About
Why we’re building Kilne.
Kilne is a small, open desktop operating system. We want a system you can understand, change and build on, without first learning a pile of new tools.
What we believe
Small enough to understand
A short list of parts, each easy to explain. Fewer parts means more of them make sense.
Apps are web apps
You build for the platform you already know, with no new toolkit to learn first.
See what an app will do
Permissions are shown in plain English before anything installs, and an install that asks for more than it showed is stopped.
Open source, with one exception
The shell, installer and tools are open source. The one proprietary part is named, and you accept its license openly.
What Kilne is made of
Debian 13 underneath. The labwc compositor on Wayland. A shell, login screen and system apps written in Rust. GPU-accelerated 2D drawing through wgpu. Chromium for the web. The full picture →
Who makes it
Kilne OS is made by Splenta Inc. This is version 0.1.0, the first early release.