Show HN: AsteroidOS 2.0 – Nobody asked, we shipped anyway

[moWerk]

Hi HN, After roughly 8 years of silently rolling 1.1 nightlies, we finally tagged a proper stable 2.0 release. We built this because wrist-sized Linux is genuinely fun to hack on, and because a handful of us think it's worth keeping capable hardware alive long after manufacturers move on. Smartwatches don't really get old — the silicon is basically the same as it was a decade ago. We just keep making it useful for us.

No usage stats, no tracking, no illusions of mass adoption. The only real signal we get is the occasional person who appears in our Matrix chat going "hey, it booted on my watch from 2014 and now it's usable again" — and that's plenty.

Privacy is non-negotiable: zero telemetry, no cloud, full local control. Longevity is the other half: we refuse to let good hardware become e-waste just because support ended. On the learning side, it's been one of the best playgrounds: instant feedback on your wrist makes QML/Qt, JavaScript watchfaces and embedded Linux feel tangible. The community is small and kind — perfect for people who want to learn open-source dev without gatekeeping.

Technically we're still pragmatic: libhybris + older kernels on most devices since it just works, but we've already mainlined rinato (Samsung Gear 2) and sparrow (ASUS ZenWatch 2) — rinato even boots with a usable UI. That's the direction we're pushing toward.

Repo: https://github.com/AsteroidOS Install images & docs: https://asteroidos.org 2.0 demo video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6FiQz0yACc Announcement post: https://asteroidos.org/news/2-0-release/

Questions, port requests, mentoring offers, criticism, weird ideas — all welcome. We do this because shaping a tiny, open wearable UX and infrastructure is oddly satisfying, and because Linux on the wrist still feels like a playground worth playing in.

Cheers, the AsteroidOS Team

[coffeeenjoyer]

Wow, this looks pretty cool! It seems you have quite a few features going... The main reason I haven't gotten a smartwatch yet is because of privacy concerns. But now seems like a good time to experiment with one of the watches you support.

I also still dream of one day daily driving a Linux smartphone, but that feels a bit more unrealistic to me, as I have more expectations from a phone, like being able to use bank apps and having a good battery life. But for a smartwatch, which I only expect to show me some biometrics and pass notifications from my phone, this seems perfect.

On this note: aren't JavaScript and QML/Qt too heavy/bloated for a device so small? I expect them to constrain performance and battery life quite a bit, but I admit I don't have a clue and would love to be proven wrong...

[moWerk]

QML runs interpreted at runtime and Qt is very close to native C++, so both are actually quite lean and fast on these devices — the overhead is surprisingly small compared to full Android Wear, and we've tuned it heavily over the years to keep battery and UI responsiveness solid. If you see devices lagging, like the sawfish (Huawei Watch 2), its usually due to updating the android base to a newer one as the manufacturer planned for and losing some of those optimizations in the process.

[hexfish]

> The main reason I haven't gotten a smartwatch yet is because of privacy concerns

Have you looked into Gadgetbridge? https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/

[dariosalvi78]

BangleJS has an embedded JS interpreter and runs just fine for days without a battery recharge.

[bsimpson]

Wild to see such fragmentation in such a niche space. It's an aftermarket Linux flash for smartwatches, and there are companion apps for SailfishOS and Ubuntu Touch, which are extremely niche flavors of the already very niche mobile Linux.

[refulgentis]

> niche space

Think of the space as less "I want Linux on my wrist", and more "I want a [cheap || not 1st world expensive] smartwatch as a gift."

These folks do gods work of making them supported and a real shared platform (c.f. their self-post "The only real signal we get is occasional [chat visitor] going "hey, it booted on my watch from 2014 and now it's usable again"")

[dylan604]

Not being much of a watch person let alone a smartwatch aficionado, I had no idea there were even that many smart watches. The long list looks impressive. I wonder if there are a lot of the same guts so it's not as bad of a nightmare to maintain as it looks. Either way, the list of supported devices is impressive.

[darkwater]

This is a feature, not a bug. Like the many Linux distros we have or the many UI/WM you can use on desktop Linux.

[ulfw]

I am running HarmonyOS on my watch (moved from Apple Watch to Huawei GT-6 41mm) now. Turns out it doesn't matter as third party apps on watches generally suck anyway (low functionality, mostly just companions to iOS/Android app, bad/not many options for UI).

