Crooli OS is live

The computer you already know how to use. Now free to download.

Crooli OS has been listed as coming soon for a while. It went live on 29 October at os.crooli.com, free for everyone, and it is already on version 1.1.2.

It is a desktop operating system for 64-bit Intel and AMD PCs, and now for Apple silicon Macs and ARM PCs too. It is built on Debian 13 with a trimmed GNOME desktop and designed for people who have never touched Linux. You do not need to know what a package manager is. You do not need an account. You write it to a USB stick (or open it in a virtual machine), try it, and install it if you like it.

What it is

A calm, fast desktop that does not ask you to think about your operating system.

• A five-step installer. Language, keyboard, disk, your name, done. Erase-and-install is the default, and disk encryption is a single optional checkbox.
• One look everywhere. A dark-glass top bar and a floating dock, with the same Ink and Paper colours, in dark and light, across the shell, the file manager, settings, the terminal, the installer and the boot screen. The typeface is [Crooli Sans](/news/introducing-crooli-sans).
• Apps in three clicks. An app store with thousands of free apps, including Spotify, Zoom, VLC, Discord and Steam.
• Updates you never see. Security updates install in the background, with no pop-ups and no forced restarts.
• Kind to older hardware. A trimmed desktop and compressed memory mean 2 GB is enough.
• Private by default. No tracking, no ads, no required account, and location is off until you turn it on.
• A quiet top bar and a floating dock. One Crooli menu holds Settings, the App Store, updates and shutting down, and your most-used apps sit in the dock.
• Hardware that just works. Wi-Fi, graphics, sound, Bluetooth and printers are set up for you, with UEFI, Secure Boot and BIOS support.

Now on Apple silicon and ARM

Version 1.1 added a second download. Alongside the Intel and AMD image there is now an Apple silicon / ARM image, built from the same configuration.

On a Mac with an M-series chip, open it in UTM and choose Virtualize, and it runs natively and at full speed. Parallels and VMware work too. It runs in a virtual machine and does not install onto the Mac's own disk, which would need Asahi Linux. The ARM image also works on ARM PCs.

Version 1.1 also made the installer easier to read, gave the boot menu a Crooli look, and later releases tidied the installer checkboxes and partition labels and put the Crooli logo in Settings > About.

Will it run on your old laptop?

That is the point of it. Try your machine.

*This part of the story is interactive. See it on crooli.com.*

Try it in fifteen minutes

You can run the whole desktop from the USB stick before changing anything on your computer.

*This part of the story is interactive. See it on crooli.com.*

Download the file for your computer from os.crooli.com, about 2 GB, and follow the three steps. To make the USB stick, use Flash by Crooli. Pick the Intel/AMD tab for a PC, or the Apple silicon tab for a Mac. If you would rather not touch real hardware on a PC, it also runs in GNOME Boxes or VirtualBox with UEFI enabled.

Open source, all of it

Crooli OS is open source under GPL-3.0. The packages, settings and scripts are public in the crooli-os repository, and you can build the ISO yourself with `./build.sh` using Docker or Podman, on any operating system including macOS. It builds for your own machine by default, so ARM on an Apple silicon Mac, or you can ask for `./build.sh amd64` or `./build.sh arm64`. Every push to `main` builds fresh ISOs on GitHub Actions, and tagged releases are published automatically with a checksum for each download.

Here is the repository as it is right now:

*This part of the story is interactive. See it on crooli.com.*

Debian and GNOME keep their own licences, and Crooli Sans is under the SIL Open Font License. The Crooli name and logo are trademarks, so forks are asked to pick their own.

Get it

Crooli OS is free forever, with nothing to upgrade and no account to create.

Download Crooli OS for Intel, AMD or Apple silicon, look through the source, or tell us what you think in the repository's discussions. It lives with the rest of the family on the [Collective page](/collective).