Arch-based XFCE desktop Offline installer MIT licensed

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

DRAM prices roughly quintupled between 2025 and 2026, and analysts expect no relief before 2028. kutu OS applies the memory stack Google and Meta proved at fleet scale — zswap, MGLRU, DAMON, PSI-driven oomd — to an ordinary desktop, with safe defaults and nothing to configure.

Download ISO Read the docs

x86_64 2GB+ RAM live session before you commit installs offline in a few clicks

MemoryHigh enforced
zswap pool 35% cap
4–16 GBthe sweet spot it's tuned for
20–40%working-set reclamation target
8kernel features verified at boot
1 commandto undo everything (kutu-reset)
≤ 2 GiBISO, BIOS + UEFI
What you get

A complete desktop that treats memory
as the scarce resource it now is

Everything ships as ordinary pacman packages with safe defaults — no config files to babysit, no daemons to babysit either.

Memory that goes further

Hot pages stay in RAM. Warm pages compress 2–3× into the zstd zswap pool. Only genuinely cold data ever touches disk — the kernel does the triage, continuously.

RAM hot pages zswap zstd · 35% cap swap cold only MGLRU ages it DAMON finds it cold oomd guards pressure

Bounded by design

The compressed pool can never eat your RAM — the cap is locked by the design spec and asserted at boot.

Tunes itself on first boot

saver< 6 GB
balanced6–16 GB
performance> 16 GB

Click-to-install, offline

Boot the live USB, poke around, then let the Calamares installer put it on disk. No accounts, no network, no “call home” — the installer works from the stick.

Updates forever

Plain pacman -Syu against the kutu repository over HTTPS. It's still Arch underneath: the wiki, the AUR and everything else keep working.

Nothing to regret

sudo kutu-reset returns the entire memory stack to stock Arch behavior. Every tweak is a package; every package is removable.

Light but complete

Curated XFCE with a matching dark theme, Firefox wrapped in its own memory ceiling, notifications, power management and a set of wallpapers that ship as tiny SVGs — a distro for the DRAM-shortage era shouldn't waste storage either.

idle session≈ 400 MB
wallpapersSVG
telemetrynone
Under the hood

Fleet-proven kernel machinery,
locked by a tested spec

The same techniques Google and Meta run across millions of machines — on a desktop, with values fixed by a versioned design spec and asserted by a boot-time prober and CI smoke tests.

zswap · zstdCompressed swap in RAM. Cold pages shrink to a third instead of hitting your disk.
MGLRUThe multi-generational LRU ages pages the way modern workloads actually behave.
DAMONSampling finds cold memory and reclaims it before pressure becomes stutter.
PSI + oomdPressure-driven kills target the actual hog instead of freezing your screen.
kutu-runPer-app MemoryHigh ceilings for Firefox & friends, enforced by systemd scopes.
Spec-lockedEvery tuned value is pinned by the design spec and checked by kutu-check-kernel.
Getting it

Three steps to a lighter machine

No partitioning homework, no installer account — the full walkthrough lives in the install guide.

Write the USB stick

Download the ISO, verify the SHA-256, dd it to a stick. That's the whole preparation.

Boot and explore

The live session logs in by itself. Poke around — your disk stays untouched until you say otherwise.

Click install, reboot

“Install kutu OS” copies the running system to disk offline, rebuilds the boot chain, and calibrates the memory stack on first boot.

Gallery

Screenshots

Captured from a QEMU boot of the actual ISO — the same image CI smoke-tests on every release.

The kutu OS Calamares installer
The offline Calamares installer running in the live session.
kutu OS live XFCE desktop
The live XFCE desktop with the kutu dark theme.
kutu OS memory tools in a terminal
Memory reporting and the kutu-run launcher in action.
No reinstall needed

Just the packages, on your existing Arch

The whole memory stack ships as ordinary pacman packages from the kutu repository. Add the repo, install kutu-memory for the kernel-level stack — or kutu-desktop-xfce for the curated desktop on top — and undo it all with kutu-reset whenever you like.

Add to /etc/pacman.conf:

# the kutu repository
[kutu]
# unsigned until v1 (spec decision D9)
SigLevel = Never
Server = https://kutuso.github.io/os/repo/$arch/

Then pacman -Syu kutu-memory — or grab the ISO for the full desktop.

Give your gigs their jobs back

Boot the live USB and see the difference before anything touches your disk.

Download the ISO