Sculpt OS version 26.10
(published in October 2026)
Sculpt is an open-source general-purpose OS.
It combines Genode's
custom microkernel, capability-based security,
sandboxed device drivers, and virtual machines in a novel operating
system for commodity PC hardware and the PinePhone.
Sculpt is used as day-to-day OS by the
Genode developers.
The administrative user interface ("Leitzentrale"):
The panel at the top gives access to a live view of the system structure (shown),
a file browser, network connectivity, power control, and system update/rollback.
The interactive graph at the center presents the running components with their
relationships and allows the user to interact with a variety of components
offered by Genode Labs and federated software providers.
Mobile-OS version
An experimental phone variant of Sculpt OS tailored for the PinePhone is
available at https://depot.genode.org/genodelabs/image.
Information about installing and using this variant are available in the form
of a dedicated article
at https://genodians.org.
MNT-Reform version
Sculpt OS is available for the i.MX8 variant for the MNT Reform laptop at
https://depot.genode.org/genodelabs/image/ and at the system-update dialog.
Preparing a bootable USB stick on Unix
On Unix-based systems, use the dd command to copy the disk image to a USB stick:
sudo dd if=sculpt-26-10.img of=/dev/sdx bs=1M conv=fsync
Here, /dev/sdx refers to the device node of your USB stick. To determine
it, you may inspect the output of dmesg after plugging it in.
Preparing a bootable USB stick on MS Windows
- Option 1: Rufus
-
-
Download and run Rufus (alternative portable executable available)
-
Plug in your USB thumb drive and select it under "Device"
-
Download the Sculpt OS image linked above and select it under "Boot selection"
-
Write to the USB drive by clicking "START"
- Option 2: Win32 Disk Imager
-
-
Download, install, and run Win32 Disk Imager
-
Download the Sculpt OS image linked above and select under "Image file"
-
Plug in your USB thumb drive and select it under "Device"
-
Write to the USB drive by clicking "Write"
Running Sculpt as VirtualBox appliance
-
Download the
sculpt-26-10.ova
(signature)
appliance that contains the Sculpt 26.10 image along with a known-to-work
VirtualBox configuration.
SHA256 013487c42902cd1ec48725b95d78ad6817cfdb537c375e0f30ce0ce444c22474
-
Start VirtualBox and import the OVA file as appliance.
-
After boot, you will be presented with one AHCI boot disk, which you
should expand via the administrative
user interface
before using it.
Running Sculpt 26.10 in Qemu
You may take the following command line as starting point for experimenting
with Sculpt 26.10 on the Qemu emulator.
qemu-system-x86_64 -display sdl -cpu Skylake-Client -machine q35 \
-m 1024 -drive format=raw,file=sculpt-26-10.img \
-netdev user,id=net0 -device e1000,netdev=net0
For better performance, you may also try the options -accel kvm -cpu host.
Previous versions
All previous releases are available at the dedicated
Sculpt OS archive page.
