys.openpgp.org gives for release@arashos.org. That page isn’t on GitHub, where the ISO is, so someone who changed the files here couldn’t change it too. Then check the ISO with that key alone:

gpg --dearmor <arashos-release.asc >arashos-release.gpg
gpgv --keyring ./arashos-release.gpg arashos-2026.11.1-x86_64.iso.sig arashos-2026.11.1-x86_64.iso

It should say “Good signature from "ArashOS Release Key release@arashos.org"”. On a computer that already runs ArashOS, check it with the key that computer trusts instead:

gpgv --keyring /usr/share/pacman/keyrings/arashos.gpg arashos-2026.11.1-x86_64.iso.sig arashos-2026.11.1-x86_64.iso