NexisOS logo NexisOS
About

Declarative, without the detours.

NexisOS is a free and open-source Linux distribution focused on transparency, control, reproducibility, security and system integrity.

Why NexisOS exists

NixOS proved that an entire operating system can be described declaratively, rebuilt reproducibly and rolled back safely. NexisOS keeps those ideas and rethinks the parts that make them harder to live with day to day.

On NixOS, a complete setup is usually spread across flakes, home-manager and hand-written derivations, all expressed in a language you have to learn first. NexisOS aims for one tool and one configuration that cover packages, services, users, your own application config and the security policy, written in plain TOML.

It also changes what happens underneath. The store is never the runtime filesystem, so applications see an ordinary /usr. Files are deduplicated as they are written, so there is no optimise pass, and garbage collection follows reference counts instead of scanning the whole store.

What it values

  • Transparency. Configuration and build inputs are explicit and auditable. No hidden magic.
  • Control. You choose where packages come from, whether that is prebuilt sources or building locally, and what a package must prove before it is installed.
  • Reproducibility. Content-addressed artifacts and immutable generations mean a configuration produces the same system every time.
  • Security. SELinux enforcing by default, sandboxed services, a firewall derived from those services, verified and scanned package downloads, and nexis-guard for intrusion prevention.
  • Compatibility. A conventional FHS-compatible runtime layout, so ordinary Linux software works as expected.

Built with Nim

NexisOS's own tooling is written in Nim, which compiles to small, fast native binaries while staying readable, a good fit for system software that should be easy to audit.

Get involved

NexisOS is developed in the open by Kyle Gortych. The project is still early, so GitHub issues will open once there is a working starting point. Until then, the best place for questions, feedback and ideas is GitHub Discussions.

License

NexisOS is free software released under the GNU General Public License v3.0.