Early Access

Powered by CipherOS

CometOS,
Linux at its
most beautiful.

Seamless Aqua glass. A system tuned to stay quick. And nothing watching you.

Download CometOSHow to install it

Available now for x86_64. Raspberry Pi and ARM64 coming soon.

The CometOS desktop in Light: the menu bar, weather, calendar and clock widgets, and the Dock.

Design

Seamless Aqua,
on your desktop.

The design language of CipherOS, now on a computer. Real glass behind every window, menu and the Dock, and soft corners on all of them.

The CometOS desktop in Dark, with Control Center open.
The same desktop in Light.
LightDark

Light or Dark. Both gorgeous.

Pick one when you set up, and change your mind from Control Center whenever you like. The menu bar, the Dock, your windows and your apps all follow.

Drag across the picture to compare.

Instantly at home.

A menu bar along the top, a Dock along the bottom, and every control right where your hands expect it. Nothing to learn, so you get straight to work.

About, in Comet Settings. The CometOS version and kernel, your displays, how much storage is free, and who builds it.
Launchpad. Every app, full screen, with search and categories along the top.

Every app, one click away.

Launchpad lays out everything you have, full screen, with search and categories. Or press Meta and Space and just type.

The controls you
reach for most.

Sound and brightness, network and power, Night Shift, Dark Mode and Do Not Disturb. All of it in Control Center, one click from anywhere.

Control Center open below the menu bar: sound and brightness sliders, then network, power, Night Shift, Dark Mode, Do Not Disturb and AirDrop as pill toggles.

Performance

Quick. And it
stays quick.

Every app in CometOS is native, and the system under them is tuned from the kernel up. The result is a desktop that answers the moment you ask, and keeps on answering.

Native apps.
Not web pages.

Plenty of desktops lean on Electron apps: each one a web page carrying a browser engine of its own, and that is where the lag comes from. CometOS ships none of them. Every app is native, so it opens sooner, scrolls smoother, and leaves your memory for the work you are doing.

Up to

0GB

of swap in compressed memory, matched to yours. Far faster than any disk.

Animations

0%

shorter, so windows open, close and minimise sooner.

At most

0s

for a stuck service to hold up a shutdown.

Memory pressure

Back to normal

Browser, 41 tabs
9.4 GBClosed
Video editor
2.1 GB
Mail
640 MB
Music
310 MB

Your desktop

Still responsive

One runaway app.
Not a frozen desktop.

When memory runs short, CometOS closes the one app using the most of it, before it can take the whole desktop down with it. Everything else carries on.

Tuned from the kernel up.

A kernel built for desktop responsiveness. Compressed memory in place of a slow swap file. A disk scheduler matched to every kind of drive, and big copies that don’t stall the desktop. You will not see any of it. You will feel all of it.

Tuned for the desktop

CometOS

Kernel
linux-zen
Swap
zram, zstd, up to 8 GB
NVMe drives
No scheduler in the way
SSDs and cards
mq-deadline
Hard disks
BFQ
Out of memory
systemd-oomd
Animations
A quarter shorter

Glass that knows your hardware.

No graphics acceleration? The glass and rounded corners step aside on their own, and come back the moment it returns.

Search that stays quiet.

Files are found by name, so nothing grinds through your documents in the background.

Folders that open faster.

Folder and file details stay cached longer, so the places you visit are ready when you get there.

Figures are CometOS’s own settings, taken from its source. They are not benchmark results.

Setup

Hello, in a minute.

From the first glow of the guava to your own desktop, CometOS asks only what it needs. Light or Dark, the terms, your account. Then a short tour, and you are home.

  1. Starting up. The guava and a progress bar on black. No scrolling text, unless you ask for it.

    1Starting up

  2. Hello. The first thing the install medium shows: the guava over the wallpaper, and Get Started.

    2Hello

  3. Choose your look. Light or Dark, picked before anything else. The menu bar, the Dock, windows and apps all follow.

    3Choose your look

  4. You’re all set. Take the tour again any time from Welcome to CometOS in Launchpad.

    4You’re all set

The installer. Install CometOS waits in the Dock of the live desktop, in your language from the first screen.

Try it. Then keep it.

CometOS runs straight from the USB stick, so you can live with it before you commit. When you are ready, Install CometOS is waiting in the Dock, and it keeps the account you already made.

Updates without the reinstall.

Software Update brings the next CometOS in place, and More Info tells you what is new before you say yes. Downloads pick up where they left off if your connection drops. Your files, accounts and settings stay exactly where they were.

Software Update. When a new version is ready, Update Now installs it, and More Info says what is new first.

Apps

Everything you need,
from day one.

A browser, mail, an office suite, photos, music and more, installed and matched to the system. Thousands more from Flathub, in the App Store.

Web browser

Fast, with your tabs right in the title bar.

Mail, calendar and contacts

All three, in one place.

Documents, spreadsheets and slides

Opens the files your colleagues send.

Photos

Browse, view and touch up your pictures.

Music and podcasts

Your library, and every show you follow.

Video editing

A multi-track timeline, ready for real projects.

Notes

Quick notes, kept on your computer.

Maps and weather

Where you are going, and what it is like there.

Files

Press Space on any file to preview it.

Scheduled backups

Versioned copies of your home folder, on a schedule.

App Store

Thousands more apps, and their updates.

Terminal

Dark by default, for when you want it.

Your phone, on your computer.

Send files both ways. Copy on one, paste on the other. See your phone’s notifications and battery from your desktop. Pair an Android phone with the KDE Connect app, and that is all it takes.

Privacy

Your computer is
Your computer.

No ads. No account. No telemetry. Setting up CometOS creates an account on your computer, and nowhere else.

What CometOS sends home

0

bytes of telemetry,
to us or to anyone else

Telemetry
None
Crash reports
None
Advertising
None
An account with us
None

The details

Under the glass.

Rolling updates through the pacman package manager. One command keeps your whole system current, and it never needs a reinstall.

Terminal. Dark by default. Here, fastfetch: CometOS on the zen kernel, with packages from pacman.
Release
Emerald Bay
Status
Early Access
Powered by
CipherOS
Available now
x86_64, on 64-bit Intel and AMD
Coming soon
Raspberry Pi and ARM64
Kernel
linux-zen
Package manager
pacman, with rolling updates
Desktop
KDE Plasma 6, on Wayland
Needs
4 GB of memory and 30 GB of disk
Starts from
UEFI or BIOS
Apps
Native, plus the App Store with Flathub
Download
3.0 GB
Licence
GNU GPL v3

Gallery

See every screen.

Lock screen. Just the time and the date over the wallpaper, until you start typing.
About This Computer. Chip, memory, graphics, disk and the CometOS build, from the guava menu. Here, a virtual machine.
Control Center, in Light. Sound and brightness sliders, then network, power, Night Shift, Dark Mode, Do Not Disturb and AirDrop as pill toggles.
Open the gallery

Make your computer
feel new again.

Try it from a USB stick first. Nothing changes until you choose Install. Available now for x86_64, with Raspberry Pi and ARM64 coming soon.

Download CometOSRead the install guide

CometOS is Powered by CipherOS.

CometOS is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Arch Linux, KDE e.V. or Apple Inc. Mac is a trademark of Apple Inc. KDE and Plasma are trademarks of KDE e.V.