Overview
After being put on hiatus at the end of 2022, and then being moved into an experimental phase at the beginning of 2025, official stable releases of MassOS will be resumed starting in September 2026. More information follows below.
Release Schedule
As was previously the case, releases will be produced on a monthly basis, with the version formatted as YYYY.MM corresponding to the year and month of release. The first new version in September 2026 will therefore be versioned as 2026.09. Due to the existence of the new MassOS upgrade utility, it will be possible to upgrade from current experimental builds of MassOS to the newer release versions (however upgrading from 2022.10 or older is unfortunately NOT supported, and a clean reinstallation will have to be performed in this case). More information about how channels will be handled with regards to upgrading is in a following section below. However it should be noted that releases may not be published immediately at the beginning of each month. Rather, if more time is required to refine a release or iron out a particular issue, then the release may not be published until later in the month. This is primarily in an effort to ease maintenance burdens and avoid falling into similar traps which contributed to the previous discontinuation of MassOS.
Builds will be hosted on the official MassOS archive server, for all supported architectures, channels, and build types (rootfs tarballs and ISO images). This is the same server that the new MassOS upgrade utility is configured to use out of the box - so it can be used both at the low level by the utility, and at the high level through web browsers as it provides the standard expected filesystem-like directory listing system. The main reason to move builds to a custom server was/is because GitHub release assets (the previously used mechanism) do not allow individual files to be more than 2 gigabytes in size.
Additionally, please be aware of the following:
- Xfce is the only desktop environment to be supported for the foreseeable future. The former GNOME port is indefinitely discontinued, and ports of other desktops are currently outside the scope of the project due to limited development resources. Work has been done to make Xfce more usable with modern technologies such as Wayland, details of which can be found in the new features overview section below.
- Builds without firmware are no longer provided - all images now include firmware by default. The rationale behind this decision can be found here.
If you are performing a clean (re)installation, you can refer to the installation guide, which also lists the system requirements for the newer versions of MassOS, as well as recommended hardware for (e.g.) GPUs.
New Features
The new releases of MassOS include MANY new changes and improvements compared to the pre-2023 versions, all of which can be found in the changelog.md file. However here are the most notable ones:
- A new graphical installation program for the MassOS Live ISO.
- A new system upgrade utility which allows in-place OS upgrades with over a dozen improvements over the previous in-place utility.
- Support for UEFI Secure Boot.
- Initial support for the aarch64 architecture.
- An inbuilt utility,
massos-snapd, which makes it easy to install Canonical's snapd package manager, WITHOUT needing snapd itself to be included out of the box on MassOS (due to its controversy).
- A switch from XZ to ZSTD compression for the kernel, initramfs, kernel modules and firmware.
- Better out-of-the-box support for running MassOS as a guest under VirtualBox, VMware and QEMU/KVM, as well as improved documentation on how to do so, including how to properly set up 3D acceleration and host-guest interaction features.
- Better support for newer media codecs as well as hardware video encoding/decoding.
- Support for Xfce Wayland (using the LabWC compositor), with MassOS-specific tweaks aiming to help bridge the usability gap due to Xfce Wayland not (yet) being fully stable and feature-complete.
The MassOS documentation has also been largely expanded on and overhauled with new information relevant to the upcoming releases of MassOS, and is being continuously expanded on for future releases. The aim is to make this the central source of information for everything related to using MassOS.
Upgrade Channels
Prior to the release of 2026.09, the only upgrade channel for the new MassOS upgrade utility is experimental. After the release, and for ongoing future releases, there will be the stable channel as well as the experimental channel. The desired channel can be specified by editing the file /etc/upgrade-massos/upgrade-massos.conf. Whichever channel you set is the channel you'll receive updates from when using the online upgrade functionality of upgrade-massos. Roughly the channels will function as follows:
stable - The stable monthly releases, versioned YYYY.MM (or YYYY.MM.2 if a mid-month hotfix update is required).experimental - Unstable development builds, or the latest stable build if there are no newer development builds.
