ReyOS

A calm, dependable KDE desktop built to give older computers a second life.
Install it, use it, update it, and recover it — without fear.

Download ISO ReyOS Browser Known Issues

Features

What's built in

These ship with ReyOS by default — no extra installs, no separate accounts.

🎛️
Control Center

One settings app instead of a dozen. Updates (atomic, read-only check first, with a pre-update Timeshift snapshot taken automatically), a Backup Center, a unified Security page (firewall, bring-your-own WireGuard VPN, Shields, permissions, opt-in USB device protection), CVE-tracked security updates, one-click NVIDIA driver install, network/Wi-Fi/sound/users, guarded permission repair, and live power & performance tuning — including zram, systemd-oomd protection, and adaptive preload for faster everyday responsiveness and boot-time follow-through — organized as Home, Essentials, and Advanced.

🛠️
System Tools

A Midnight Copper terminal menu (reyos-tools) for the stuff you'd otherwise have to Google: safe package updates, firewall rules, CPU/swap tuning, zram and swappiness controls, home-only permission fixes, and network & disk info.

🌐
Web

ReyOS Browser is private by default — session-only, no history, no accounts — with ad/tracker Shields on out of the box, a maintained filter list you can refresh anytime, and a reader mode for cleaner articles. More on the browser ↓

📚
Reader

ReyOS Reader is a native EPUB, PDF, and comic-book (CBZ/CBR) reader with a Kindle-style layout — for your books and manga without needing a browser tab or a third-party app.

Screenshots

What it actually looks like

Real captures from a fresh ReyOS-Test install — no mockups, no staged renders.

ReyOS desktop with the Midnight Copper wallpaper

The desktop — KDE Plasma, Midnight Copper theme.

ReyOS Browser window open to the ReyOS start page

ReyOS Browser — private by default, captured as a live app window.

ReyOS Toolbox terminal window

ReyOS Toolbox — the Midnight Copper terminal menu for system maintenance.

Status

What's ready, what's next

ReyOS is being built and validated in the open, one fresh install at a time. Here's the honest state of things right now — nothing here is marketing gloss.

KDE Desktop
Working — KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland
Installer (Calamares)
Working — full installs verified end-to-end, repeatedly
Backup & Recovery
Working — Timeshift snapshots + Backup Center
Firewall & Security
Working — firewall, bring-your-own VPN, Shields, USB protection
Performance Tooling (zram, OOM protection, adaptive preload)
Working — live-verified
Public ISO Download
Published (2026.09.03)
ReyOS WSL
Available, unverified on Windows

KNOWN LIMITATIONS RIGHT NOW

  • The public ISO is out (2026.09.03) — download and checksums are in the Download section below. It ships with the first version of ReyOS Connect (KDE Connect + VPN remote access + Bluetooth + Remote Desktop); Remote Desktop's video/input hasn't been verified end-to-end on real hardware yet, only against a VM with a known display-acceleration limitation.
  • ReyOS Browser doesn't have a Windows build yet; only the built-in Linux browser exists today.
  • Not recommended as a daily-driver machine yet — best tried on spare hardware or a virtual machine.
  • ReyOS WSL — a separate, terminal-only build for Windows Subsystem for Linux — is downloadable now, but was only built and verified on Linux (a real Dev VM build run). It hasn't been installed on a real Windows 11 + WSL2 machine yet.

Download

Get ReyOS

Published as a GitHub Release with SHA-256 checksums. The ISO (3.1GB) is split into two parts to fit GitHub's per-file size limit — download both and join them before use (steps below). Source is already public if you want to follow along.

💿
ReyOS ISO (2026.09.03)

x86_64, KDE Plasma, Calamares installer, Midnight Copper theme. Includes ReyOS Connect for the first time.

Download Part 1 (1.6GB) Download Part 2 (1.4GB)

Release notes on GitHub · See how installing works ↓

After downloading both parts, join them into one file:

Linux / macOS:

cat reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso.part1 reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso.part2 > reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso

Windows (Command Prompt):

copy /b reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso.part1+reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso.part2 reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso
📦
Source Code

Package sources, ISO build profile, and Calamares config — all public on GitHub.

