KAADZOS

Debian 13 · Trixie · amd64

Live · Installable · Verified

An operating system that proves itself.

KaadzOS is a minimal Debian 13 image with a hand-built Sway desktop, a theme rendered from one palette, and an on-demand pack system. Every push is built, booted on BIOS and UEFI, and installed to disk before anything ships.

Download the ISO Read the source
  • Release 0.1.0
  • 6 / 6 jobs passed
  • ISO 1.4 GB
  • SHA-256 verified
The KaadzOS live session: Sway with Waybar, a floating terminal and the Night wallpaper
Fig. 01 — KaadzOS live session, captured from the QEMU framebuffer by CI. Not staged. The run fails on any Sway warning.

01 / The image

Small by design. No language runtime, no recommends, nothing it cannot justify — a working Wayland desktop, and room for what you add later.

The base image is Debian trixie built from the archive with --apt-recommends false: kernel, firmware, NetworkManager, Sway, Waybar, foot, fuzzel, mako and the lean defaults. Everything heavier is opt-in.

Eight declarative packs add AI tooling, Android apps, Windows apps, dev chains, gaming, creative apps, privacy tools or Cloudflare's client — through one idempotent command, from a terminal or the $mod+a menu.

02 / The desktop

Sway, themed
down to the console.

Session
Sway on Wayland. Waybar, foot, fuzzel, mako and swaylock, driven from the Super key.
Theme
One file, theme/palette, renders the boot splash, boot menus, Sway, Waybar, foot, fuzzel, mako, swaylock, GTK3/4, Qt6ct, the wallpaper and the console colours.
Installer
Calamares unpacks the live squashfs onto disk and repairs the copy in place. The installed system boots through greetd into the same session.
Defaults
GNOME Web, Thunar, Mousepad, imv and zathura. Screen recording with wf-recorder on $mod+Print.
Memory
zram swap (zstd) sized at half of RAM with swappiness 180. The boot test reports idle RAM on every run.
Secure Boot
Debian's signed shim and GRUB ship in the image, so the installed system boots with Secure Boot enabled. The live USB still needs it off.

03 / The packs

Eight packs,
one command.

  • ai
  • android
  • cloudflare
  • creative
  • dev
  • gaming
  • privacy
  • windows

kaadzos add <pack> — idempotent, gated on requirements, with a dry-run that prints every command. State lives in /var/lib/kaadzos.

04 / The proof

Nothing ships
unproven.

06Jobs per push
02Firmwares booted
02Installs driven
00Warnings tolerated

The boot test waits for a real swaymsg IPC reply on the serial console, dumps the framebuffer and fails if swaynag is running — a red bar means the config emitted an error. The install test drives Calamares with wtype on a blank disk, then boots the installed system without the ISO.

05 / Download

Take it
for a drive.

Download the ISO Release notes

Verify

sha256sum --check \
  KaadzOS-trixie-amd64.iso.sha256

KaadzOS-trixie-amd64.iso: OK

Write

# replace sdX — this erases it
sudo dd if=KaadzOS-trixie-amd64.iso \
  of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress \
  oflag=sync

Hybrid image: the same file boots from a USB stick under BIOS or UEFI. On Windows, write it with Rufus or balenaEtcher in DD mode. Installed systems can opt into the signed KaadzOS archive: APT repository notes.