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Software that do not foist a specific init system.
This page lists quality operating systems for desktop, mobile, personal and commercial usage.
Proudly anti-wrong "antiX Magic" in an environment suitable for old and new computers.
antiX is a fast, lightweight and easy to install linux live CD distribution based on Debian Stable for Intel-AMD x86 compatible systems.
antiX offers the “antiX Magic” in an environment suitable for old and new computers. So do not throw away that old computer yet!
The purpose of antiX is to provide a light, and fully functional and flexible free operating system for both newcomers and experienced users of Linux.
It should run on most computers, ranging from 256MB old systems with pre-configured swap to the latest powerful boxes. 512MB RAM is the recommended minimum for antiX. Installation to hard drive requires a minimum 7.0GB hard disk size.
A modern, general-purpose Linux distribution.
Chimera is a general-purpose Linux-based OS born from unhappiness with the status quo. It aims to create a system that is simple, transparent, and easy to pick up, without having to give up practicality and a rich feature set.
It is built from scratch using novel tooling, approaches, and userland. Instead of intentionally limiting ourselves, we strive to achieve both conceptual simplicity and convenience with careful and high quality software design.
Chimera Linux strives to keep the design simple while still providing the experience and features that most people want, such as multiple desktop environments, Flatpak support, a graphical package manager, and easy access to desktop configuration tools.
Chimera Linux does not have a system installer, instead providing manual command line instructions to bootstrap the operating system from a live environment.
Chimera Linux is an independent distribution which uses an unusual combination of technologies behind the scenes. Chimera Linux uses BSD userland command line tools, the Clang/LLVM compiler toolchain, dinit for service management, and APK for package management.
Software freedom, your way.
Devuan GNU+Linux is a fork of Debian without systemd that allows users to reclaim control over their system by avoiding unnecessary entanglements and ensuring Init Freedom.
Dragora is an independent GNU/Linux distribution, designed from scratch to provide a system composed only by free software: you have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve all applications installed on your computer.
Based on the concepts of simplicity and elegance, it offers a user-friendly Unix-like environment with emphasis on stability and security for long-term durability.
Lean and efficient with the function and form of traditional desktop computers.
Start, control and monitor all critical system daemons without using Systemd.
Easily manage multiple software packages under a single directory hierarchy.
It also offers many lightweight alternatives to popular system components, such as musl libc, libressl, mksh, scron, pkgconf, DWM, TWM, …
A simple, elegant desktop BSD Operating System.
GhostBSD offers a friendly, desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD.
It features the MATE desktop environment, and a selection of essential software preinstalled, simplifying your computing experience from the start.
GhostBSD delivers an elegant interface using the GTK environment, ensuring a beautiful and comfortable user experience on the modern BSD platform. This setup provides a natural, native Unix work environment that is both intuitive and productive.
GhostBSD builds on the robust FreeBSD codebase.
The alternative Linux distribution.
GoboLinux is an alternative Linux distribution which redefines the entire filesystem hierarchy.
In GoboLinux you do not need a package database because the filesystem is the database: each program resides in its own directory, such as /Programs/LibX11/1.6.9 and /Programs/GCC/9.2.0.
GoboLinux is a modular Linux distribution: it organizes the programs in your system in a new, logical way. Instead of having parts of a program thrown at /usr/bin, other parts at /etc and yet more parts thrown at /usr/share/something/or/another, each program gets its own directory tree, keeping them all neatly separated and allowing you to see everything that's installed in the system and which files belong to which programs in a simple and obvious way.
Simplicity, elegance, and usability. Less, but better!
helloSystem is a desktop system for creators with a focus on simplicity, elegance, and usability. It is based on FreeBSD and its design follows the “Less, but better” philosophy.
It is intended as a system for “mere mortals”, welcoming to switchers from the Mac.
FreeBSD is used as the core operating system.
La distro del pueblo!!
Loc-OS is a GNU/Linux distribution focused on low resource consumption.
Being very light, it is able to run perfectly on older computers, although it also works flawlessly on modern computers.
It has SysV as an init system, and there are three desktops available, LXDE (in 32 and 64 bits), Xfce (only in 64 bits), and KDE Plasma (in 32 and 64 bits).
The main and lightest version is LXDE.
Loc-OS is a fork of Debian.
The BSD for everyone.
MidnightBSD is a BSD-derived operating system developed for desktop computers in mind. It includes all the software that you would expect for your daily tasks — email, internet browsing, word processing, gaming, and much more.
With a small community of dedicated developers, MidnightBSD strives to create an easy-to-use operating system everyone can use, freely. Available for x86, AMD64 and as Virtual Machines.