View on GitHub

Install Guide

How installing ReyOS works

Same steps as installing any Linux distro from a USB drive — the one extra step here is joining the two downloaded parts back into a single ISO first.

  1. Download both parts, join them, and verify the checksum

    Download reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso.part1 and .part2 from the GitHub Release, then join them (Linux/macOS):

    cat reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso.part1 reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso.part2 > reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso

    On Windows (Command Prompt):

    copy /b reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso.part1+reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso.part2 reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso

    Then confirm the joined file wasn't corrupted:

    sha256sum reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso

    Compare the result against 398b1cf09a0403c9304c6153d0334131f927221201ead81e3c23af9204dd7938 (also published with the release).

  2. Write it to a USB drive (8GB or larger)

    On Linux, find your USB device first with lsblk — getting the device wrong will erase the wrong disk — then write the ISO directly to it:

    sudo dd if=reyos-2026.09.03-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync

    Replace /dev/sdX with your actual USB device, not a partition like /dev/sdX1. Prefer a GUI? balenaEtcher or Ventoy work the same way on Linux, Windows, or macOS.

  3. Boot from the USB drive

    Restart the target machine and open its boot menu — commonly F12, F10, Esc, or Del depending on the motherboard — and select the USB drive. ReyOS boots straight to a live desktop; nothing on the machine's disk is touched yet, so it's safe to just look around first.

  4. Run the installer

    The Calamares installer opens automatically on the live desktop. Pick your language and keyboard layout, choose a disk (Erase Disk is the simplest option for a clean install), and create your user account.

  5. Reboot into ReyOS

    Once the installer shows "All done.", remove the USB drive and reboot. First login lands on ReyOS Welcome to finish setup — pick software, and you're in.

This is the same install flow that's been run and verified on real test hardware for every build — a real Calamares install completing and booting into ReyOS was confirmed again on this exact ISO.

ReyOS Browser

Private by default

The browser built into ReyOS runs a private, session-only profile with no persistent history — Shields blocks ads/trackers, upgrades HTTP to HTTPS, strips tracking parameters from links, and randomizes your canvas/WebGL/audio fingerprint per site, all backed by a filter list you can refresh anytime. Plus a reader mode for cleaner articles, a KWallet-backed password manager, bookmark folders, and its own download manager. No extensions or accounts required.

🐧
Linux

Included by default on ReyOS. On Arch-based distros you build the package directly from the ReyOS source tree, not from the AUR; Ubuntu and Debian users can grab a ready-made .deb — see below.

Build it on your distro ↓

🪟
Windows

A Windows build is in development and not yet available.

In Development

Run ReyOS Browser outside ReyOS

The browser itself is cross-distro Qt/PySide code. On Arch-based systems, build the package directly from the ReyOS repo — not from the AUR. On Ubuntu or Debian, grab the ready-made .deb below.

Arch-based distros

It's a real package with no ReyOS-specific runtime dependencies. This is not an AUR install: pyside6, qt6-webengine, qt6-webchannel, kirigami, libnotify, kdialog, and python-secretstorage are all in the official Arch Linux repos, so makepkg handles everything:

git clone https://github.com/Reypaulino/ReyOS.git
cd ReyOS/reyos-packages/reyos-browser
makepkg -si

Then launch it with reyos-browser. Works on Arch, CachyOS, Manjaro, EndeavourOS, or anything else built on pacman.

Ubuntu / Debian

A ready-made amd64 .deb is available on GitHub Releases. It bundles its own Python runtime (PySide6 + Qt WebEngine); apt pulls in the handful of system libraries QtWebEngine needs automatically:

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/Reypaulino/ReyOS/releases/download/reyos-browser-v0.1.0-97ubuntu1/reyos-browser_0.1.0-97ubuntu1_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./reyos-browser_0.1.0-97ubuntu1_amd64.deb

Then launch it from your app menu, or run reyos-browser.

