Reader supplied reviews for Vanilla OS Average rating 6.6 from 38 review(s) What are your thoughts on Vanilla OS? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: Rating:    out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: Version: 3 Rating: 9 Date: 2026-11-12 Country: United States Votes: 0 My Linux journey began in 2000. Since then, I've tried at least a dozen distros, most of which are among the most popular. I'm not a developer or a person who is prone to digging deep and tweaking config files and the like. I prefer a distro that just works. Lately, I've been researching and testing rolling releases as well as immutable distros. I like the strengths an immutable distro offers users like me. Among those I've tried are Fedora's Silverblue and Knioite, but KDE is too busy for me, so I choose GNOME for both its aesthetic and operational simplicity. You won't find a dash or icons on my desktop, and keep it as minimal as possible. I prefer using the keyboard as much as possible and access my apps with the launcher and keyboard shortcuts. During my research, I repeatedly read promising reviews about Vanilla OS and decided to give it a spin. I liked that the installer was basic and uncomplicated. I knew the installation would take longer than installing other distros, so that was not an issue. Afterward, I installed my usual apps, rebooted, and enjoyed how Vanilla OS looks and functions. So far, the only issue I've had was trying to install the VPN I use on my other devices. The VPN's support team provided CLI commands and a workaround, but nothing worked. Meanwhile, I've settled with using my browsers' VPN extension because I may use a different VPN, if at all, in the future. Here's what I love about Vanilla OS: its simplicity, speed, rolling release, and stability with its immutability, and rollback if something breaks. I realize that Vanilla OS is still a work in progress, but it fits the bill for me and my needs. Other than the issue I've had trying to install my VPN, I have nothing remotely negative to say about Vanilla OS. I had a similar problem with Fedora's rpm-ostree. Perhaps VPNs are not what they're cracked up to be anyway? I'm the kind of user who's probably fairly secure without one. If you're on the fence about Vanilla Os, I recommend trying it out anyway. You may be pleasantly surised. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 2 Rating: 8 Date: 2026-07-22 Country: Türkiye Votes: 8 Solid, actually the best vision about a distro. But it needs to be developed. Its still new to town. Lets wait for it. For now you can't use tailscale. You can't really also use any tool that is like tailscale. So this is BEST choice for people who is not into tech, and just wanna use a pc for common things its for you. But if you are into tech i think we need to wait. When it gets well developed, i can't wait to use it as my daily drive distro. Like i said it really has a solid vision. I don't ever think tailscale will be usable tho. Their philosophy: "Stability is the Feature" — they'd rather remove a broken feature than ship it. That's admirable but means niche stuff like Tailscale support is low priority. IF YOU REALLY NEED TO USE TAILSCALE (Which makes me sad cuz i love it) you can use custom ISO (sucks. Needs maintaining tho) or you can use user-space tailscale. That is limited but still for basic VPN access to your tailnet? This works fine. I heard NVIDIA has problems but didn't encounter any. Waydroid is a mess but not because of the Vanila OS it is because waydroid itself is generally a mess. Not even talking about NVIDIA cards doesn't still work on waydroid. (So i heard they removed Android app support because it wasn't stable enough) But yeah. Its so user-friendly. Its like cousin of NixOS who holds hands of you and doesn't let you waste your time or brain. Also Vanilla OS will get better with the Vanilla OS 3 "Reunion". Im so excited about that. They will rewrite bunch of things. ARM64 support coming (Raspberry Pi, Apple Silicon VMs), GNOME 50 with new terminal (Ptyxis), they rebuilt their entire package infrastructure, APX GUI now on Flathub (so anyone can use it). Verdict: Vanilla OS will get more polished and stable. It grows fast. Thanks to Vanilla OS team. Especially Mirko Brombin, an Italian developer that created Bottles tho. See the obsession? His design philosophy revolves around sandboxing. That is a interesing and actual useful vision for linux future. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 2 Rating: 8 Date: 2026-02-03 Votes: 3 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. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 38 reader reviews of Vanilla OS...