Midweight Simple Stable Desktop OS.
MX Linux is a cooperative venture between the antiX and MX Linux communities.
It is a family of operating systems that are designed to combine elegant and efficient desktops with high stability and solid performance. MX’s graphical tools provide an easy way to do a wide variety of tasks, while the Live USB and snapshot tools inherited from antiX add impressive portability and remastering capabilities.
Extensive support is available through videos, documentation and a very friendly Forum.
Be Bold. Be Different. Use #Nitrux.
Powered by Debian, KDE Plasma and Frameworks, and AppImages.
The Boomer Distribution.
PCLinuxOS is a free easy to use Linux-based Operating System for x86_64 desktops or laptops.
PCLinuxOS is distributed as a LiveCD/DVD/USB ISO image, and can also be installed to your computer.
The LiveCD/DVD/USB mode lets you try PCLInuxOS without making any changes to your computer.
If you like it, you can install the operating system to your hard drive.
Locally installed versions of PCLinuxOS utilize the Advanced Packaging Tool (or APT), a package management system (originally from the Debian distribution), together with Synaptic, a GUI frontend to APT for easy software installation.
PCLinuxOS has over 12,000 rpm software packages available from our software repository.
The Linux Desktop OS.
Peppermint is an operating system that provides a user with the opportunity to build the system that best fits their needs. While at the same time providing a functioning OS with minimum hassle out of the box.
Our mainline desktop Peppermint ships with the desktop environment xfce with the thunar file manager set as default.
Peppermint comes with nearly nothing installed other than, the core packages needed to run the system and you have the choice to which packages should best fit your build.
An open-source environment you can trust.
ReactOS is a free and open-source operating system based on the best design principles found in the Windows NT architecture. It is written completely from scratch, ReactOS is not a Linux-based system and it shares none of the UNIX architecture.
The main purpose of the ReactOS project is to provide an operating system which is binary compatible with Windows. This will allow Windows applications and drivers to run as they would on a Windows system. Additionally, the look and feel of the Windows operating system is used, such that people accustomed to the familiar interface of Windows would find using ReactOS straightforward.
The ultimate purpose of ReactOS is to allow people to use it as an alternative to Windows without the need to change software they are used to.
The Bonsai OS.
Salix is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Slackware that is simple, fast and easy to use, with stability being a primary goal.
Salix is also fully backwards compatible with Slackware, so you can benefit from Salix repositories, which they can use as an "extra" quality source of software for your favorite distribution.
Like a bonsai, Salix is small, light & the product of infinite care.
Small, fast, stable and easy to use!
SliTaz is a secure and high performance operating system using the Linux Kernel and GNU software.
SliTaz GNU/Linux is a free operating system working completely in memory from removable media such as a CD-ROM or USB key. It is light, speedy and fully installable on a hard drive. SliTaz is distributed in the form of a LiveCD that you can easily burn to a cdrom and boot from. When the system is running you can eject the LiveCD and use your CD drive for other tasks. The Live system provides a fully-featured, working graphical distro and lets you keep your data and personal settings on persistent media. The system can be extended with the Tazpkg package manager and security updates are provided for the cooking and stable versions.
Enter the void.
Void is a general purpose operating system, based on the monolithic Linux kernel.
Its package system allows you to quickly install, update and remove software; software is provided in binary packages or can be built directly from sources with the help of the XBPS source packages collection.
A FOSS Linux distribution for mobile devices.
Maemo Leste is an independent mobile operating system focused on trustworthiness.
It aims to provide a free and open source Maemo experience on mobile phones and tablets. It is an effort to create a true FOSS mobile operating system for the FOSS community. Maemo Leste is based on GNU/Linux, and specifically - Devuan GNU/Linux.
The purpose is to provide a secure and modern mobile operating system that consists only of free software, obeys and respects the users' privacy and digital rights.
The project also works closely with projects that aim to produce hardware that Maemo Leste and other community mobile operating systems could run on. The operating system itself takes much of its design and core components from the Nokia-developed Maemo Fremantle, while replacing any closed source software with open source software.
real Linux distribution for phones.
postmarketOS extends the free and open source operating system Alpine Linux to run on smartphones and other mobile devices. Alpine is a security-oriented, light-weight Linux distribution based on musl libc and BusyBox.
Currently, postmarketOS is for Linux enthusiasts. In the long term, postmarketOS shall empower ordinary people to be in control of their phone (and not the other way around).
Note: The variants of GNOME Mobile, Phosh and Plasma Mobile will have systemd installed as an init system; hence, an installation with the custom installer "pmbootstrap" must be conducted to install a system of which of these variants without systemd.
