Apertis is a Debian derivative distribution geared towards the creation of product-specific images for ARM (both the 32bit ARMv7 and 64-bit ARMv8 versions using the hardfloat ABI) and Intel x86-64 (64-bit) systems.

Apertis v2024pre is the preview release of the Apertis v2024 stable release flow that will lead to the LTS Apertis v2024.0 release in March 2024.

This is the second Apertis release that is built on top of Debian Bookworm along with several customizations and it ships the latest Linux LTS kernel 6.6.x series. Later releases in the v2024 channel will be tracking kernel updates in this LTS series as well as Debian Bookworm Stable Channel.

Test results for the v2024pre release are available in the following test reports:

Release flow

  • 2022 Q4: v2024dev0
  • 2023 Q1: v2024dev1
  • 2023 Q2: v2024dev2
  • 2023 Q3: v2024dev3
  • 2023 Q4: v2024pre
  • 2024 Q1: v2024.0
  • 2024 Q2: v2024.1
  • 2024 Q3: v2024.2
  • 2024 Q4: v2024.3
  • 2025 Q1: v2024.4
  • 2025 Q2: v2024.5
  • 2025 Q3: v2024.6
  • 2025 Q4: v2024.7

Release downloads

Apertis v2024pre.0 images
Intel 64-bit fixedfunction hmi base SDK SDK
ARM 32-bit (U-Boot) fixedfunction hmi
ARM 64-bit (U-Boot) fixedfunction
ARM 64-bit (Raspberry Pi) fixedfunction hmi

The Intel fixedfunction and hmi images are tested on the reference hardware (UP Squared 6000), but they can run on any UEFI-based x86-64 system. The sdk image is tested under VirtualBox.

Apertis v2024pre package list

The full list of packages available from the v2024pre APT repositories is available in tab-separated value (TSV) format for easy processing in spreadsheets:

Apertis v2024pre repositories

deb https://repositories.apertis.org/apertis/ v2024pre target development sdk non-free

New features

New versions of core packages

As part of the rebase on top of Debian Bookworm all the packages have been updated. As a summary this is a list of the packages available:

The Debian release notes provides additional information about the new version of packages.

Add support for podman

As working with different container technologies provides extra flexibility to build products, Apertis added the support for podman (libpod). During this work, special care has been taken to ensure that this package and its dependencies match Apertis license expectations.

Include user friendly license reports for target images

As part of the evolution of Apertis, a new set of reports based on OSS Review Toolkit are included for every target image. These reports are human friendly, allowing an easy review of the licenses used by Apertis images.

Include builddeps reports

Following the idea of provide more resources for Software Build of Materials, now Apertis provides a report for the build dependencies of every package in the target images, including its version. This information helps to easily track CVEs that might potentially affect Apertis packages.

Support for running integration tests on MRs

Following the guidelines described in the Apertis test strategy this release provides initial support for running automated tests on LAVA in the context of a MR. With this feature, packages changes can be validated by running integration tests before landing them to main branches.

It is currently recommended that only packages where potential regressions may have a high-impact on the system stability have this feature enabled, given the extra resources required to run the tests.

As before, all available integration tests are also run regularly on daily image builds.

Build and integration

Improve aptly integration and performance

After switching to aptly as the publisher for Apertis packages several improvements have been made to the integration with OBS as well as the performance during publishing. As a result, the overhead in the process of creating managing APT repositories has been dramatically reduced, both in the manual effort required and in the amount of infrastructure resources.

Support for more fine-grained access roles in QA Report App

With the goal of providing better access control to the QA Report App, now three different roles are defined to allow performing the following actions: view results, submit manual tests results and tag images. These changes should allow teams to better split responsibilities, by only allowing the necessary access to specific users/groups.

Deprecations and ABI/API breaks

Regressions

No known regressions.

Deprecations

No known deprecations

Breaks

No known breaks

Infrastructure

Apertis Docker images

The Apertis Docker images provide a unified and easily reproducible build environment for developers and services.

