AxOS is an ambitious community-driven Linux distribution that takes the bleeding-edge reliability of Arch Linux and wraps it in a carefully crafted desktop experience of its own making. Where most Arch-based derivatives simply repackage the upstream GNOME or KDE Plasma desktops, AxOS differentiates itself with the Ax Desktop Environment — a custom layer built atop GNOME Shell that delivers a distinctive, cohesive aesthetic with its own icon theme, shell extensions, control panels, and visual identity. The result is a distro that looks and feels purpose-built rather than assembled from pre-existing parts.
Installation & First Boot
AxOS uses the Calamares installer, providing a familiar graphical wizard that guides users through partitioning, locale, user creation, and bootloader setup. The process is smooth and takes roughly 10–15 minutes on modern hardware. Upon first boot, users are greeted by a polished welcome app that highlights key features, points toward the AUR, and walks through initial customisation options — a thoughtful touch that lowers the bar for those coming from more hand-held distributions.
The Ax Desktop Environment
The centrepiece of AxOS is its Ax DE. Built on GNOME Shell, it inherits the underlying stability and Wayland-first architecture of upstream GNOME while diverging meaningfully in look and workflow. Custom shell extensions provide a refined top bar, a dock-style taskbar, and tighter system tray integration. The default theme pairs muted, purple-tinted dark palettes with crisp typography, giving the desktop a premium feel. App animations are smooth and consistent, and the system settings panel has been reorganised for clarity. Power users will appreciate that all of this is still GNOME underneath — extensions from the GNOME extensions website largely continue to work.
Software & Package Management
As an Arch derivative, AxOS gives users access to the entire pacman repository ecosystem and the Arch User Repository (AUR). The default AUR helper is yay, pre-installed and ready to use. AxOS also ships its own small repository of custom packages including the Ax DE components, ensuring the desktop environment receives targeted updates independently of upstream GNOME releases. Common multimedia codecs, fonts, and firmware blobs are included out of the box, meaning media playback and hardware compatibility are handled without post-install configuration for most users.
Performance
AxOS runs noticeably well on mid-range hardware. Memory usage at idle sits around 900 MB–1.2 GB, which is reasonable for a GNOME-based system. Boot times on NVMe storage are typically under 10 seconds. Because AxOS ships a relatively lean default package set — focusing on the Ax DE and a curated selection of GTK apps — there is little bloat to trim. Gaming is supported through Steam (available in the official repos), Lutris, and the full suite of Proton/Wine tools available on Arch.
Updates & Rolling Release Model
As a rolling release, AxOS receives continuous updates from Arch's stable repositories plus its own overlay. Users should be comfortable with the occasional need to intervene on an update — reading Arch Linux news before running system upgrades is advisable. That said, AxOS ships a graphical update notifier and has documented its upgrade policies clearly, making the rolling model more approachable than raw Arch for less experienced users.
Community & Documentation
AxOS has a growing Discord community and a dedicated wiki. Because the base is Arch, the extensive Arch Wiki remains applicable for the vast majority of troubleshooting scenarios. The Ax DE–specific documentation is developing but covers the most common customisation and troubleshooting scenarios. The project is actively maintained by a small but responsive development team.