FlickOS 2.0

FlickOS 2.0 is a rebuild from scratch on Debian 13 "trixie" with a lightweight Wayland desktop (labwc). It ships as a bootable live ISO with a graphical installer.

Important: reinstall required if you are coming from 1.x

FlickOS 1.x was based on Ubuntu 20.04 and LXLE. There is no in-place upgrade to 2.0. Back up your files, then install 2.0 fresh.

What's new

• Debian 13 base (Linux 6.12 LTS), 64-bit only. One ISO boots on both BIOS and UEFI machines and can be written to a USB stick.
• labwc desktop, with waybar, mako notifications, fuzzel launcher, foot terminal and the PCManFM file manager. You log in on the console (tty1) and the desktop starts; there is no display manager.
• Three desktop layouts, switchable live from Settings → Desktop Layout & Style. It also opens once on a new account's first login:
• Redmond (default): one bottom panel
• Cupertino: top bar and dock
• Traditional: top panel with a window list
• Arc-Dark look everywhere: GTK theme, Numix-Circle icons, panel, terminal, launcher, notifications, window borders, boot menu, boot splash and installer. A Light style recolors the desktop live. Fine-tune GTK settings in Settings → Appearance.
• Optional window tiling (flick-tiler), off by default. Super+T turns it on or off, Super+M cycles the arrangement, Super+J/K moves focus and Super+Shift+J/K swaps windows. The panel has a button for it too.
• Wallpaper picker (Waypaper), with a default wallpaper per layout.
• Calamares graphical installer, with FlickOS branding.
• Ready to use: Firefox ESR, LibreOffice, VLC, Mousepad, Ristretto, Evince and Xarchiver, plus Bluetooth, printing and Flatpak (Flathub).
• Sound and network: PipeWire audio and NetworkManager.
• Secure by default: firewall (ufw) on with incoming connections blocked, and automatic security updates.
• Updates for FlickOS itself come through its own apt repository (https://dvbondoy.github.io/flickos-apt), so sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade also updates the FlickOS desktop, layouts and settings.

Trying it and installing

1. Download FlickOS-64bit-v2.0.iso and check it: sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS
2. Write it to a USB stick (for example with Balena Etcher or dd) and boot it.
3. The live session logs in automatically as user (password live). Choose Install FlickOS from the right-click desktop menu to install.

Basics

Right-click the desktop for the menu.

Known issues

• Tiling limits: windows that are already open when tiling is turned on stay floating until you tile them with Super+Shift+T, and all monitors use the same arrangement.
• There is no upgrade path from 1.x (see above).

Downloads

• ISO: https://sourceforge.net/projects/flickos/files/v2.0/
• Source code and issues: https://github.com/dvbondoy/FlickOS
• Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/flickos/