Try it beside your desktop

Keep the Linux desktop you already use. MixOS runs next to it on another virtual terminal (VT): your desktop stays on VT1, MixOS takes another VT, and you flip between them with Ctrl+Alt+F1 and Ctrl+Alt+F5. Both keep running.

This is how MixOS is meant to be tried, and it shapes the whole design.

Status: the mechanism runs daily on the developers' machines. The download and the one-command installer are being built. This page describes what they will do.

Why not a virtual machine?

VirtualBox, virt-manager, Incus and Proxmox show a guest desktop in a window, through a virtual GPU and emulated or remote-display input. You can feel that, and a desktop is exactly the kind of software where you notice. Getting native graphics out of a VM means passing through a second GPU, which most people can't do.

On its own VT, MixOS drives the real GPU, keyboard, mouse and speakers. There is no hypervisor, virtual GPU, remote-display protocol or second kernel in the way. What you try is what you would get.

How it works

Three things already in the Linux kernel and systemd do the work:

  1. Virtual terminals. Each VT is a separate console. When you switch, the kernel asks the current owner to let go before handing over.
  2. GPU and input handover. Only one program can drive the display at a time. Your desktop's compositor is managed by systemd-logind on VT1; MixOS's compositor is managed by seatd on its own VT. Each lets go of the display and input devices when its VT goes to the background, and takes them back when it returns.
  3. Separate sessions. MixOS keeps its own runtime directory and its own session bus, so nothing it runs collides with your desktop's.

The container is what makes it a download: systemd-nspawn runs MixOS as a self-contained machine, importctl fetches and verifies the signed image, and machinectl starts, stops and removes it.

What you need

  • A mainstream Linux distribution running systemd: Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Arch, openSUSE or Mint, among others.
  • systemd-nspawn. Debian-family systems need the systemd-container package; most others already have it.
  • Intel or AMD graphics. NVIDIA's proprietary driver needs extra work and comes later.
  • sudo, for the one install command.

What the installer will do

  1. Check your system: systemd and kernel versions, GPU vendor, and a free VT.
  2. Fetch the signed MixOS image and verify its signature.
  3. Describe the machine in one small configuration file: which GPU, which VT, your audio, and a separate home directory with chosen folders shared.
  4. Reserve the VT so no login prompt starts there.
  5. Start MixOS and switch to its VT. If MixOS doesn't come up in time, it switches you back to VT1 automatically.

Removal undoes every step and leaves your system exactly as it was.

Things to know first

  • It is not a sandbox. MixOS gets your real input devices and GPU, so trust it as you would any package you install as root.
  • Your desktop keeps running in the background, and so does everything in it. While MixOS is in front, the installer stops your desktop from deciding you have gone idle and suspending the machine.
  • Apps can't be in both places at once. Firefox and Thunderbird already open on one desktop refuse to open the same profile on the other. That is their profile lock protecting your data, not a fault.
  • If a screen ever goes black, SSH in from another machine, or use Alt+SysRq+R followed by Ctrl+Alt+F1 where your kernel allows it.

For agents

Every page on this site is static HTML, and also published as Markdown: this page is /try.md. /llms.txt indexes the whole manual and /llms-full.txt is all of it in one file.

This page as Markdown · This page describes the current main branch of MixOS.