36 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 50.7 ms ] thread
I’m curious if anyone here uses this and can share their experience.
I read this as Arduino OS. :sad_face:
This feels like a lot to run on an arduino. Even the arm ones arn't hitting 100mhz.
So it's just another Linux distribution? A Flatpack-based spinoff of Ubuntu?
Why would one want to run this over Ubuntu? So much effort is wasted on producing and maintaining entire distributions when they are just another distro with a preinstalled package list and a skin?
I made it half way down the page before I realized this wasn’t “ArduinOS”.

I can’t be the only one.

Even after reading this comment I looked back because I really didn’t know what you were talking about, and only after reading the comment about “Anduin” did I realize there was no r in the name. Crazy.
Only 2 GB iso! Smaller than Ubuntu! ... I remember when Ubuntu 14.04 was 1 GB ISOs... oh that was a decade ago :(
> AnduinOS, a one-man project from a Chinese Microsoft engineer, is quite a new Ubuntu remix that reshapes GNOME in the image of Windows 11.

> it modifies Canonical's current version of GNOME to look strikingly like Windows 11, using a collection of existing extensions and themes

https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/23/anduinos/

I'm not really sure after reading through the front page why it's different from Ubuntu, it mentions flatpaks so that's one aspect.

But there's no breakdown of what other major things are different, or why to pick it over Ubuntu or [other popular distro].

It wants to specifically target Windows 11 users, which is strange because Windows 11 itself isn't done with targeting its own users yet.
I really wish people creating a distro, and even more so distro of a distro of a distro should not call it OS. (Debian - Ubuntu . AnduinOS)

I am alwasy happy to look at new operating system projects. It is a major hobby.

Could distros use AnduinDI AnduinUbuntu AnduinLinux. or just Anduin

I dont like getting my hopes up like that.

Is windows 11 really the GUI that we want to be emulating?
No ARM builds either, despite being based on Ubuntu, so I'm not even going to bother trying it out since I expect poor experience on an emulated x86.
Aaaaaargh a fucking AI did translate this from English to German when I look at it. Horrible translation.

Eine freundliche Distribution. Ok, fuck yes, if it is friendly, does it say good morning and good night? And ask me how I am?

"Es ist eine perfekte Kombination aus Erfahrung und Ökologie." Ok, it's about ecology, so something about trees and nature and owls and bunnies?

"AnduinOS ist Ihre finale Linux-Distribution!". Wait, you'll think I DIE if I use this?

Maybe this is pedantic, but with a "No telemetry at all!" headline it's weird to see two telemetry-gathering applications (Youtube, Steam) in the demo screenshots. Unless there's something to mitigate this?

Edit: The headline text changes on each page refresh, most of the time it says something else.

It’s sad that it seems some of the comments are asking “Why?”…

I’d say this is a good middle ground compromise for people who want the privacy of QubesOS but with an Ubuntu experience underneath

it's pretty straightforward to change: a makefile, some preset variables in a .sh, then it iterates through https://github.com/Anduin2017/AnduinOS/tree/5bbd94d9c4fa455e... - the tree also points at the gnome-extensions it uses to create and mod the global menu.

can't be too hard to rebase onto Debian (the superior .deb distribution). I put it on 2 endof10 laptops as whatever I do every few years, kde just doesn't stick

The desktop background reminds me of some screens that MEPIS OS used [0] back when I was first getting into Linux in high school and the idea of live distributions blew my mind. I assume it's a coincidence people just like pyramids I guess.

[0] - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mepis.png

Is this meant to be a Windows 11 clone on Ubuntu?
Considering we already have Linux Mint which is Ubuntu based with the shite parts removed and where flatpacks are well supported, I wish it would say more about about the unique selling point of AnduinOS.
This actually looks pretty neat, particularly the integration with Flatpak.

One thing that confused me when I first went to Linux a million years ago was the difference in how you install stuff. With Windows you download an exe file, double click it, next next next finish, and you have your app installed.

With Linux, every distro is slightly different and it's almost never quite as straightforward to people. I think Flatpak has the potential to bring that kind of Windows-style of installation to the masses, and it always kind of annoyed me that Ubuntu doesn't embrace Flatpak outta the box.

I have been distro-hopping since probably around 2004, whenever now someone is asking me what to recommend as a Linux, it’s as follow:

- Entry level and everything you will ever need, stable, etc: Mint

- Feeling adventures: go with arch or some of its arch-based distros.

- Used linux before: NixOS.

Why do people keep doing this?
Seeing the screenshot on the site with WPS Office seem like a huge red flag to me, while the distro might not be affiliated with WPS Office, I'll just put the link here to raise attention that WPS Office DOES NOT worth anyone's trust.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/vz1gse/allegedly_wps...