FreshTomato is an open source firmware replacement project based on Linux, for home and SOHO WiFi routers.
FreshTomato includes a friendly interface, which is considered easy to use even by inexperienced users.
It also offers many features, and security and bug fixes that are not available on stock vendor firmware.
FreshTomato is distributed with the GPL license.
The OpenWrt Project is a Linux operating system targeting embedded devices.
Instead of trying to create a single, static firmware, OpenWrt provides a fully writable filesystem with package management.
This frees you from the application selection and configuration provided by the vendor and allows you to customize the device through the use of packages to suit any application.
For developers, OpenWrt is the framework to build an application without having to build a complete firmware around it; for users this means the ability for full customization, to use the device in ways never envisioned.
Small. Simple. Secure.
Alpine Linux is a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox.
Arch Hurd is a derivative work of Arch Linux porting it to the GNU Hurd system with packages optimised for the i686 architecture.
Our purpose is to provide an Arch-like user environment (BSD-style init scripts, i686-optimised packages, use of the pacman package manager, rolling-release, and a KISS set up) on the Hurd which is stable enough for use, if not as a primary OS, at least as something to consider as a dual-boot option.
Artix Linux is a rolling-release distribution, based on Arch Linux.
It uses real init systems, because PID1 must be simple, secure and stable.
Artix Linux is a fork (or continuation as an autonomous project) of the Arch-OpenRC and Manjaro-OpenRC projects.
Artix Linux offers a lightweight, rolling-release operating system featuring the OpenRC init software. (Alternative spins feature the runit and s6 init software.) Several editions of Artix Linux are available, featuring either a plain command line or one of several desktop environments.
CRUX is a lightweight Linux distribution for the x86-64 architecture targeted at experienced Linux users.
The primary focus of this distribution is keep it simple, which is reflected in a straightforward tar.gz-based package system, BSD-style initscripts, and a relatively small collection of trimmed packages.
The secondary focus is utilization of new Linux features and recent tools and libraries.
CRUX also has a ports system which makes it easy to install and upgrade applications.
DragonFly BSD was forked from FreeBSD 4.8 in June of 2003, by Mr. Matthew Dillon. The project was originally billed as "the logical continuation of the FreeBSD 4.x series", yet this description has long since become obsolete.
From a performance perspective, the only real competitor of DragonFly these days is Linux. The ultimate goal of the DragonFly project at its inception was to provide native clustering support in the kernel.
This type of functionality requires a sophisticated cache management framework for filesystem namespaces, file spaces and VM spaces. These and other features eventually culminate in the ability to allow heavily interactive programs to run across multiple machines with cache coherency fully guaranteed in all respects.
This also requires being able to divide resources, including the CPU by way of a controlled VM context, for safe assignment to potentially unsecured third-party clusters over the internet. This original design direction, although no longer the primary goal of the DragonFly project, has influenced many of the design decisions made in the intervening years. While full cache coherency is no longer a top level goal, filesystem coherency is, and that direction continues to guide the project in a number of ways.
Funtoo Linux is a community-developed Linux meta-distribution and evolution of Gentoo Linux.
Funtoo Linux is optimized for the best possible performance on the latest Intel and AMD hardware.
Funtoo is led by Mr. Daniel Robbins, the creator of Gentoo Linux, and is actively developed by the Funtoo community.
A highly flexible, source-based Linux distribution.
Gentoo is a free operating system based on Linux that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need.
Extreme configurability, performance, and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience.
Thanks to a technology called Portage, Gentoo can become an ideal secure server, development workstation, professional desktop, gaming system, embedded solution, or something else—whatever you need it to be. Because of its near-unlimited adaptability, we call Gentoo a metadistribution.
Of course, Gentoo is more than just software. It is also a community around the distribution. Gentoo benefits from around 250 developers and thousands of users, many of which are experts in their fields. The distribution project provides the means for the users to enjoy Gentoo: documentation, infrastructure, release engineering, software porting, quality assurance, security followup, hardening, and more.
To advise and help Gentoo's general development, a 7-member council is elected on a yearly basis which decides on general issues, policies, and advancements in the Gentoo project.
GNU Guix is a package manager for GNU/Linux systems. It is designed to give people more control over their general-purpose and specialized computing environments, and make these easier to reproduce over time and deploy to one or many devices.
Founded in 2014 by Mr. Oliver Pinter and Mr. Shawn Webb, HardenedBSD is a security-enhanced fork of FreeBSD. The HardenedBSD Project is implementing many exploit mitigation and security technologies on top of FreeBSD.
