DiffOS is a GNU/Linux distribution aspiring to the meet the Free System Distribution Guidelines (GNU FSDG), based on Debian GNU/Linux.
tl;dr:
podman run -it registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:trixieDiffOS is the Debian Increment For Freedom Operating System.
Aspire to the goals of GNU FSDG and become a recognized Free GNU/Linux distribution.
Uses Debian GNU/Linux as upstream.
Support for all architectures supported by Debian.
Provide Containers, Cloud Images, LiveCD and installer ISOs.
Provide standalone hosting of the package repository.
Provide documentation and issue tracker.
Keep changes to a minimal, in particular:
Upstream-first policy to prefer that any changes are made in Debian, and only if that fails they are considered for DiffOS.
Binary package re-use for as much as is possible.
Don’t modify any source-level Debian package unless REQUIRED by the FSDG (e.g., for freedom concerns) or REQUIRED by the Debian project (e.g., for branding reasons).
Publish a list of packages that are added, removed or modified compared to Debian, with justification for each change.
Publish Diffoscope-style outputs comparing our artifacts with comparable Debian artifact.
Everything built from CI/CD pipelines, inspired by the Salsa CI pipeline but extended to cover the package repository and installation images as well, to allow modern GitSecDevOps of the entire supply-chain.
Use inspiration from other Debian-derived FSDG distributions Trisquel GNU/Linux and PureOS, and broader with GNU Guix especially on how to approach existing freedom concerns in packages.
Git Forge agnostic. While currently hosted on GitLab.com, scripts and configuration are (or will be) designed to allow setup on self-hosted GitLab instance, Codeberg.org or self-hosted Forgejo.
Maintained by Humans - THE HUMAN MANIFESTO FOR THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.
The package archives for DiffOS are considered stable. Currently we
support trixie, bookworm and bullseye. Archives are published at
https://deb.diffos.org/diffos/ and
http://security.diffos.org/diffos-security/ following the same naming
pattern as Debian. Instead of bookworm,
trixie, or trixie-security, DiffOS uses the
suites diffos-bookworm, diffos-trixie, and
diffos-trixie-security and so on. Only the
main component is available. For example, the
InRelease file for Diffos trixie is published at
https://deb.diffos.org/diffos/dists/diffos-trixie/InRelease for
example.
The DiffOS archive project holds the package archive, including scripts to merge packages from Debian.
DiffOS containers
exists for (applicable) combinations of trixie, bookworm and bullseye
for amd64, arm64, ppc64el and riscv64, including *-slim
variants.
DiffOS cloud
images exists for bookworm and trixie exists for amd64, arm64,
ppc64el and riscv64 flavor, for the generic variant.
Packages for DiffOS are developed using one project per package, available under the packages/ sub-group. Each package has a CI/CD pipeline building binaries. Resulting binaries are merged manually into the archive.
Lists of differences between Debian and DiffOS are continously monitored and summarized by debdistdiff.
LiveCD and installation ISOs are WIP.
Diffoscope comparisons of artifacts are planned.
Reviewing packages for branding and freedom concerns is likely to be a perpetual ongoing task. Inspiration and co-operation with Trisquel and PureOS will help here.
Automating repository import, merge and generation in CI/CD is planned, currently this is performaned manually.
A Forgejo codeberg.com variant is planned as a long-term goal.
The main www.diffos.org website public since 2026-09-04.
See DiffOS Container Images for variants and current status.
Example usage for amd64, arm64, ppc64el and riscv64:
podman run -it registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:trixieMulti-arch (amd64, arm64, trixie/bookworm ppc64el, trixie riscv64) variants:
| Container URL |
|---|
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:trixie |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:trixie-slim |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bookworm |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bookworm-slim |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bullseye |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bullseye-slim |
Arch-specific non-slim variants:
| Container URL |
|---|
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:trixie-amd64 |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:trixie-arm64 |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:trixie-riscv64 |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:trixie-ppc64el |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bookworm-amd64 |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bookworm-arm64 |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bookworm-ppc64el |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bullseye-amd64 |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bullseye-arm64 |
Arch-specific slim variants:
| Container URL |
|---|
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:trixie-slim-amd64 |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:trixie-slim-arm64 |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:trixie-slim-riscv64 |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:trixie-slim-ppc64el |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bookworm-slim-amd64 |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bookworm-slim-arm64 |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bookworm-slim-ppc64el |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bullseye-slim-amd64 |
| registry.gitlab.com/debdistutils/diffos/container:bullseye-slim-arm64 |
The DiffOS Cloud Images project create and publish the cloud images. See the package registry to download release images, which includes the following variants:
Issues can be filed in the DiffOS issue tracker.
If you are aware that your issue is related to a specific component, please file the issue with the relevant issue tracker.
Packages distributed via DiffOS are licensed under various licenses, but are all believe to be free software and follow the FSDG guidelines.
On an installed DiffOS system, licensing information are available as
/usr/share/doc/PKG/copyright replacing PKG with the
relevant package you are interested in.
Any file in this project is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
See the file COPYING or [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html] for license text.