The Kiln Linux distribution

Kiln is a minimal distribution based on Arch Linux. It uses Arch’s repositories, pacman and systemd unchanged, and adds a small live ISO with a menu-driven installer, a choice of seven desktops with twmx as the default, and kiln, a tool that keeps your package sets in readable profile files.

An installed Kiln system is an Arch system: run pacman -Syu to update it, and the Arch wiki applies as is.

Kiln runs on x86_64. Download the ISO, or build it yourself with archiso. The source is on GitHub; follow the commit history to see what changed.

Read the documentation to learn how Kiln fits together, or start with the contributing guide.

Arch underneath

Kiln replaces nothing in Arch. Packages come from the official Arch repositories through pacman.

A pacman hook keeps Kiln’s os-release in place when Arch’s filesystem package upgrades. Everything else is a default you can change.

Live ISO

The ISO is built with archiso from a profile derived from Arch’s releng, cut to about 50 packages. It boots on UEFI and BIOS.

make iso builds it without root, in a user namespace.

Installer

kiln-install is a bash script that asks every question first and changes nothing until you confirm. Erasing a disk needs its name typed back.

It installs with pacstrap, boots with systemd-boot, GRUB or Limine on UEFI or BIOS, and checks the result before it reports success.

Profiles

A profile is a named list of packages in a TOML file. Kiln ships 10: core, twmx, i3, sway, hyprland, xfce, plasma, gnome, developer, audio. They stack, and you can write your own.

See what each profile installs.

kiln

kiln 0.1.0, written in Rust, compares a profile with the system and has pacman install what’s missing. pacman stays the only package database.

kiln remove --purge only uninstalls what kiln itself installed, never a package you added. See package management.

Desktops

The installer offers twmx (the default), i3, Sway, Hyprland, XFCE, KDE Plasma, GNOME or none.

The four window managers start when you log in on tty1. XFCE, Plasma and GNOME get a login screen.

Recent commits

• Merge pull request #7 from kilnlinux/sof-firmware
• fix(installer): install sof-firmware so Intel laptops have sound
• Merge pull request #6 from kilnlinux/e2e-desktop-environments
• docs(testing): XFCE, Plasma and GNOME install and reach their login manager
• Merge pull request #5 from kilnlinux/e2e-desktops
• test(e2e): check os-release survives a filesystem upgrade; record runs
• Merge pull request #4 from kilnlinux/e2e-desktops
• test(e2e): check desktop and bar over serial; Hyprland gets PipeWire
• Merge pull request #3 from kilnlinux/e2e-luks-btrfs-kernels
• test(e2e): FS, ENCRYPT and KERNEL options; LUKS, btrfs and linux-lts pass

Profiles

• core Minimal command-line system
• twmx twmx X11 desktop: xterm, dmenu, dunst
• i3 i3 X11 tiling desktop: i3status, i3lock, xterm, dmenu, dunst
• sway Sway Wayland desktop: foot, fuzzel, mako
• hyprland Hyprland Wayland tiling desktop: kitty, wofi, mako
• xfce XFCE desktop environment (X11) with the LightDM login screen
• plasma KDE Plasma desktop environment (Wayland) with the SDDM login screen
• gnome GNOME desktop environment (Wayland) with the GDM login screen
• developer Git, compilers, make, debugger
• audio PipeWire audio (PulseAudio and ALSA compatible)

Not done yet: a hosted repository for [kiln] package updates (twmx updates per user from GitHub), broader hardware testing.

kiln commands

• kiln list active profiles and the packages kiln manages
• kiln search <query>… search the official repositories (pacman -ss)
• kiln profile list all profiles kiln can find
• kiln profile show <profile> a profile’s packages and whether they’re installed
• kiln profile create <name> new empty profile in ~/.config/kiln/profiles
• kiln plan <profile> what apply would change; changes nothing
• kiln apply <profile> install what the profile is missing, mark it active
• kiln remove <profile> mark a profile inactive (keeps its packages)
• kiln doctor check pacman, dependencies and profiles
• kiln export <name> [pkg…] write a profile from the given packages, or from all explicitly installed ones