One ISO. Every distro. Every platform.
- ✓ 2 minutes, not 20 — no Anaconda, no curses UI from 1998
- ✓ One USB, four distros — CentOS, Debian, RHEL, Rocky — pick at install time
- ✓ ZFS on root out of the box — no manual DKMS dance, no initramfs prayer
- ✓ Boot environments — roll back any upgrade in 30 seconds
- ✓ Offline — 3,600 packages baked in, zero internet required
- ✓ Web UI — click, don't type
- ✓ Same tools on Debian and CentOS —
kpkg install nginxworks everywhere - ✓ Automatic safety net — every package operation takes a ZFS snapshot first
- ✓ Export anywhere — qcow2, VHD, VMDK, OVA, raw — build once, run anywhere
- ✓ Three profiles — Desktop, Server, or Core (just ZFS, nothing else, for advanced users)
kldload is a distro build tool that produces a single bootable ISO with everything baked in. No internet. No post-install configuration. No praying the initramfs is correct.
What you didn’t know Linux could do
30-second OS rollback
Boot environments let you undo an entire OS upgrade at the bootloader. Pick the pre-upgrade snapshot, reboot, done. No rescue USB. No reinstall. 30 seconds.
Self-healing storage
Every block is checksummed. If a bit flips — silent data corruption that ext4 will never detect — ZFS catches it and auto-repairs from the mirror or parity. Your data is intact, always.
Compression makes you faster
lz4 compression writes less data to disk. Less I/O = faster performance. You get more usable space and better throughput. It’s not a trade-off — it’s free.
Clone 500GB in 0.1 seconds
kclone /srv/database /srv/database-test — instant copy-on-write clone. Zero additional space until data diverges. Production database cloned for testing in milliseconds.
cp.Per-directory encryption
Not full-disk LUKS. Per-dataset AES-256-GCM with independent keys. Home dir, database, logs — each locked separately. Compromise one key, the rest stay sealed.
Atomic package management
kpkg install nginx snapshots the filesystem first. If the install breaks something, ksnap rollback undoes everything — the package, its config files, the state changes. All of it.
Block-level replication
zfs send | ssh remote zfs recv — not file copying. Block-level replication. Build one system, replicate it to 100 nodes. Only changed blocks travel. It’s Git for your entire OS.
GPU sharing without passthrough
NVIDIA drivers on the host, containers on top. Every container shares the GPU simultaneously. Jellyfin transcoding + AI inference + monitoring — one GPU, no vGPU license.
Air-gapped deployment
3,600+ packages across two distro families, baked into one USB. Install a full Linux desktop with ZFS on root in a facility with zero internet. Military, classified, remote — it just works.
USB to production fleet
Boot USB → install → export VMDK → upload to cloud → Terraform deploys 100 instances. One pipeline from bare metal to production. 4 distros × 3 profiles × 6 export formats = 72 unique configurations from one ISO.
Multi-Distro Installer
CentOS Stream 9
RHEL upstream. Enterprise-grade. dnf --installroot from the baked-in RPM darksite. ~900 packages offline. Desktop, server, or core profile.
Debian 13 (Trixie)
Stable. Proven. debootstrap from the embedded APT darksite on localhost:3142. ~2,700 packages offline. Desktop, server, or core profile.
RHEL 9
Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Enter your activation key and org ID in the web UI. Pulls from Red Hat CDN. The only path that needs internet.
Rocky Linux 9
RHEL binary-compatible. Community-driven. Uses the same RPM darksite and dnf --installroot path as CentOS. ~900 packages offline. Desktop, server, or core profile.
ZFS on Root
128-bit Copy-on-Write
Never overwrites data in place. Every change goes to a new location. Old versions stay intact for snapshots. Checksums on every block. Self-healing on mirrors.
Boot Environments
ZFSBootMenu presents every OS state as a boot option. Upgrade broke something? Pick the pre-upgrade snapshot at boot. 15-second rollback. No rescue USB.
Automatic Snapshots
Before every package change. Every 15 minutes for /srv. Configurable retention. Factory reset snapshot on install. Managed by sanoid.
Native Encryption
Per-dataset AES-256-GCM. Each directory can have its own key. Lock and unlock datasets independently. Send encrypted snapshots to untrusted storage.
Kernel Modules
ZFS (DKMS)
Built against the target kernel at install time. Auto-signed for Secure Boot via MOK. Rebuilds automatically on kernel upgrades. The entire point of kldload.
WireGuard
Kernel-level encrypted networking. Available on first boot for VPNs, site-to-site links, or mesh overlays. No userland daemon.
NVIDIA (optional)
GPU drivers baked into the image. CUDA-ready on first boot. Select in the web UI. No post-install driver dance. No nouveau conflicts.
eBPF tools (optional)
BCC tracing tools and bpftrace. Observe syscalls, network flows, disk I/O in real time. Select in the web UI.
Web UI Installer
Browser-based
GNOME desktop boots, Firefox opens to the installer on port 8080. Pick distro, profile, disk, hostname, password. Real-time install log streaming via WebSocket.
Unattended mode
Pass an answers file: kldload-install-target --config answers.env. Same installer, no UI. Automate fleet deployments with identical configs.
Pool Designer
Visual ZFS pool topology calculator. Select disks, pick a layout (mirror, RAIDZ1/2/3, stripe), see usable space and the exact zpool create command.
Profile summary
Live status line during install: CentOS Stream 9 · Desktop +WireGuard +eBPF → QCOW2. Know exactly what's being built.
Image Factory
kexport
Standalone tool. Export any installed disk to any format, any time, as many times as you want. Install once, produce every image you need.
kexport /dev/sda qcow2 · kexport /dev/sda allqcow2
Compressed, copy-on-write. KVM, Proxmox, OpenStack.
raw
Sparse dd-ready image. Cloud import, dd to another disk.
VHD / VMDK / OVA
Azure, Hyper-V, VMware ESXi, vSphere, VirtualBox. One install produces every format.
Air-Gap & Offline
Dual darksite mirrors
RPM mirror (~900 packages) for CentOS/RHEL. APT mirror (~2,700 packages) for Debian. Both baked into the ISO. Full transitive dependency closure. Nothing downloaded at deploy time.
ZFSBootMenu EFI
Pre-built UEFI binary included in the ISO. No network fetch for the bootloader. Works on any UEFI system.
30+ CLI Tools
Short names. No flags to memorize. Work identically on Debian and CentOS.
Fully Auditable
100% bash. One Python file. Zero compiled binaries.
The installer, the firstboot scripts, the snapshot system, the boot environment manager, the darksite builder, the image exporter — all plain bash. The web UI is one Python file. No Go. No Rust. No node_modules. No vendor SDKs.
cat any file and read what it does. Fork the repo and modify it. That's the point.