kutu OS

The RAM-sipping Linux desktop for the DRAM-shortage era.

Between 2025 and 2026 DRAM prices roughly quintupled. A 64GB kit that cost $191 in 2025 cleared $1,100 a year later, and analysts expect no relief before 2028. If your machine has 4–16GB and started feeling cramped, kutu OS is for it: a Linux desktop that treats memory as the scarce resource it now is — every gigabyte your software doesn't waste is an upgrade you don't have to buy at crisis prices.

kutu OS applies the memory-conservation stack that Google and Meta proved at fleet scale (compressed swap tiers, smarter page aging, proactive reclaim, pressure-driven killing) to a normal desktop, with safe defaults and nothing to configure. See docs/MEMORY.md for what runs under the hood and how to tune or disable any of it.

What you get

• An Arch-based XFCE desktop that boots into a live session and installs itself with a few clicks (Calamares installer, offline, no accounts needed)
• A memory stack designed to reclaim 20–40% of effective working set (design target — measured baselines land with M2's benchmark harness): zswap (zstd-compressed swap in RAM), MGLRU page aging, DAMON proactive reclaim, PSI-driven systemd-oomd, and per-application memory ceilings
• First-boot auto-tuning by RAM size (saver / balanced / performance modes)
• Everything reversible: sudo kutu-reset returns you to stock behavior
• Updates forever via plain pacman -Syu against the kutu repository

Getting it

Download the latest ISO from releases, write it to a USB stick (dd if=kutu-os-*.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress), boot it, click "Install kutu OS".

• Needs: x86_64, 2GB+ RAM (8GB+ storage for install), USB or DVD
• The live session logs in automatically — poke around before installing

Project status

• M1 (current): tuned OS + installer + CI, smoke-tested end to end in QEMU on every release
• M2 (in flight): kutu-doctor — the live memory-health dashboard and mode switcher — is built and shipped; kutu-memoryd (PSI-driven policy daemon with a user-visible aggressiveness dial) is next
• M3: libmempressure — a Linux answer to Android's onTrimMemory, so apps can shed memory gracefully under pressure instead of dying — is built and tested; mempressured and app integration follow

Design spec: superpowers/specs/2026-08-27-ramageddon-pivot-design.md

Building from source

Requires only docker and ~10GB of disk:

make build      # packages + ISO, all inside docker (30-90 min)
make smoke      # boot the ISO in QEMU and assert the memory stack
make test-vm    # boot the ISO interactively
make test       # lint + unit tests + package builds (docker)

Nothing on your host is touched — every build and test runs in disposable containers and VMs. Details: docs/BUILDING.md, docs/RELEASE.md.

FAQ

Is this Arch Linux? It is built from Arch packages with a custom repository of kutu packages on top, so the wiki, AUR, and pacman all work. kutu-specific behavior is configuration and a handful of small packages — removable without breaking the system.

What happened to the ML-inference appliance OS? This repository was originally that. It pivoted; the history is in git.

Why not just buy more RAM? If you can, do. This is for everyone who can't — or shouldn't have to.