Vanilla OS 3 Reunion brings ARM64 support, reproducible builds, GNOME 50 “Tokyo”, and more

Vanilla OS 3 Reunion is now available, delivering a substantial update to this Debian-based Linux distribution after a two-year gap since Vanilla OS 2 Orchid. A central highlight is official ARM64 device support for systems with UEFI firmware, achieved through multi-architecture images and ARM64 builds across all packages. This expands hardware compatibility to include single-board computers, laptops, and workstations based on ARM technology.

Following this, most release images, apart from those with NVIDIA kernel modules, are now fully reproducible, allowing the build process to yield identically matching outputs from the same sources. Users will notice the operating system now features the Linux 7.1 kernel and GNOME 50 “Tokyo”, which comes with a Wayland-only session and enhanced fractional scaling.

The update also refreshes several default applications: Ptyxis replaces Black Box as the terminal emulator, Papers supplants Evince for document viewing, and Resources takes the place of GNOME System Monitor. File Roller and Photos are deprecated and not preinstalled anymore. New features include a post-upgrade mode in First Setup that helps users install new applications and remove outdated ones, and the introduction of Vanilla Continuity, a backup and restore tool working with ABRoot.

Both the Apx and Vanilla System Operator utilities have been rebuilt using the Vanilla OS SDK, and the Apx GUI can now be downloaded from Flathub, making it available to Linux users beyond Vanilla OS. Various other changes and enhancements described in the announcement post complete this release.