The project started with Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) as an initial focal point and is now implementing further exploit mitigation techniques.
HardenedBSD forked the FreeBSD codebase for ease of development.
Prior to the founding of HardenedBSD, Oliver and Shawn worked on separate repositories, occasionally causing collaboration issues.
Unifying the codebases in 2013 was a natural step in efficient, effective collaboration between the two individuals.
Since the unification of the work, HardenedBSD is growing faster than ever.
HardenedBSD aims to implement innovative exploit mitigation and security solutions for the FreeBSD community. Security is like an onion--it is made up of layers.
In order to be successful, attackers must peel back each layer. HardenedBSD takes a holistic approach to security by hardening the system and implementing exploit mitigation technologies.
The primary purpose is to provide a clean-room reimplementation of the publicly-documented parts of the grsecurity patchset for Linux.
A fully free, stable, secure, simple, lightweight and long-term support distribution.
The Hyperbola Project is a community driven effort to provide a fully free (as in freedom) operating system that is stable, secure, simple, lightweight that tries to Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) under a Long Term Support (LTS) way.
Hyperbola is an independent, free and libre system built from scratch using the package-management from Arch GNU/Linux and especially patchsets for security from Debian providing packages that meet the GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines (GNU FSDG). Packages are provided for the i686 and x86_64 architectures.
Our purpose is to provide a full new BSD descendant operating-system named HyperbolaBSD.
Our community is friendly and helpful. Please hop on IRC channel and check out our forums to get your feet wet. Also glance through our wiki if you want to learn more about Hyperbola.
Kiss Linux is a meta-distribution for the x86_64 architecture with a focus on simplicity, sustainability and user freedom.
The project was created by Mr. Dylan Araps who also acts as its sole developer and BDFL.
The distribution is designed to be maintainable by a single person and to this end has no infrastructure, backend or monetary running costs. Further, all installations of KISS contain everything needed to continue its development.
The user is provided with three things.
1. The Official Repositories - An extensible base including a fully X11-less Wayland environment, modern web browser, media player and everything needed for this system to rebuild (and update) itself (in under 120 packages).
2. The Package Management System - A pleasant to work with and concise package format powered by a small, portable and self-contained package manager (written in POSIX shell).
3. The Freedom To Go It Alone - Users can choose to maintain their system themselves thus freeing them from all external influence. The system then belongs to the user and they become totally self-reliant.
LiGurOS is a source based distribution building upon code and packages from a broad family of Gentoo-based distributions. Source based means all the software is compiled from source. The Gentoo-family of operating systems heavily uses portage as the package manager with the ability to change settings globally but also per package. So you can specify what exact configuration options are passed to the package upon building. This results in a operating system without bloat and running optimized for your processor.
LiGurOS is optimized for speed and taking advantage of the latest features of AMD and Intel processors. LiGurOS tries to balance between state-of-the-art and stability, providing two basic release models (stable and rolling). As LiGurOS is a semi-/rolling-release distribution, you install the system once and update it throughout the life of your hardware.
LiGurOS gives you the choice of your favorite services manager, out-of-the-box we support openrc, but s6 and others are also an option.
Linux Guru’s Operating System was created with the need to address some issues that source-based distributions and rolling distributions have. Like transparent automatic testing, semi-rolling release with stability and security in mind just to name a few.
NetBSD is a free, fast, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system. It is available for a wide range of platforms, from large-scale servers and powerful desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices.
NuTyX is a complete GNU/Linux distribution with high flexibility, thanks to the collections and the groups concepts.
It is recommend that potential people to utilize this system would first acquire some good knowledge about the GNU/Linux system.
Original concepts like 'install-nutyx' script, the independent GRUB installation procedure, the collections, the 'cards' package manager will trouble those with little GNU/Linux system experience.
It is an excellent operating system for people who want to commit themselves to developing their skills further and learning how a Linux system is put together.
NuTyX offers the MATE, LXDE, LXQt, Enlightenment, GNOME, KDE6 and XFCE graphical interfaces in binary form.
Detailed instructions are available online.
NuTyX uses its own package manager named CARDS.
It is up to you to decide whether to use the ports system, to compile and install your own source packages, or to be content with the binary packages that are natively integrated into the system.
It is inspired by the excellent Linux From Scratch documentation LFS and Behind Linux From Scratch documentation BLFS.
Free to control your System.
Based on Arch Linux, Obarun provides not only a reliable alternative but a service management experience like no other, tailored to give professionals total control.
