a Simplicity, Source-built, Agent-First Linux distro
Kan-Linux(or KanLinux) is a Simplicity, Source‑Built, Agent‑First Linux distribution. The name Kan(勘) derives from Instructions for Practical Living by Wang Yangming, representing the philosophy of breaking through technical obscurations and returning to the system’s original simplicity. The name Kan(勘) also stands for "see through the delusions and return to simplicity".
The main goal of Kan-Linux is to enable programmers and AI researchers to build their own Linux OS (Omarchy-style, for example) from the full source code with minimal setup on a wide range of hardware - locally and in the cloud.
- Simplicity — Eliminate overly complex wrapper layers and overengineering, following the core philosophy of ggml/llama.cpp. Not dependent on any existing Linux distribution.
- Monorepo — Drawing lessons from existing Linux distributions and the highly sophisticated Yocto Project, the project uses an AOSP-style single-repository architecture. All source code is stored and hosted in one single code repository to simplify development, build and maintenance work.
- Source-Built — The entire OS and all components are built from source.
- llama.cpp-First — Built-in native llama.cpp edge inference engine for local AI deployment.
- Agent-First & AI-native security audit pipeline — Supports AI agents to autonomously compile, deploy, install components, run system checks and resolve issues. Kan-Linux embeds LLM-based source-level security audit (GLM-5.3 and others) as a mandatory gate before compilation. Security is shifted from "binary post-scanning" to source pre-admission auditing.
- Omarchy targets end users, delivering an out-of-the-box complete desktop system, with visual polish as one of its core goals.
- Kan‑Linux targets programmers, AI researchers and Linux distribution builders, providing a neutral Wayland underlying graphics platform. Its core goals are controllability, auditability(no black-box within the OS), modularity and reproducible builds, and visual polish is not a project objective.
- Kan‑Linux draws inspiration from Omarchy’s desktop shell, and integrates it as our optional early default desktop. We port this shell as an upper-layer UI example to show the capabilities of the Kan-Linux platform. Even if we remove or disable the Omarchy shell in the future, the whole system and graphics infrastructure can still run fully and independently.
- Omarchy is based on the upstream Arch Linux distribution, while Kan-Linux is built completely from scratch and does not rely on any upstream Linux distribution.
- PoC via QEMU virtual machine (stage-1, done)
- Add greeter and full desktop environment in QEMU virtual machine (stage-2.1)
- Enable Kan-Linux to run on physical x86-64 desktop PCs (stage-2.2)
- Enable Kan-Linux to run on physical x86-64 laptops (stage-2.3)
- Add AI-Agent within the desktop environment in QEMU virtual machine (stage-2.4)
- Enable/test/verify AI-Agent within the desktop environment in physical x86-64 PCs/laptops (stage-2.5)
- AArch64 laptops (stage-3)
Please refer to https://github.com/kan-linux/kan/releases/tag/v0.2.6
- Contributors can open PRs
- Collaborators will be invited based on contributions
- Maintainers can push to branches in the
kanrepo and merge PRs into themasterbranch - Any help with managing issues, PRs and projects is very appreciated!
- Read the CONTRIBUTING.md for more information
- Inspired by Omarchy and Omarchy's desktop shell
- Thanks to LFS (Linux From Scratch)
- Thanks to llama.cpp
- Thanks to the entire Linux community(various tech orgs, such as Redhat(RHEL/Fedora/QEMU), SPI(Debian), Linux Foundation, Linaro, Canonical(Ubuntu), System76(Pop!_OS)... and tech stacks)
- Special thanks to the AI assistant for extensive technical discussions, architectural advice, and writing assistance throughout the development of Kan-Linux