Development builds, which may continue to be referred to as "experimental", will be produced up to a few times during the window between the most recent stable MassOS release and the next planned stable MassOS release, primarily to test upcoming changes and ensure stability before the next version is fully released. Unlike the versioning of the current experimental builds, the newer development builds will switch to being versioned as YYYY.MM.devX, where the first portion is the release code of the following month, and the X represents the particular development build as an incremented number. For example, a build in mid-September 2026 may be called 2026.10.dev1, and a build towards the end of September 2026 (but before the stable release of 2026.10 in October) may be called 2026.10.dev2 - and then when the stable version 2026.10 is released, it will be pushed to the experimental upgrade channel as well as the stable channel.
Although it will be possible, as previously mentioned, to upgrade from current experimental builds to 2026.09 when it is released, it should be noted that you will NOT be opted out of the experimental channel by default after doing so. If you wish to opt out and move to the stable channel, you must replace channel: "experimental" with channel: "stable" in the file /etc/upgrade-massos/upgrade-massos.conf - this can be done either before or after taking the 2026.09 update on your machine. By comparison, clean installations of 2026.09 or higher will automatically be configured to use the stable channel by default, and clean installations of future development builds will be set to use experimental by default.
Please note that, while every attempt will be made to produce stable release builds for BOTH x86_64 and aarch64 architectures, no guarantees can be made that the same will be true for development builds. Some development builds may only be produced for x86_64, primarily to ease development work, and in particular because the only aarch64 hardware owned by the MassOS developers which is suitable enough to compile MassOS, is still nowhere near as powerful as the owned x86_64 build hardware. As a result, official aarch64 builds take over twice as long to complete as x86_64 builds. You are of course welcome to build MassOS yourself if you own powerful enough hardware yourself; the linked documentation page lists the minimum and recommended system requirements for building MassOS.
Community
Ongoing work is still being done with regards to setting up an official MassOS community and place for discussion. Primarily we are aiming to avoid Discord as well as other proprietary or otherwise ethically-questionable platforms, while retaining an interface that users are most familiar with. As a result, are currently looking into free software alternatives such as Stoat and Fluxer. When this is confirmed, another announcement will be produced as a pinned issue to the MassOS source repository. For now, the GitHub discussions area can be used instead. The (eventual) community would also be in need of competent and reliable moderators, so feel free to get in touch if this interests you.
Repository Branches
development is going to be the only maintained branch going forward. Releases will be made as tags/snapshots of this branch, rather than being merged back into the main branch which was previously the case. development has been configured as the primary branch for git, so running git clone on the MassOS repository will automatically fetch the development branch by default.
If a hotfix update is needed between releases, then a branch will be made from the development commit corresponding to that base stable release, to ensure the fixes can be applied while keeping currently-unstable features separate.
Overview
After being put on hiatus at the end of 2022, and then being moved into an experimental phase at the beginning of 2025, official stable releases of MassOS will be resumed starting in September 2026. More information follows below.
Release Schedule
As was previously the case, releases will be produced on a monthly basis, with the version formatted as
YYYY.MMcorresponding to the year and month of release. The first new version in September 2026 will therefore be versioned as2026.09. Due to the existence of the new MassOS upgrade utility, it will be possible to upgrade from current experimental builds of MassOS to the newer release versions (however upgrading from2022.10or older is unfortunately NOT supported, and a clean reinstallation will have to be performed in this case). More information about how channels will be handled with regards to upgrading is in a following section below. However it should be noted that releases may not be published immediately at the beginning of each month. Rather, if more time is required to refine a release or iron out a particular issue, then the release may not be published until later in the month. This is primarily in an effort to ease maintenance burdens and avoid falling into similar traps which contributed to the previous discontinuation of MassOS.Builds will be hosted on the official MassOS archive server, for all supported architectures, channels, and build types (rootfs tarballs and ISO images). This is the same server that the new MassOS upgrade utility is configured to use out of the box - so it can be used both at the low level by the utility, and at the high level through web browsers as it provides the standard expected filesystem-like directory listing system. The main reason to move builds to a custom server was/is because GitHub release assets (the previously used mechanism) do not allow individual files to be more than 2 gigabytes in size.
