Published . Development milestone: October 31, 2026.
Testing Ecliptic across Arch and Debian.
October 31 expanded testing on Debian trixie alongside Arch, brought the first apps to a Debian test channel, and advanced Mail, Terminal and Phobos compatibility work.
October 31 expanded the work to see how Ecliptic runs on Debian’s stable release, trixie, alongside its existing Arch system. The tests explore a different update pace while keeping the desktop and apps familiar across both systems.
The long-term choice remains open. Ecliptic may ultimately offer both Arch and Debian versions; testing is still too early to settle that. The everyday Ecliptic system remained on Arch at the cutoff, and the Debian packages and installer were still development work.
Apps that install and update as packages
The first Debian packages for Files and Terminal reached a separate test channel. Fresh virtual machines installed them, upgraded from an earlier build, opened both windows and removed them again. The final removal check found the same package names and files as before installation, with Debian’s own intervening updates accounted for.
That matters because a desktop assembled by copying programs onto a test computer has no reliable way to keep those programs current. Packaging gives the next installation a repeatable starting point and a route to updates.
The channel checks also accepted a valid signed index and refused seven wrong-key or tampering cases. These were development checks, with initial trust setup and protection against replaying an old signed index still requiring work before public release. Terminal’s start-page cards were also difficult to read in the minimal test environment; that remained an integration issue for the full desktop.
Ecliptic’s copy of Debian’s repositories became available for development, preserving Debian’s signatures and checking downloaded packages. Its channels simply followed Debian at this stage. The additional holds and virtual-machine promotion checks used by Ecliptic’s Arch mirror had not been added to the Debian path.
Keeping the desktop working across both systems
Shared app changes reached the main development branch so the same code could work with Arch’s newer libraries and trixie’s older ones. Desktop panels can find their display library without assuming an Arch-specific location, and programs use the signal-handling interface available on each system.
The portability work also found an everyday Terminal bug on both systems. Trying to start a program that was missing could crash Terminal and take its other windows with it. The fix keeps the affected pane open with the reason, lets Restart shell or Reconnect try again, and leaves other tabs and panes running. Its regression test exercises a failed start, another failed retry, a successful retry once the program exists and a new tab afterward.
Ecliptic AI also handles an app’s menu entry disappearing between discovery and launch. Its tool reports that the app did not start, while the AI window carries on.
These shared changes were merged but had not been published as a new Arch app release. The Debian Files and Terminal test packages carried the relevant compatibility fixes.
Mail that preserves its messages and respects closing
Mail’s quieter lifecycle moved from its prototype branch into main after review. Closing the last window stops new-mail notifications, while allowing work already requested to finish. Scheduled sending uses its separate timer-driven program rather than leaving inbox synchronization running indefinitely.
The review fixed several edge cases: a scheduled time arriving while the sender was already running, one account’s error preventing others from continuing, and a sent draft whose server copy could not yet be removed. The failed-send notification can also launch Mail when no window is open. That launch call was checked on a virtual display; clicking the real notification still needed a hands-on trial.
Mail also gained its own compatibility code for Python 3.13. It preserves stored message files across the two Python versions and supports watching for new mail, folder names containing spaces and server capabilities announced after sign-in. A synthetic mailbox populated on Arch was copied to trixie and compared: stored messages, searches and conversation results matched. A message then written on trixie could be read back on Arch.
The final recorded Arch review ran 325 Mail tests with three skips, with the accessibility test excluded. Trixie’s isolated runs covered the window and test-server paths, but its service-stop test still lacked a real user service manager. Real provider sign-ins, the normal late-send threshold and the update path on an everyday computer remained to check. This was merged development work, not a newly delivered Mail package.
Phobos and a rebuilt desktop foundation
A repeatable build process now produces the newer desktop components trixie needs. A clean virtual machine installed the development base package and reached Hyprland with Ecliptic’s configuration. This did not yet include a fully packaged Ecliptic login and desktop startup.
One rebuilt component addresses the GTK memory error found during the earlier display-switching trial. An instrumented before-and-after check showed the stock library releasing the wrong memory and the corrected build releasing its mapped display-format table. That verifies a specific fix, rather than establishing that every monitor or KVM problem is solved.
Phobos 0.8B also answered in a Debian virtual machine using the same model-server options as Ecliptic AI. Both the CPU path and the Vulkan path worked. Vulkan used a software renderer in this test, so it establishes backend compatibility, not real GPU acceleration or speed. The model package built, but had not been uploaded to the test channel.
Physical trials supplied another useful result: trixie booted with Secure Boot on, including a short NVIDIA desktop run after driver-key enrollment. That run did not establish suspend, display-switching or long-term stability, and the installer still needed a clearer enrollment flow.
Software on apt, with integration still ahead
The Debian version of Ecliptic Software reached the test channel with search, Explore, package installation and removal, vendor-app recipes and system updates through apt. Virtual-machine checks exercised refused authorization, offline recovery, a full disk, skipped updates and a batch update. They also found and fixed a keyboard-focus trap inside a closed details section.
A final review corrected vendor packages being described as Debian packages. That correction remained on the Debian packaging branch and was not yet in the uploaded Software package. The real password dialog, complete desktop restart handling and a fully packaged Debian installation still needed integration checks.
The Debian experiment also makes the maintenance work clearer: components rebuilt outside Debian’s normal packages still need their fixes tracked and delivered. October 31 established a working test channel and more shared app code, giving the testing a repeatable foundation. Further testing will help determine whether Ecliptic offers one version or both; no public Debian installer is announced by this entry.