Open Source Operating Systems
The Operating Systems we recommend, filtered to Open Source. See all Operating Systems →
Tails
Tails: Portable, encrypted and secure through the Tor network
Whonix
A free, open-source desktop operating system that forces all traffic through Tor, run as two isolated virtual machines.
secureblue
secureblue is a security-hardened immutable Linux OS built on Fedora Atomic Desktops. It ships as OCI bootable container images and applies kernel hardening, a hardened memory allocator from GrapheneOS, and a hardened Chromium browser called Trivalent.
Kicksecure
Kicksecure is a security-hardened Debian-based Linux distribution that applies a broad set of kernel and userspace hardening settings out of the box, reducing the attack surface without requiring manual configuration. It also serves as the foundation for the Whonix anonymity OS.
Fedora Atomic Desktops
Fedora Atomic Desktops (Silverblue, Kinoite, and others) are immutable Fedora variants where the base OS is read-only and updated atomically via rpm-ostree. Applications run as Flatpaks, and rollback to a prior OS image is built in.
NixOS
NixOS is a Linux distribution built entirely on the Nix package manager, where the whole system (kernel, packages, services, and configuration) is declared in a single set of files. Upgrades are atomic and fully reproducible rollbacks are a built-in feature.
Fedora Workstation
Fedora Workstation: User friendly and easy to setup
Arch Linux
Arch Linux is a minimal, rolling-release Linux distribution built around a do-it-yourself philosophy. You assemble the system yourself from a bare base, choosing every component, and keep it current with the pacman package manager.
openSUSE Tumbleweed
openSUSE Tumbleweed is a rolling-release Linux distribution that defaults to Btrfs with Snapper snapshots, letting you boot into a previous system state if an update breaks something. Available with KDE, GNOME, or Xfce.
