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linuxlive turns a short spec file into your own live Linux distro. You choose a base (Ubuntu or Fedora), a desktop, some apps from Flathub, and your own wallpaper and logo. linuxlive then builds an ISO image that boots from a USB stick or in a virtual machine, on BIOS and UEFI PCs, with Secure Boot on.

This wiki shows you how to make one, from an empty folder to a USB stick you can boot.

What a distro looks like

A whole distro is one short YAML file plus two images:

schema_version: 1
name: Lawn Darts Linux
version: "0.1"
base: ubuntu
desktop: cinnamon
apps:
  - firefox
  - vlc
branding:
  wallpaper: assets/lawndarts/wallpaper.png
  logo: assets/lawndarts/logo.png
  accent_color: "#e0661f"

The name appears in the boot menu, on the boot splash, in the About screen and in /etc/os-release. The wallpaper is the desktop background, and the logo replaces the boot splash logo, the KDE launcher and, on Cinnamon, the menu button.

Pick your route

What you have	Route	What it costs
A GitHub account and a web browser	The template linuxlive-distro: click Use this template, edit one file, and GitHub builds and boot-tests your ISO. See Getting Started.	Free in a public repository
A GitHub account, git and Python, and changes to make to linuxlive itself	A fork of this repository; see Building with GitHub Actions	Free in a public fork
A Linux PC or server with root access, podman and about 30 GB of free disk	Building Locally	Your own machine's time

Most people should start with the template. You don't need Linux or any installs, and your ISO is boot-tested in five firmware and media combinations before you download it.

Read in this order

1. Getting Started: the whole path once, start to finish, with a worked example.
2. Writing a Spec: every field, the list of bases, desktops and apps, and the rules for images.
3. Building with GitHub Actions or Building Locally.
4. Testing and Booting: check the download, try it in VirtualBox, write a USB stick and boot a real PC.
5. Known Limitations: what doesn't work yet. Read it before you rely on a build.

Project status

linuxlive is early. All four example distros build and boot in CI on every change, but:

• the ISOs are live only: there is no installer, and nothing is saved when you shut down;
• they run on 64-bit Intel and AMD PCs only (no Apple silicon, no ARM);
• they have been tried in QEMU and VirtualBox only, not yet on real hardware.

The Known Limitations page has the full list.

Help and contributing

• Questions and bug reports: open an issue. Say which spec you built (paste it), how you built it, and what you saw.
• Security problems: report them privately, as SECURITY.md describes.
• Code, fixes and new catalog apps: see CONTRIBUTING.md. Commits need a Signed-off-by line (git commit -s).

linuxlive is licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later.