About The Ur Project

The Ur Project is an Open Source project started by Auke Kok (aka sofar) to pick up where I left off a few years back and do better at making a Linux Distro.

But instead of doing this under a corporate umbrella, this time I'm doing this by myself. No corporate backing. Nobody except me (for now) calling the shots.

The goals of the project are to make a mature Linux distribution. This means something specific to me. It means that people, entrepreneurs, non-profits, businesses alike should be able to use the Ur Project build system to create a Linux Distribution themselves, or even better, together.

When I say mature, I'm talking about doing proper provenance records, license recording, CVE/vulnerability scans, malware detection, tests, and other things on top of a first class build system that allows users to build complex and great things.

But content wise the build system is neutral and doesn't favor e.g. an atomic OS over a classic one. Composition is a layer in the model. You can build container images just as easily as a live USB image, and maintain an atomic update model besides a normal package-based one.

What goes in the distro is up to users. I'm building a vanilla style distro to validate all the machinery. But users can explore modifying parts of it by themselves and make their own compositions, or even rebuild and remix. The content is shareable and it is easy to create content for others.

The main distribution code is all written in Rust. The project will be largely licensed under a GPL-3.0-or-later license, and available in git on this website.

--sofar (aka Auke)