Changelog: Fixing the Fork’s Systemic Pain

2026-09-22. This round of fixes spans the update tool, the Welcome app and the installer, all exposed by real installation testing. Versions involved: linxira-update 0.1.3, linxira-welcome 1.0.4, and the next install image (installer changes already merged to main).

Where forking hurts

Linxira OS is forked from an Arch base. In the first month after the fork, hidden assumptions inherited from upstream started blowing up one by one — the kind of problems that only surface when you watch “someone else” install the system for the first time.

1. The update tool false-flagging “unable to determine ownership”

pacman -Qmq returns 1 even when there are no foreign packages. The old code treated “empty set” as “detection failure” — so the cleaner your [linxira] repository setup (which is exactly the end state we want), the harder the update tool failed. Fixed: only exit codes ≥ 2 count as failure. The same batch adds: check timeout raised from 30s to 120s (downloading full databases on CN networks routinely exceeds 30 seconds — “slow” was being misread as “stuck”), and one automatic retry when checkupdates hits a transient download failure.

2. Package name ≠ binary name: three gray tiles on COSMIC

Arch’s cosmic-terminal package installs a binary called /usr/bin/cosmic-term. The Welcome app’s “Terminal” and “Config CLI” tiles were checking a path that does not exist, so both stayed gray on COSMIC; the linxira-update --launch terminal fallback chain also fell through all three candidates — “click, nothing happens”. The “System Settings” tile was hard-coded to KDE’s systemsettings. All three fixed with per-desktop candidate fallbacks (cosmic-term → konsole → xterm; cosmic-settings → systemsettings).

3. Dark mode that follows the desktop

Qt has no platform-theme plugin on COSMIC, so a dark desktop got a blinding white window. Welcome 1.0.4 now reads the freedesktop color-scheme portal (org.freedesktop.appearance) and applies a Fusion dark palette — highlight in our brand teal — when dark is preferred.

4. Installer: localized mirrors + server path unblocked

• Chinese installs get CN mirrors first: when the install language is Chinese, the target’s mirrorlist is written directly with Tsinghua/USTC/Aliyun/NJU mirrors instead of relying on reflector’s global ranking — “reachable” is not “fast”, and foreign mirrors have dragged first updates into timeouts. Non-Chinese installs keep the original behavior.
• Flathub CN mirror preseeded: /etc/flatpak/remotes.d gets a SJTU-mirror Flathub definition, so cosmic-store works out of the box (dl.flathub.org is effectively unreachable from CN).
• sddm / cronie demoted to non-mandatory: server and minimal installs no longer hard-fail when individual service names change.

Removing third-party distro repository dependencies

The hidden dependencies inherited at fork time are going to zero: the packaging CI’s check-boundaries.sh has always banned CachyOS / AUR / Seafoam sources in PKGBUILDs; the install image contains only the official Arch repositories plus the signed [linxira] repository, with kernels being official linux / linux-lts — no third-party distro build artifacts at all. What remains are a few “parameter reference” comments (zram, sysctl tuning values) — homage, not dependency.

What’s next

The next step is full Linux bootstrap development: using our own toolchain (Bio SDK, Zeta) to progressively replace the borrowed base with layers we fully control. See today’s companion post “What Omarchy Teaches Us”.