[zozbot234]

These are all Linux kernel-based WearOS watches (not just smartbands running a barebones microcontroller), so could they be running a mainlined kernel and Linux OS such as pmOS? Of course the UI layer might be specific to the form factor, but everything else could just be standard.

[verin0x]

In theory yes. Asteroidos has experimental support for a mainline watch. Most vendors don't upstream their drivers and kernel mods. Also Android drivers use an abstraction layer and a different format to some extentent. So you have to reverse and write your own driver.

So they could run mainline if the vendor or a user bothers to upstream drivers and hardware quirks.

A lot of the vendors don't meet quality expectations of the kernel team and sources are usually for older kernel versions and the code would need changes or refactoring.

[nunobrito]

Thanks for sharing, indeed it is good to reuse and improve hardware whenever possible rather than just going to waste. Had never heard of this project before, so it was a good find.

I see the supported watches, still have a doubt: what is scenario looking like for the cheap smarwatches from Aliexpress and similar? Any chance to also flash a new firmware or is this limited to more CPU-powerful watches?

[casept]

Most cheap watches are microcontroller-only. AsteroidOS is a Linux distro and therefore needs a chip capable of running some Linux variant.

[coderai]

Initially, I read Asteroids 2 :P If someone clicked like me thinking of the game, I recommend playing this one :D https://coderai.itch.io/clashroids

[morrisjm]

Turns out you can play Asteroids on AsteroidOS https://github.com/moWerk/asteroid-blaster

[adithyassekhar]

This is seriously impressive! Never knew after market os's were even a thing for watches with their proprietary drivers.

I like that peeking watch face switcher, companies like samsung even after all these years still takes way too long to apply a watch face.

[moWerk]

Thanks so much! The peek gesture is inherited from lipstick and we kind of built our UI around those possibilities.

[tamimio]

Thanks for sharing this, it looks promising!

I would love if it would support some of the no-brand Chinese watches you get usually for cheap, the hardware is great but the software usually is bad or outdated. I use one now, I don’t even know anything about it other than the Bluetooth name and app name, but it’s good in measuring distance, blood pressure, heart rate, sleep, among others that’s surprisingly it’s very accurate, it also has a builtin strong flashlight, I like it but with a fully fledged linux would definitely be better.

[MayeulC]

Hey, thanks for the new release. I should definitely fix my wristband and start wearing my AsteroisOS watch again (LG Lenok).

You have probably addressed that somewhere, but would it be possible to run your UI stack somewhere else? (PostmarketOS).

My other wish for AsteroidOS would be for it to leverage Wi-Fi better. Not sure how much more energy it would use, but having a longer range for my notifications would be nice (at least on LAN). Being able to perform a few other actions independently of my phone would be great: weather % time updates, e-mail notifications, home assistant control, etc. I get that it may affect battery life as well.

While I'm at it: tiny bug report, but I adjusted the time while the stopwatch was running, and this affected the stopwatch result.

[moWerk]

Nice, thanks for the bug report! I have made in issue in the stopwatch repo: https://github.com/AsteroidOS/asteroid-stopwatch/issues/13

We have implemented a wifi toggle in the quickpanel with 2.0. But the wifi credentials still need to be entered into connmanctl on the cli. As soon as you got wifi set up and connected, you can already now sync weather data usin asteroid-weatherfetch. But right, wifi usually uses up to 30% more power and should be enabled selectively.

For the postmarket question, yes, it is our longterm goal to mainline watches, which we are sort of doing in coorperation with the postmarket guys. But thats a humongous task and part of the idea of this 2.0 release is to interest capable contributors to push things further ;)

[pinkmuffinere]

This looks cool!! I have an Apple Watch that I’ve been perfectly satisfied with, but it strikes me that AsteroidOS might allow me to explore other unique smart devices relatively cheaply, by buying used/non-supported stuff and trying it out. Are there any in particular that you’d recommend to a newbie? Hopefully something that is both eBay-able[1] and fun?

[1] of course open to other sources as well

[Pxtl]

I have a galaxy watch 4 which I'd hoped was old-enough to be supported but I can see that it is not. I get it, hardware is hard.

I'm curious, is the challenge with newer hardware lack of chipset drivers for modern watches, or is there a fundamental difference between the new devices and the old ones that make them completely incompatible with asteroidOS?

