A hostile but reversible hijack of your Linux userland.
🏴 Why PirateOS? PirateOS is when you really, really want to distrohop, but can't. If you're living on the edge of the Linux hardware econsystem or have serious ethical issues with mainstream Linux OS distributions, PirateOs is a way to "go your own way". ITs still in heavy development and I want to add some more features before release.
It's for users of: 🧪 Sketchy crowdfunding SBCs 💀 Discontinued eMMC-based devices 🔧 Custom-kernel Frankenboards 💤 Abandoned OS images 💤 Forgotten Android tablet ports 🧱 Anything where changing distros risks bricking it
…and it’s also for those who simply want a clean, minimal userland free from creeping complexity.
It's also for people who: ☠️ Hate or fear Rust bloating every command-line tool 🧼 Reject CoCs that feel more like corporate HR documents than community collaboration 🧍♂️ Believe userland should be POSIX, fast, and transparent 🧙♂️ Prefere C to autogenerated binary blobs 🕳️ Want to understand every line of code they rely on
Many niche or obscure Linux-capable devices ship with outdated or custom-tweaked operating often bound to:
- Vendor-specific kernels that are hard or impossible to Nonstandard bootloaders that easily break
- Peripheral hacks (e.g. screen, WiFi, or storage drivers) with no upstream support
- Abandoned OS images with no package updates or community support
Trying to install a full new distro often leads to broken displays, bootloops, or dead hardware.
But **s real power is in the and that's where PirateOS sails in.
PirateOS doesn't replace your system. It hijacks it.
- We build musl a lighter suckless libc.
- We download and install the latest suckless tools, binutils, base, etc.
- Overrides bloated GNU tools with suckless alternatives (
sbase,ubase, etc.)- WE DO NOT INSTALL OUR TOOLS OVER anything in /usr/bin /bin or /usr/local/bin
- YOU CHOOSE where to put it, like ~/.local/pirateos ~/pirateos or /opt/pirateos
- (PENDING) Hijacks your
$PATH,EDITOR,PAGER,MANPATH, and more - Uses aliases or wrappers to quietly subvert coreutils behavior
- Runs in your space - root, packages or reboots not required.
- PATH still falls back to native binaries if one doesnt exist in your hijacked path.
It is meant to be a permanent change, but tools to undo, and update are being developed.
Its a "microdistro - hop" changing your look and feel without being tried to a distro.
- Build a new kernel
- Replace systemd (yet)
- remove GNU
- remove RUST
- change your C compiler or make,etc.
- musl
- suckless ubase,sbase
- awk
- mg editor (staticly linked)
- a custom pager
- installs a number of other software that "rocks" on suckless.org
run ./install.sh This will create everything in the build directory. TODO: install it into a suitible directory for use.
- a rebuild /update kernel option?
- repalce systemd with something more suckless?