Hey everyone,
I’m incredibly proud to announce the release of Liya Linux v2.4, codenamed Shravya — a Sanskrit word meaning praise-worthy. This release is not just a milestone in terms of technology, but also a deeply personal achievement.
Liya has always aimed to be a clean, modern Linux distribution that respects your hardware and your time. With Shravya, that vision becomes even sharper.
This release marks a complete backend overhaul, deeper performance integration, new tools, and a more minimal, efficient system. It's the result of months of solo development — countless hours of refining, testing, breaking, and rebuilding.
🏗️ Fundamental Architecture Changes
🚫 Dropping Legacy CPU Support
With Shravya, support for the x86_64-v1 microarchitecture has been officially dropped. This means older systems using the following CPUs will no longer be supported:
- AMD K8-family
- AMD K10-family
- AMD Family 10h (Barcelona)
- Intel Pentium 4 / Xeon (Nocona)
- Intel Core 2 (all variants)
This was a tough decision, but a necessary one. Supporting these aging architectures meant sacrificing modern performance.
✅ Embracing x86_64-v2 and x86_64-v3
The system is now optimized for x86_64-v2 and v3, allowing better compiler optimizations, reduced latency, and smarter memory use. If your processor supports v3, I strongly recommend using the corresponding ISO — the speed boost is noticeable across daily tasks. We (ALHP Project) use really safe compilation flags like -flto=auto, -march=x86-64-v3 and -O3, keeping emphasis on full compatibility
Shoutout to the ALHP project for making microarch-specific builds more accessible.
⚙️ Core Improvements
🧬 Switched to the Xanmod Kernel
Shravya ships with the linux-xanmod kernel by default. This kernel is optimized for responsiveness and performance, making Liya snappier for daily use, gaming, creative workloads, and development.
This kernel alone has significantly improved performance in benchmarks and real-world usage.
🧠 Smarter RAM Compression: ZRAM/Zswap
Memory management has been rethought:
- If your system has more than 8 GiB of RAM, zram will be auto-enabled at install time.
- For systems with 8 GiB or less, zswap will be used for better compatibility.
These changes improve performance and reduce swap-related disk usage without requiring user intervention.
🛠️ Introducing Saanvi – Your System Manager
Saanvi
Saanvi is a brand-new GTK4-based system manager written for this release. It's not just for Liya — it’s built to be configurable via TOML, making it portable and adaptable to other distributions too.
Features:
- Modern, minimal UI (thanks to libadwaita)
- No root daemon, light on resources
- TOML configuration for defining UI behavior
- Easy to extend, inspect services, manage startup, and more
Saanvi represents a huge personal effort and will continue to evolve over time. It’s an early but solid foundation.
📦 v2 & v3 ISO Builds
You can now download two ISO variants:
x86_64-v2 — for general modern systemsx86_64-v3 — recommended for newer hardware
These are separate builds, compiled specifically for your microarchitecture to ensure optimal performance.
❌ No Direct Upgrade from v2.3
This release involved deep architectural changes, and as such, upgrading from Liya v2.3 is not possible.
A clean install is strongly recommended.
The system layout, core packages, and even compiler flags have changed drastically. While I know this may be inconvenient for some, it's necessary for moving forward cleanly.
🧼 Lighter, Faster, Cleaner
Users told me Liya was getting bloated — and I listened.
In Shravya:
- Removed unnecessary packages from the default install
- Reduced background services and startup tasks
- Streamlined the desktop experience to be clean and focused
The result is a faster, lighter system that respects your attention and hardware.
💬 A Personal Word
This release marks the beginning of a new chapter.
While Ashini Group provided valuable support during earlier stages of development, including mentorship, infrastructure, and incubation — they’ve since stepped away as planned. I'm deeply grateful for their backing during that formative phase.
From this release forward, Liya Linux is entirely developed and maintained by me, a single independent developer.
This means slower updates at times — but also more control, more care, and more soul in every release.
🪟 Thinking of Moving On From Windows?
With Windows 10 reaching end-of-support, there’s never been a better time to switch to something lighter, cleaner, and faster.
Liya Linux v2.4 Shravya is:
- Clean by default
- Built for modern hardware
- Free from telemetry
- Easy to use and configure
- Actively focused on performance
🙏 Gratitude
This wouldn’t be possible without the encouragement, support, and feedback from:
- Ashini Group, for their early incubation
- Deeksha College, for moral and technical support
- My user base — however small — for being patient and passionate
Every bug report, suggestion, and word of encouragement matters more than you know.
🧭 The Road Ahead
Shravya lays the foundation for the future of Liya Linux.
Next on the roadmap:
- More Saanvi features
- Possibly more beauty
- Better hybrid graphics support
- Community involvement
Until then, I hope you enjoy using Shravya as much as I’ve enjoyed building it.
EDIT: Pamac Takes time to launch, it is because aur and flatpak database is updated
— With gratitude,
Sayed M. Hisham
Developer, Liya Linux
KNOWN ISSUES
Search option in cinnamenu doesnt work
workaround
sudo rm -rf /usr/share/cinnamon/applets/Cinnamenu@json
sudo pacman -Sy cinnamenu