Additionally, please be aware of the following:
If you are performing a clean (re)installation, you can refer to the installation guide, which also lists the system requirements for the newer versions of MassOS, as well as recommended hardware for (e.g.) GPUs.
New Features
The new releases of MassOS include MANY new changes and improvements compared to the pre-2023 versions, all of which can be found in the changelog.md file. However here are the most notable ones:
massos-snapd, which makes it easy to install Canonical's snapd package manager, WITHOUT needing snapd itself to be included out of the box on MassOS (due to its controversy).The MassOS documentation has also been largely expanded on and overhauled with new information relevant to the upcoming releases of MassOS, and is being continuously expanded on for future releases. The aim is to make this the central source of information for everything related to using MassOS.
Upgrade Channels
Prior to the release of
2026.09, the only upgrade channel for the new MassOS upgrade utility isexperimental. After the release, and for ongoing future releases, there will be thestablechannel as well as theexperimentalchannel. The desired channel can be specified by editing the file/etc/upgrade-massos/upgrade-massos.conf. Whichever channel you set is the channel you'll receive updates from when using the online upgrade functionality ofupgrade-massos. Roughly the channels will function as follows:stable- The stable monthly releases, versionedYYYY.MM(orYYYY.MM.2if a mid-month hotfix update is required).experimental- Unstable development builds, or the latest stable build if there are no newer development builds.Development builds, which may continue to be referred to as "experimental", will be produced up to a few times during the window between the most recent stable MassOS release and the next planned stable MassOS release, primarily to test upcoming changes and ensure stability before the next version is fully released. Unlike the versioning of the current experimental builds, the newer development builds will switch to being versioned as
YYYY.MM.devX, where the first portion is the release code of the following month, and theXrepresents the particular development build as an incremented number. For example, a build in mid-September 2026 may be called2026.10.dev1, and a build towards the end of September 2026 (but before the stable release of2026.10in October) may be called2026.10.dev2- and then when the stable version2026.10is released, it will be pushed to the experimental upgrade channel as well as the stable channel.Although it will be possible, as previously mentioned, to upgrade from current experimental builds to
2026.09when it is released, it should be noted that you will NOT be opted out of theexperimentalchannel by default after doing so. If you wish to opt out and move to the stable channel, you must replacechannel: "experimental"withchannel: "stable"in the file/etc/upgrade-massos/upgrade-massos.conf- this can be done either before or after taking the2026.09update on your machine. By comparison, clean installations of2026.09or higher will automatically be configured to use thestablechannel by default, and clean installations of future development builds will be set to useexperimentalby default.Please note that, while every attempt will be made to produce stable release builds for BOTH x86_64 and aarch64 architectures, no guarantees can be made that the same will be true for development builds. Some development builds may only be produced for x86_64, primarily to ease development work, and in particular because the only aarch64 hardware owned by the MassOS developers which is suitable enough to compile MassOS, is still nowhere near as powerful as the owned x86_64 build hardware. As a result, official aarch64 builds take over twice as long to complete as x86_64 builds. You are of course welcome to build MassOS yourself if you own powerful enough hardware yourself; the linked documentation page lists the minimum and recommended system requirements for building MassOS.
Community
Ongoing work is still being done with regards to setting up an official MassOS community and place for discussion. Primarily we are aiming to avoid Discord as well as other proprietary or otherwise ethically-questionable platforms, while retaining an interface that users are most familiar with. As a result, are currently looking into free software alternatives such as Stoat and Fluxer. When this is confirmed, another announcement will be produced as a pinned issue to the MassOS source repository. For now, the GitHub discussions area can be used instead. The (eventual) community would also be in need of competent and reliable moderators, so feel free to get in touch if this interests you.
Repository Branches
developmentis going to be the only maintained branch going forward. Releases will be made as tags/snapshots of this branch, rather than being merged back into themainbranch which was previously the case.developmenthas been configured as the primary branch for git, so runninggit cloneon the MassOS repository will automatically fetch the development branch by default.If a hotfix update is needed between releases, then a branch will be made from the
developmentcommit corresponding to that base stable release, to ensure the fixes can be applied while keeping currently-unstable features separate.