Skip to main content

Tromsø

Alpha

Aurora on your desktop.

A freedesktop.org and KDE Plasma image, designed from the ground up to bring Aurora's visual identity to KDE. Built from the best OS tech from the CNCF, Apache Foundation, and the freedesktop.org community — BuildStream pipelines, bootc delivery, and a fully Wayland Plasma 6 desktop. This is what KDE looks like when you build it from source.

KDE Plasma 6Desktop
BuildStreamBuilt with
freedesktop-sdkBase
GNOME OSModeled on
Documentation 📖GitHub 💻

KDE Plasma 6

The latest stable release of Plasma, built from source — no distribution middleman, no lag.

Freedesktop SDK

Same battle-tested libraries as Flathub. Continuously upgraded, always up to date.

Modern Userspace

bootc, systemd-boot, container-first, and legacy-free. Wayland from the ground up.

Designed for Contributors

Your path to contributing to KDE, freedesktop-sdk, and the BuildStream ecosystem. Start here, level up, become part of upstream.

BuildStream & BuildGrid

Hermetic sandbox builds with distributed execution, reproducible and fully auditable.

⚠️ Alpha. Take appropriate precautions.

Features

🧱

Everything from source

Qt 6, KDE Frameworks, Plasma, and apps — ~170 BuildStream elements built on freedesktop-sdk, the same minimal Linux runtime that powers GNOME OS. No binary packages.

🔁

Reproducible by design

BuildStream caches every build artifact. Same inputs, same image — every time. No "works on my machine" drift between contributors.

Aurora-themed Plasma

KDE Plasma 6 with Aurora's visual identity — not stock upstream, not a re-skin. A coherent desktop built to look like it belongs together.

Native bootc image

The output is a standard bootc OCI image. Pull it, boot it, rebase onto it, or turn it into installable media with tacklebox.

🖥️

Shared family

Tromsø and XFCE Linux are siblings — same freedesktop-sdk base, same BuildStream pipeline, different desktop. Fix the base once, both benefit.

Get started

Build from source
git clone https://github.com/tuna-os/tromso.git
cd tromso
just build
Boot in a VM
just generate-bootable-image
just boot-vm
Rebase an existing bootc system
sudo bootc switch ghcr.io/tuna-os/tromso:latest

Part of the BuildStream desktop family

Tromsø is built with BuildStream on freedesktop-sdk — the same foundation as GNOME OS. These sibling projects share the same build system and base:

🖥️XFCE LinuxLightweight XFCE Wayland on the same freedesktop-sdk base.🌺Zirconium HawaiiNiri compositor on freedesktop-sdk — 100% reproducible from source.

More from TunaOS

TackleboxA high-performance bootc orchestrator for multi-boot, updatable, deduplicated media.TavernA modern, fast, beautiful Homebrew client for Linux — GTK 4 + Libadwaita.⌨️bluefin-cliA modern CLI for shell config and dev-environment customization, with beautiful Charm TUIs.🖥️XFCE LinuxThe lightweight one. XFCE Wayland on the same freedesktop-sdk base as Tromsø and GNOME OS.TunaOSCloud-native Enterprise Linux desktop images built with bootc.
All projects →