Obarun’s repositories maintain compatibility with Arch Linux while adding tools for service management, package building, and system installation.
While tailored for experienced users, the Obarun community is supportive and open to those willing to explore a different approach to Linux.
The OpenBSD project produces a free, multi-platform BSD 4.4-based UNIX-like operating system. Its efforts emphasize portability, standardisation, correctness, proactive security and integrated cryptography.
The project also develops the widely-used and popular OpenSSH (OpenBSD Secure Shell) software, which provides encrypted communication sessions over a computer network using the SSH protocol.
A fully free, simple, and lightweight operating system.
The Parabola project is a community-driven, "labour-of-love" effort to maintain a 100% free (as in: freedom) operating system distribution that is lean, clean, and hackable.
Based on the Arch distribution, Parabola is a complete, user-friendly operating system, suitable for general "everyday" use, while retaining Arch's "power-user" charm. Parabola adheres to the GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines (FSDG); which requires source code for every part of the system to be freely available, modifyable, and re-distributable. All Parabola packages are built from source, in clean chroots, and with networking disabled, in order to replace any software and artworks in the standard Arch system which fall outside the GNU guidelines. LiveISOs, installers, and packages are provided for the armv7h, i686, and x86_64 CPU architectures.
Our community is friendly and helpful. Feel free to hop on the IRC channel, join the web forum, or subscribe to the mailing lists, to get your feet wet. Once you are ready to begin your adventures through Fosstopia, the wiki will guide you well toward learning to install and use Parabola comfortably and confidently.
Based on Debian SID.
The PuffOS project aims to provide pure Linux experience by freeing Devuan from bloats.
PuffOS is based on Debian's installation with Deboostap and uses Devuan's SID repos.
Note that it might not be as robust as Debian Bullseye for stability.
PuffOS utilizes sysv-init.
The most senior Linux system.
The Official Release of Slackware Linux by Mr. Patrick Volkerding is an advanced Linux operating system, designed with the twin goals of ease of use and stability as top priorities.
Including the latest popular software while retaining a sense of tradition, providing simplicity and ease of use alongside flexibility and power, Slackware brings the best of all worlds to the table.
Slackware Linux provides new and experienced users alike with a fully-featured system, equipped to serve in any capacity from desktop workstation to machine-room server.
HTTP, FTP, and Email servers are ready to go out of the box, as are a wide selection of popular desktop environments.
A full range of development tools, editors, and current libraries is included for users who wish to develop or compile additional software.
SulinOS project is an independent base linux distro project.
The main purpose in creating SulinOS is to create an rolling release operating system that does not use systemd.
It uses two different kernels, Linux kernel and Libre kernel. In order to continue in accordance with the gnu philosophy glibc used as libc library.
SulinOS aims to create a strong substructure named indispensable which is a kind of minimal system. Thanks to this infrastructure, we have created an easy-to-shape distro. It can be used on desktops, servers and embedded devices.
SulinOS uses its own toolset. It uses it's own package manager called inary. SulinOS uses openrc as service manager. Also SulinOS has force-elogind so you may compile systemd related packages without systemd. SulinOS has dummy-selinux software. You can run selinux dependent packages with dummy-selinux. (dummy-selinux is not preinstalled)
Micro Core Linux, 12MB Linux GUI Desktop, Live, Frugal, Extendable.
TinyCore becomes simply an example of what the Core Project can produce, an 16MB FLTK/FLWM desktop.
CorePlus ofers a simple way to get started using the Core philosophy with its included community packaged extensions enabling easy embedded frugal or pendrive installation of the user's choice of supported desktop, while maintaining the Core principal of mounted extensions with full package management.
It is not a complete desktop nor is all hardware completely supported. It represents only the core needed to boot into a very minimal X desktop typically with wired internet access.
The people have complete control over which applications and/or additional hardware to have supported, be it for a desktop, a netbook, an appliance, or server, selectable by the user by installing additional applications from online repositories, or easily compiling most anything you desire using tools provided.
The Core Project is a highly modular based system with community build extensions.
A lightweight source based distro for advanced Linux Users.
Customize your system with Venom Linux, a lightweight source based distro for advanced Linux users targeting x86_64 machines.
Venom Linux is an independently-developed, rolling-release distribution inspired by CRUX.
It targets experienced Linux users. Venom uses SysV init as the main init system and BSD-like ports as software packages which are managed by a custom package management tool called scratchpkg (written in compliance with POSIX standards).
The distribution offers a simple graphical desktop built around the Openbox window manager and a text-mode system installer.
Do you know of other open source operating systems that do not force systemd?
Contact me on XMPP.