Download for Ubuntu/Debian (.deb)

ReyOS WSL

Develop on ReyOS without leaving Windows

A lightweight Arch/ReyOS terminal environment for Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 — ReyOS development, package building, dependency/script testing, and general dev tooling from a Windows machine, no VM required. It does not replace the ReyOS desktop ISO: no KDE Plasma, no installer, no bootloader, no hardware drivers — WSL2 supplies its own kernel and there's no desktop session to boot into.

Built and verified with a real pacstrap run on the ReyOS Dev VM — three real bugs were found and fixed that way, not by guessing. It has not yet been installed on a real Windows 11 + WSL2 machine, so treat the Windows-side steps below as untested until someone actually runs them.
🪟
Windows (WSL2)

x86_64, no kernel/bootloader/desktop bundled — Minimal profile by default, with Developer and ReyOS Developer profiles offered at first run.

Download ReyOS-WSL-x86_64.wsl
Before you start: WSL2 itself needs to already be set up on your machine. If wsl --import fails with something like HCS_E_SERVICE_NOT_AVAILABLE, run wsl --install --no-distribution as admin, restart, and confirm Task Manager → Performance → CPU shows "Virtualization: Enabled" (a BIOS/UEFI setting if not — Windows can't turn this on for you).

  1. Download and verify

    Grab ReyOS-WSL-2026.09.02-x86_64.wsl and its checksum from the GitHub Release above, then confirm it (PowerShell):

    Get-FileHash .\ReyOS-WSL-2026.09.02-x86_64.wsl -Algorithm SHA256

    Compare against the published .sha256 file.

  2. Install it

    Use wsl --import, not wsl --install --from-file — real-tested on Windows 11, --from-file fails with error_file_not_found against this artifact (it targets Microsoft's newer packaged .wsl format, not a plain rootfs tarball). --import takes three separate things: a distro name, a new empty folder for WSL's own use, and the file you actually downloaded — point that last one at wherever it landed (Downloads, here):

    wsl --import ReyOS $env:LOCALAPPDATA\ReyOS-WSL $env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\ReyOS-WSL-2026.09.02-x86_64.wsl
wsl -d ReyOS

  3. First launch

    A setup wizard runs automatically on first login: pick a username and password, then choose Minimal, Developer (git, Python, Node.js, base-devel), or ReyOS Developer (adds the tools needed to actually build reyos-* packages — cmake, meson, ninja, Qt6 dev libs, and more).

  4. Restart the distro once

    WSL only picks up your new default user after a restart:

    wsl -t ReyOS
wsl -d ReyOS

    You're now in a ReyOS shell as your own user, with sudo and the ReyOS/CachyOS/Arch package repos configured.

Selected ReyOS GUI apps (like ReyOS Browser or ReyOS Reader) can launch through WSLg where your WSL/Windows version supports it — this hasn't been confirmed on real hardware yet. KDE Connect device pairing, Bluetooth, and hardware-dependent Control Center pages are not expected to work under WSL and aren't something this build tries to fake.

Build and run a real reyos-* package (e.g. ReyOS Browser)

First check whether GUI forwarding (WSLg) is actually available on this WSL/Windows version:

echo $WAYLAND_DISPLAY $DISPLAY

If both come back empty, there's no GUI forwarding here — CLI/build testing below still works fine, a window just won't appear. Either way, get the source and build:

git clone https://github.com/Reypaulino/ReyOS.git
cd ReyOS/reyos-packages/reyos-browser
reyos-dev-test . --install --run reyos-browser

reyos-dev-test (built into the image) lints the PKGBUILD, runs a real makepkg -sf — pulling pyside6, qt6-webengine, qt6-webchannel, kirigami, and the rest straight from the official repos, no AUR — installs the result, then launches it if a real $WAYLAND_DISPLAY was found. Swap in any other reyos-packages/<name> directory to build something else.