Fir is a minimal source-based Linux distribution that boots into a finished desktop, a premade rice and stays small enough to understand. What can be built is built on your machine. There is no configuration language to learn, no resolver to argue with, and no systemd underneath.
Small enough to read
A curated tree, one version of each package, plain shell recipes. No use flags, no slots, and no dependency solver doing arithmetic behind your back. When the build order is wrong, the recipe is wrong, and you can see it in the file.
Source, because that is the point
Packages are compiled on your machine, in a clean chroot, from recipes you can read and edit. The closed bits firmware, a browser, the occasional driver is still binary because thats the world we live in.
Already riced
The desktop is not a starting point you spend a weekend fixing. It ships configured: window manager, bar, colours, keybindings, the lot. Everything is a file you own and can change. The default just has to look good first.
What Fir is not
- Not a mainline distribution. A hobby project, built for one machine and shown to anyone who asks.
- Not a framework. No configuration language, no module system, no cleverness to learn.
- Not a package-count contest. The tree is curated and stays small on purpose.
- Not ready. No installer, no images, no documents worth reading yet.
Where it stands
Fir is at the very beginning: a name, a design, a window manager and this website. There is nothing to install. If you want to watch it happen, the news page is where progress gets written down.
Start here
- Download — nothing yet, but this is where it will be.
- Documentation — a skeleton, and honest about being one.
- Packages — a placeholder tree, to show the shape of things.
- News — the build log.