Qdistro - vibe coded linux desktop with VM app isolation

Hey, I would like to share a hobby project. It is pretty much work in progress (unusable), but perhaps someone was thinking about creating something similar.

It is Linux distribution / desktop partially inspired by Qubes. It isolates individual apps into separate machines, and allows their windows to run side by side on a single desktop. It uses KVM, selinux, wayland on top of regular linux distro (Opensuse Tumbleweed). I started it because I use libvirt VMs for daily development, and wanted something more polished like Qubes.

It fits definition of “vibe coded”, most code was generated by agent, and not reviewed. Big part was designed from mobile phone. But it is two months of work, and it passed several rounds of automated reviews. And I hope I have a good dev process.

Parts:

  • multitier VM isolation, each tier offers different tradeoff with security and memory overhead (SElinux, separate linux user, VM…)
  • Weston based compositor and window manager. Window content shared via RDP (per window server), waypipe and other protocols. Again trade off between performance and security
  • Desktop (shell) forked from Noctalia. Goal is to have GUI for everything.
  • system utils like file manager, terminal, notebook… all integrated into multi VM desktop
  • Permission framework with approval process and admin user

There is more, it should be “kubernetes for desktop” and “harness for local agent”. But that does not really belong here.

Right now I am testing it on VMs, and in few weeks I will install it on real hardware. If you would like to try it, clone qdistro repo, ask agent to clone siblinks repos, and build you daily VM image from qdistro/ci. You can also ask agent to run some interesting GUI tests in foreground, to see it in action.

Website:

Main docs:

Your project seems very similar to Spectrum OS.

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I guess I could post an update:

  • a few weeks of bugfixing
  • working on paravirtualization isolation using gVisor. It can run desktop apps.
  • I started driving this on a few computers
  • working on ISO with installer
  • about one month away from public alpha version with downloadable and installable ISO
  • next focus is managing complex permissions, and using local agents

I moved to github:

My main focus is dev automation, GUI testing, agent harnesses… qdistro code is sort of sideeffect.

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This is an awesome project!

Have been coding with agents myself. They are building me a one pane automation center for Proxmox, Pfsense, AWS, anything with ssh or API, infrastructure as code but with a gui. All sorts of sys-admin primitives to build automatons out of. Pretty sure this takes a team before AI, now I do it by chatting.