LingOS is a kernel, a desktop, a filesystem, a network stack and a shelf of real
apps -- a music studio, a 3D modeler, a web browser, a messenger -- all compiled from
.ling source straight to bare metal. No Linux underneath.
What's inside
Every item below is running code, exercised by monitor-driven QEMU tests that click, type, record audio and capture packets -- not a roadmap.
x86_64 via GRUB/Multiboot2 as a live CD or an installed disk with its own two-stage MBR bootloader, dual-boot menu and chainloader. A from-scratch aarch64 HAL boots the Raspberry Pi 3, 4 and 5.
IDT/PIC and VBAR_EL1 interrupt handling, a 100 Hz timer, a cooperative in-kernel scheduler and a preemptive ring-3 layer: syscall/sysret, per-process page tables, an ELF loader.
A buddy frame allocator, a slab heap with working free(), and 4-level paging with NX and W^X on the kernel image plus a separate address space per user process.
A git-style root filesystem: BLAKE3-hashed immutable objects, an O(1) hash index, a double-buffered superblock and an append-only commit log. FAT for USB sticks and SD cards.
Sign-in, a multi-window manager with spring-physics dragging, an auto-hiding dock, Alt+Tab, a tray with Wi-Fi, volume and network, live resolution and theme switching, and a localized UI.
An e1000 driver under an IPv4/TCP/DNS/HTTPS client. Settings > Network runs an on-screen ARP, DNS, TCP and HTTPS test, and a built-in SSH + SFTP server can start at boot.
An AC'97 driver with a per-app mixer and pentatonic sound themes, HDMI audio on the Pi, and a Files app that plays WAV, OGG and FLAC.
A Packages window and terminal commands that sync, search and install from the live lingfu registry over the network, then ling run the result.
Qwen3 runs inside the kernel from a GGUF on disk -- tokenizer, quantized matrix kernels, KV cache. Type ask in the Terminal; the desktop keeps moving while it thinks.
Apps
The x86 ISO and the Raspberry Pi studio image ship with these on board, launched from the Applications menu or the dock. Click any screenshot to enlarge it.
The full studio, LingOS Edition: arranger, piano roll, mixer with per-track effect racks, MIDI, automation. Shown here with the bundled Anthem of Ling Country project.
musicPi studio
A tracker-style DAW in the kernel itself: 8 channels × 64 rows, 14 instruments, drive / crush / echo / reverb, arpeggiator and euclid scripts, Mix AI, WAV and MIDI export.
musicx86
A 3D modeler with outliner, primitives, transforms, vertex colours, smoothing, mirroring and UV boxing, rendered by the OS's own graphics stack.
3DPi studio
A box-model web browser written in Ling: DOM and CSS layout, canvas, PNG images, redirects, history and a start page pointing around Ling Country.
internet
Direct messages to other LingOS machines on the same network. Each peer has a LingId you compare out of band before trusting a first contact.
internetLAN
The game and app studio: scene hierarchy, inspector, asset browser, a timeline for cutscenes, scripts and one-click build & export.
develop
A local wallet for the LNG network: keys are generated on this computer, with a 24-word recovery phrase.
finance
An action game with an online login, character creation and flight -- the same Chinese-keyword Ling demo from ling-lang.org.
gameling run any .ling fileUnder the hood
LingOS is built by the exact same ling compiler that runs
on your desktop -- AOT through Cranelift, straight to a Multiboot2 ELF or a Pi
kernel8.img. The x86_64 and aarch64 kernels share their drivers,
filesystem and scheduler; only the HAL differs.
ling build per target: --platform kernel for x86_64, --platform rpi for the Pi.# start the SSH + SFTP server, now and at every boot
> ssh-serve on
ssh-serve: ON -- SSH + SFTP server, port 22 (persisted: starts at boot)
# give this terminal a different look
> term paper
preset applied
# install a package from the live registry and run it
> lingfu install ling-miao
> ling run hello.ling
# ask the on-device model (loads from the model disk on first use)
> ask what is a content-addressed filesystem?
> llm statusScreenshots
Straight out of QEMU. See all of them →
Boot the live ISO in QEMU or VirtualBox, or write it to a USB stick -- no install required.
Ling Country
The omniglot systems language LingOS is written in -- English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Thai keywords.
The language book, tutorials and builtin reference.
The package registry LingOS installs from over the network.
Kernel, drivers, apps, build scripts and the QEMU test harness.
The ling toolchain -- interpreter, Cranelift AOT, kernel and Pi targets.
Say hi, share what you built, report what broke.