Vanilla OS 3 Reunion Arrives with ARM64 Support and Linux 7.1.3 Kernel

Vanilla OS 3 Reunion is the latest immutable Linux distribution, adding ARM64 support, GNOME 50 Tokyo on Wayland, Linux kernel 7.1.3, and reproducible build mechanisms.

ARM64 support means the same images run on UEFI‑enabled ARM devices such as SBCs, laptops and workstations, with each package providing an ARM64 variant and no feature reduction compared to AMD64.

The reproducible build process ensures that building the same source yields identical byte‑for‑byte images, allowing users to verify that the published images have not been tampered with; NVIDIA images are currently excluded.

GNOME 50 brings a Wayland‑only session, improved fractional scaling, and a reshuffled default application set (Ptyxis replaces Black Box, Papers replaces Evince, Resources replaces GNOME System Monitor, while File Roller and Photos are dropped).

The distribution introduces a new backup and restore tool, Vanilla Continuity, which snapshots the home directory, Flatpak list and ABRoot metadata and can store backups locally, on LUKS2‑encrypted drives, or via SFTP/FTP/NFS; the current version is command‑line only.

Under the hood, Apx and VSO have been rewritten with the Vanilla OS SDK, moving Apx configuration to config.json, adding Debian, openSUSE Leap and Ubuntu 26.04 as default stacks, and providing a Flathub‑available graphical front‑end.

VSO now runs on Debian testing instead of sid, adds an init hook for subsystem start‑up, and the new subsystem is named apx‑vso‑native, while the older apx‑vso‑pico requires package updates before upgrading.

Distrobox 2.0.0‑rc.4, rewritten in Go, is bundled and compatible with Apx v3; the Vanilla Image Builder (Vib) has been updated to 1.1.0 with a cleanup flag, container‑mounted source files, and a new -o option for specifying the output container.

Upgrade notes: users of Vanilla OS 2 Orchid 1.4.0 can upgrade via the normal system upgrade or abroot upgrade, but ABRoot versions below 2.4.0 cannot upgrade directly to the multi‑arch images; a full system update is required first.

Overall, the release extends the immutable‑desktop philosophy to ARM64, modernises many components, and adds reproducible builds and snapshot‑based backups as core safety features.