[moWerk]

With the latest devices its usually a problem that manufacturers choose to omit the usb pin outs in favor of water resistance and wireless charging. Making them a challenge to flash and still wear afterwards. Another issue is that we currently need to rely on libhybris for quick porting process that employs the android drivers. And the new devices run android versions that libhybris can not handle yet. Its just a slow process on all fronts but we are actually releasing this 2.0 publicly to possibly interest more developers.

[bmurphy1976]

This is great! I'm going to install it immediately. I have a Fossil 6. It's in my opinion the best looking smartwatch yet released however the WatchOS performance and functionality is absolutely dreadful. I'm excited to bring this watch back from the dead!

[cfiggers]

This is an awesome project. Props to y'all for just making something you want to exist!

I have a Tizen-based Samsung watch (Gear Sport, 2017). It's served me faithfully but I'm starting to notice the battery degrading. I'd be interested in trying AsteroidOS with it, if Tizen support ever lands.

[mapcars]

Thats awesome! Recently I was looking into making apps for my smartwatch that don't exist (like watch display with multiple timezones), and infrastructure to make your own apps is very poor.

One thing I wish for is Rust support, since its running Linux it should be possible, isn't it?

[moWerk]

It would be possible to use Rust. Nobody got around working on it tbh. But simple things like your mentioned watchface idea are really quick to do in QML.

[anitil]

> wrist-sized Linux

What a charming turn of phrase!

[jeron]

we're finally upon the year of the linux wristwatch

[xrd]

Can anyone suggest where to find a watch that is supported if you live in the US? I've been scanning eBay but it feels difficult to get ahold of a supported device. Are there sites that ship to the US where a new or used device can be found?

[moWerk]

Usually the Ticwatch Pro 2018/2020 (catfish) is widely available since it was a popular model. The more recent version Ticwatch Pro 3 (rubyfish/rover) is freshly ported and not as well supported as the first Ticwatch Pro yet. I bought one new in box just this week from german ebay for 70€. We got a Team member in the US/ML who is hoarding watches and seems to have no problem acquiring them :D I wish you luck.

[listic]

I can see some Fossil Gen 6's on eBay in the US. (I only learned about AsteroidOS today and I'm not in the US)

[fsflover]

Did you consider PineTime?

[3abiton]

This amazing! I am definitely a target audience for this (I don't run any phone without at least unlocked bootloader, root and lsposed). So happy to see ROMs are coming to Android watches!

[0pteron]

I've always wanted a watch whose face colors can be changed to fit my outfit. It seems this is doable albeit at the cost of battery but I havent seen any software that allows it

[moWerk]

This is totally doable! The Always on Display screen can have colors and those do not impact the battery life much. Nothing hinders you to show a full color as AoD. There are some watches however that only support 4 colors in AoD mode. Namely the ASUS ones. If you are serious about developing such a watchface, come to our matrix chat for more tips where to start.

[MagneFire]

Great work to everyone involved with the project!

[Dowry9092]

This makes me want to go find some old watches! Love to commitment to privacy and longevity.

[readingnews]

Heh, I made myself laugh.

Literally clicked on that link thinking I had read _asteroids_, as in a remake of the 1979 game.

Total disappointment ensued.

[lovegrenoble]

well done!

[lovegrenoble]

Rust support?

[verin0x]

The main UI and GUI components are Qt. So you could use Qt bindings to build something with Rust. If you don't want the same look and feel, it's just a normal linux with wayland and systemd. Cross compile to the architecture and adapt the UI to the small displays and you should be fine.

[jenadine]

What bad reputation?

[irishcoffee]

Damn, not even LLM copy. Frodo lives.

[moWerk]

Perfect! Our Ring is libhybris, Sauron is the binary blob drivers the manufacturers cursed us with, and we're still hobbling toward mainline Mordor one old kernel backport at a time. One does not simply upstream a smartwatch driver.

[antonvs]

fyi the announcement is very obviously ai-written. It’s off-putting.

[moWerk]

Fair suspicion in 2026 — but we actually started drafting that announcement in early 2023 before first committing it here: https://github.com/jrtberlin/aos2.0-post. As a non native speaker i sure ran my commits through grammar polishing multiple times over the years. And i am genuinely curious now what to avoid to not sound like an LLM if you could dig out one or two examples.

[prmoustache]

What is off-putting ia this kind of comments everywhere you go.

This is the new "this has clearly been photoshoped" meme we used to see on every forum thread 2 decades ago and it is annoying as hell.