A More Reliable PostmarketOS.
Introducing Duranium.
“Immutable” means the core operating system is read-only and can't be modified while it's running. System updates are applied as complete, verified images rather than individual packages. Either the new image works, or the system falls back to the previous one automatically. No partially-applied state. No debugging audio when you need to make a phone call and no fussing with a broken web browser when you just want to doomscroll cat photos. It also means developers can reproduce the exact state of a user's device, making it much easier to track down and fix issues.
Image-based updates are nothing to bawk at. Duranium is an immutable variant of postmarketOS, built around the idea that your device should just work, and keep working. You shouldn't need to know what a terminal is to keep your device running.
Reliability and ease of use take priority over flexibility. Some choices that make it robust also mean it has higher hardware requirements and won't run on every device that can boot postmarketOS. Not every device that can boot postmarketOS will be supported.
The package base for Duranium is shared with current versions of postmarketOS, and improvements flow into both. Think of it as a different deployment model on top, not a fork.
Duranium is still a work in progress. We are looking for testers, not people who need a reliable daily driver just yet. See the Help Wanted section at the end of this post if this interests you!
The initial proof-of-concept was funded by NLnet through the NGI initiative. Some ongoing development is funded through the postmarketOS Contributor Support Program.
The entire article may be found here.