instantOS

it works. fast. powerful.

instantOS logo

instantOS - Home

instantOS is an Arch Linux based distro that works out of the box but is still aimed at power users. Everything is lightning fast, flexible and just works.

In addition to the usual Arch packages, we also package for the Nix universal package manager (and NixOS) via instantNIX.

Overview

Just works

The user does not have to worry about everything from wifi to volume and brightness, theming and notification-management. A graphical settings menu ensures accessibility for anyone just like with a desktop environment.

Power-user friendly

instantOS has lots of functionality that goes beyond that of a normal desktop environment like tiling and instantASSIST that ensure a high skill ceiling

Ultra lightweight

The RAM usage on idle is about 150-160Mb (tested on a fresh install on Virtualbox). That is less than half of what the lightest Ubuntu flavor uses. It comes with as little bloat as possible without sacrificing on features.

Feature rich

The small footprint is not achieved through measures like slimming down the kernel or compromising on features and visuals.

Hybrid window manager

instantWM can do both tiling and floating windows with none of them being a second class citizen. It maintains full feature parity with dwm when it comes to tiling and the floating features can rival most conventional desktop environments.

Keyboard and Mouse/touch support

A keyboard centered workflow can make you much more productive but getting rid of the mouse is not the best thing for everyone. Tiling WMs actually make a lot of sense for tablets since screen estate is important and if you are using a graphics tablet it may be important as well to have a way of doing things with the mouse. That’s why the interface can be fully navigated using only the mouse.

Support/Community

Until the user base outgrows this, any questions will be answered immediately by the devs. You can open issues on GitHub, ask for help on the Discord server, on the Subreddit or write an email to instantos@paperbenni.xyz

instantOS beta 7 released


Partners

A list of repos, todo and some guidelines can be found here.

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instantOS is still in early beta, contributions always welcome