Download

Download it. See for yourself.

One ISO. Four targets. ZFS on root. Offline. Two minutes.

The whole thing — 15 GB, offline
Pushbutton golden image and developer workstation. Debian and Fedora mirrors, Kubernetes images, model runtime, every console.
↓  Download sha256
Fedora workstation — 5.9 GB
The Fedora mirror and all the tools. Fedora installs offline; labs and AI pull from the network.
↓  Download sha256
Net installer — 2.2 GB
Every tool, no mirrors. Any distribution, installed from its own repositories. Needs a network.
↓  Download sha256
Core — 1.4 GB
Fedora, ZFS on root and ZFSBootMenu. No consoles, no web UI, no mirrors. Needs a network.
↓  Download sha256

AMD64 · BSD-3-Clause · resumable (curl -C - / wget -c) · what’s new in 1.4.2 · Discord

Verify it: sha256sum kldload-free-latest.iso and compare against the published sum. Expect 0a7fb94ddb1d… for the full 1.4.2 image. The sum file names the versioned filename, so it also tells you which release you have. The smaller editions, built 2026-09-06: 086826b4ab71… net installer (sum), c9d6b306705a… core (sum), 995bd74c6152… Fedora-only (sum).

System Requirements

Each cell is minimum / recommended. kldload builds a full OS with ZFS on root, kernel modules and DKMS, so the floor is higher than a stock install — and the two desktop editions run real VMs on ZFS clones for KVM, Kubernetes, klab and the appliances, which is where the 32 GB and 16 cores go.
The whole thing Fedora workstation Net installer Core
CPU 8 / 16 cores 8 / 16 cores 4 / 8 cores — 16 with the labs 2 / 4 cores
RAM 16 / 32 GB+ 16 / 32 GB+ 8 / 16 GB — 32 with the labs 4 / 8 GB
Disk 256 / 512 GB NVMe 128 / 512 GB 64 / 256 GB 32 / 64 GB
GPU NVIDIA for the local model; optional otherwise NVIDIA for the local model; optional otherwise optional —
USB stick 32 GB+ 8 GB+ 4 GB+ 2 GB+
Boot UEFI (Secure Boot supported). Legacy BIOS is not supported.
Internet Not needed for Debian and Fedora; RHEL family and Arch install over the network Not needed for Fedora; the rest over the network Required Required
Inside the installer you still pick a profile — desktop, workstation, server, core, KVM, Kubernetes, storage, VDI, RDP, monitoring — and a server profile on the whole-thing image needs less than the desktop numbers above. The numbers are what the desktop with its labs wants; a VM with 8 GB will install and run the core of it.

Three steps

1

Download
Grab the ISO above

2

Burn to USB
dd, Rufus, or Balena Etcher

3

Boot & install
Pick your distro. 2 minutes.

Write to USB

Linux / macOS

# One-liner: download + burn + eject (replace /dev/sdX)
curl -L -o /tmp/kldload.iso https://dl.kldload.com/kldload-free-latest.iso && \
  dd if=/tmp/kldload.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync conv=fsync && \
  sync && eject /dev/sdX

Windows

Use Rufus (recommended) or Balena Etcher. Select the ISO, select your USB drive, click Start.

Or boot in a VM

Works in KVM, Proxmox, VMware ESXi, VirtualBox, UTM. Just attach the ISO as a CD-ROM and boot with UEFI.

Or build your own

# Clone and build — same result as the download
git clone https://github.com/kldload/kldload.git
cd kldload
./deploy.sh clean && ./deploy.sh builder-image && PROFILE=desktop ./deploy.sh build

Every script is readable bash. No compiled binaries. No vendor SDK. cat any file and read what it does.

Source: github.com/kldload/kldload  ·  Docs: github.com/kldload/kldload/docs  ·  Changelog: CHANGELOG.md
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