Vanilla OS

Reader supplied reviews for Vanilla OS Average rating 6.5 from 36 review(s) Version: 2 Rating: 8 Date: 2026-02-03 Votes: 0 I downloaded and installed it on a Dell XPS 13 with an SSD HD. The installation is quite easy and straightforward. It even offers you to choose what apps you want to install on your system during the setup process. The desktop (Gnome) is clean and well integrates into the system and the A/B root is quite fascinating. Unfortunately I couldn't keep using it because I was unable to setup DNSOverTLS and DNSSEC which are a must for me. Although Vanilla OS uses systemd, it does not come with systemd-resolved by default, therefore you need to use and setup something like UNBOUND DNS resolver which I was not able to make it work so I had to move on. Version: 2 Rating: 9 Date: 2025-11-07 Votes: 8 VanillaOS is my favorite of all immutable distro's! On my old Dell XPS 13 it is stable, clean, lightweight and fast. Gnome is clean and customizable via extensions. Second favorite is NixOS, but it keeps taking up insane amounts of disk space that I cannot clean up using all the GC methods. I see the benefit of OS tree but VanillaOS, on the other hand, uses A/B root which is transparent and easy to understand and fulfills my goal of a immutable system: being able to recover from a broken state. The only things I struggle with in VanillaOS is that it makes it hard to setup an IDE and docker environment. Because of all the virtualization capabilities using APX (which is pretty cool) it's a struggle to get apps to access the host system (no, apx export is not enough). And while it does have podman, I seem to have docker(-compose) setups that are just not compatible and fail to work without true host access. Also, no tailscale. The solution? A custom vanillaOS ISO which is a complicated process of having to setup a personal github repo that holds your configuration. So here I am, questioning if I should even be using an immutable distro :-| Version: 22.10-r7 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-10-23 Votes: 7 I enjoy having a clean desktop. No distractions. I do my work and go about my day without any issues. Revived my old iMac (late model 2015) without any issues. It's fast, solid, and no Snaps. I also enjoy the fact that I can choose what to install on my system. The install could be clearer, however. Also, the OS will indicate to you that it needs to download "other components" once installed. Don't bother. Do your update as one would via terminal or via Software. Reboot, and done. Enjoy a clean desktop. See all 36 reader reviews of Vanilla OS...