Eclipse OS

Why Eclipse

Small on the inside,
huge on the outside

A modern microkernel that doesn't make you give up the software you already use.

🦀

Safe by design

The kernel is written in Rust: no buffer overflows or dangling pointers at the heart of the system. It is a reimplementation of the Zircon microkernel.

🐧

Speaks Linux

It implements the Linux system calls following Linux's own documentation: BusyBox, Mesa, foot or labwc, built for Linux, work as they are.

🌙

Its own desktop

A Wayland session with labwc and native pieces: the animated lunarbg wallpaper, the lunarbar panel and a quick launcher.

🛡️

Built-in guardian

hunter lives inside the kernel: it enforces LSM-style policies, watches W^X and detects anomalous behaviour.

⚡

Measured boot

Every boot stage is timed, from the firmware to eclipse-init. What isn't measured can't be improved.

💽

Real hardware

Its own AHCI, NVMe, e1000e, USB and sound drivers; DRM/KMS graphics and an installer that puts it on your disk.

How it looks

Eclipse OS, up and running

Real screenshots of Eclipse OS 0.7.1, built from the current code and booted in QEMU. Pick a tab.

A sky of its own

The lunarbg wallpaper draws an eclipse in real time with the actual time, date and phase of the Moon. At the top, lunarbar with the four workspaces, CPU, memory, network, temperature and calendar. At the bottom, tasks, volume, notifications and hunter's shield.

Everything one key away

Press Alt+Space, type and run. Apps, settings, restart and shutdown, all in the same place.

A terminal that tells the truth

uname says Eclipse, the root lives on EclipseFS, its own file system, and /proc/hunter shows live what the kernel is watching.

Everything under control

Ctrl+Shift+Esc opens lunarmon: per-core load, memory, network, disk, processes and boot services. And if a program tries to reach the network without permission, hunter asks you in a notification.

Coming from KDE?

With eclipse-look kde the panel and launcher take on Plasma's Breeze colours. The pieces are the same; only the skin changes.

Coming from Windows?

eclipse-look win11 centres the taskbar and turns the launcher into a translucent Start menu.

Boot in plain sight

The rboot loader draws the logo and the first half of the progress bar; the kernel finishes it. Every stretch is timed.

Under the hood

From the board to your desktop

Its own kernel below and Linux software above, layer by layer.

Desktoplabwc · lunarbg · lunarbar · foot · Mesa
User spaceeclipse-init · BusyBox · musl · apt
Linux layersystem calls · /proc · /sys · DRM/KMS
Rust microkernelZircon objects · scheduler · hunter · EclipseFS
Hardwarex86_64 · arm64 · RISC‑V · UEFI with rboot

Try it

In three steps

A virtual machine is all you need. If you like it, the installer puts it on your disk.

Download the ISO

Pick desktop or minimal, for x86_64 or arm64, in Downloads.

eclipse-desktop-x86_64.iso.gz

Boot it in QEMU

It needs UEFI firmware (OVMF) and at least 4 GB of memory.

gunzip eclipse-desktop-x86_64.iso.gz
qemu-system-x86_64 -machine q35 \
  -m 8G -smp 4 -vga virtio \
  -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly=on,file=OVMF.fd \
  -cdrom eclipse-desktop-x86_64.iso

Install it

From the live console, the installer walks you through the rest.

# with a SATA or NVMe disk attached
install-eclipse

Want to build it yourself?

The whole system, from the kernel to the desktop, comes from a single repository.

View the code Eclipse vs Linux (in Spanish)

Small on the inside,huge on the outside