As of today, this includes the apertis-base, apertis-image-builder, apertis-package-source-builder, apertis-flatdeb-builder, apertis-documentation-builder, and apertis-testcases-builder, Docker images.

Images

Image daily builds, as well as release builds can be found at https://images.apertis.org/

Infrastructure overview

The Apertis Image Recipes provides an overview of the image building process and the involved services.

Known issues

High

  • Issue #363 aum-ota-rollback-blacklist: test failed
  • Issue #364 aum-offline-upgrade-branch: test failed
  • Issue #365 aum-ota-auto: test failed
  • Issue #366 aum-ota-signed: test failed
  • Issue #371 aum-out-of-space: test failed
  • Issue #411 aum-ota-out-of-space: test failed
  • Issue #419 High level tracking of AUM issues
  • Issue #431 Package rust-coreutils does not provide license mapping information
  • Issue #437 Weekly images are not linked properly
  • Issue #448 ade-commands: test failed
  • Issue #451 dbus-installed-tests: test failed
  • Issue #456 SBOM support for rust packages does not work in v2024pre
  • Issue #461 sdk-debos-image-building: test failed
  • Issue #466 AUM out of space tests fail on amd64
  • Issue #469 aum-power-cut: test failed
  • Issue #474 “WiFi WPA3-Transition-Mode access point” (AP mode) connection is not re-established after rebooting AP.
  • Issue #476 “apertis-update-manager-usb-unplug” is getting failed. Update is not starting automatically
  • Issue #479 apparmor-basic-profiles: test failed
  • Issue #480 aum-ota-api: test failed
  • Issue #485 AUM tests fail on v2024pre armhf
  • Issue #487 “sdk-vb-fullscreen” fails on “SDK” and “BASE-SDK” of “v2023.3rc1”.
  • Issue #488 Flashing an HMI image on the eMMC of R-car H3e-2G board leads to a kernel panic.
  • Issue #490 gpgv (sequioa) crashes when added debian archives

Needs triage

Normal

  • Issue #7 Crash when initialising egl on ARM target
  • Issue #32 Gitlab pipeline OBS job reported “success” but OBS build was “unresolvable”
  • Issue #36 dashboard: gnome-settings-daemon-data incorrectly flagged as missing the git repository
  • Issue #118 tiny-container-system-connectivity-profile: test failed
  • Issue #246 tiny-container-user-connectivity-profile: test failed
  • Issue #252 tiny-container-system-basic: test failed
  • Issue #330 datefudge: 64-bit time_t support on 32-bit archs
  • Issue #333 tiny-container-user-aa-enforcement: test failed
  • Issue #337 flatpak-run-demo-cli-app: test failed
  • Issue #338 psdk-test not executing properly.
  • Issue #339 Up Squared 6000 board fails to boot randomly
  • Issue #342 tiny-container-system-aa-enforcement: test failed
  • Issue #344 tiny-container-user-basic: test failed
  • Issue #377 import-debian-package issues during package import
  • Issue #378 apparmor-gstreamer1-0: test failed
  • Issue #396 Pipeline to build package fails during build-source for texlive-extra
  • Issue #405 traprain: test failed
  • Issue #413 obs-runner: Disabled architectures on a OBS package get re-enabled when CI creates a branch
  • Issue #415 sdk-vb-fullscreen test case is failing.
  • Issue #438 pstore-test case is getting failed in armhf
  • Issue #441 tiny-container-user-device-sharing: test failed
  • Issue #455 tiny-container-system-folder-sharing: test failed
  • Issue #459 tiny-container-system-device-sharing: test failed
  • Issue #465 tiny-container-system-seccomp: test failed
  • Issue #486 “webkit2gtk-ac-3d-rendering” fails in “ARMHF” of “v2023.3rc1”.
  • Issue #491 AM62x: Do not install firmware prerequisites in image for boot firmware generation

Low

  • Issue #15 Fix the kernel command line generation in OSTRee for FIT image
  • Issue #23 Remote outputs and local output, buffer size combined in Maynard/GTK
  • Issue #382 Investigate why gitlab is sending warnings about new sign ons from internal IPs