One USB. ZFS on root across eight Linux distributions — plus a GUI-first RHEL workstation, a KVM-on-ZFS hypervisor, Kubernetes, and a local AI assistant, all assembled from stock vendor repos.

kldload builds any of eight supported Linux distributions from their own package repos (dnf, apt, pacman, apk) onto ZFS on root, with ZFSBootMenu boot environments, WireGuard, eBPF, and an optional KVM hypervisor, Kubernetes, klab multi-distro test platform, and Bob local AI. Nothing is forked. Nothing is patched. Every package comes straight from the vendor's CDN, and most distros install fully offline from mirrors baked into the ISO.

Pick a distro, pick a profile, install. The profiles are examples of what the substrate can become — start with one, mix in another with kpkg add, or build your own from the primitives.

Website: kldload.com · Download: dl.kldload.com · Discord: discord.gg/QX8wf38N3V

Installer

Dashboard (first boot)

# Download and burn (USB target)
curl -L -o kldload.iso https://dl.kldload.com/kldload-free-latest.iso
sudo wipefs -af /dev/sdX
sudo dd if=kldload.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M oflag=direct conv=fsync status=progress && sync

# Or build from source
git clone https://github.com/kldload/kldload.git && cd kldload
PROFILE=desktop ./deploy.sh build

Boot the USB → the web UI opens over TLS at https://<host>:8443 → pick distro + profile + disk → install.

Live environment is Fedora 44 (kernel pinned at 6.19.x, OpenZFS 2.4.x).

Fedora 44 + ZFS: there is no upstream zfsonlinux build for Fedora 44 yet, so kldload bridges to the fc43 OpenZFS repo and pins the target kernel to 6.19.x (F44 ships 7.0.x, which the bridge's DKMS can't build against). When an upstream Fedora 44 OpenZFS source lands, the bridge and the kernel pin go away and the target moves to native fc44 + the GA kernel.

The Desktop profile is a GUI-first RHEL 10 workstation: expert operations — ZFS replication, KVM, Kubernetes, eBPF observability — exposed as point-and-shoot desktop apps, not CLI rituals.

• Install-time Platform Options. Checkboxes for NVIDIA drivers, KVM, Kubernetes, eBPF tooling, and golden-image building. Desktop-only, default-clean — you opt into the heavy stuff.
• Native app windows. Each tool (VMs, Kubernetes, ZFS, Metrics, Bob, …) opens as its own chromeless GTK/WebKit window — no browser chrome, no left menu — backed by the same web console the server edition serves.
• Console as its own app. The tmux F-key operator cockpit (k9s, ZFS internals, eBPF panels, VM/log streams) is a single Console application — not embedded inside every tool window.
• Bob. Local AI assistant (Ollama + RAG + voice) as a desktop app. No cloud, no telemetry.

kube-cluster up           # single- or three-node K8s in < 20 minutes
kube-demo                 # PetClinic + ArgoCD smoke test
klab golden centos        # build the CentOS golden VM
klab matrix run script.sh # run a change against every supported distro in parallel

• OpenZFS on root — checksummed, compressed, snapshotted, self-healing on mirrors. lz4 default. dedup / encryption optional.
• ZFSBootMenu — UEFI bootloader that understands ZFS. Boot environments. Seconds-fast rollback. No GRUB.
• WireGuard — kernel-level encrypted networking. One UDP port at the firewall.
• eBPF observability — BCC tools + bpftrace + an F-key tmux cockpit on the host; Cilium + Hubble + Tetragon inside the K8s profile (no kube-proxy, no iptables, no sidecars).
• KVM hypervisor — libvirt + qemu-kvm with every VM on a ZFS zvol. ~100 ms clones via COW. Atomic snapshots. fs-freeze app-consistency. Incremental zfs send replication.
• NVIDIA + CUDA — drivers and CUDA optional at install. Time-sliced GPU sharing across Bob and guest VMs. No PCIe passthrough required.
• Bob — local AI assistant: Ollama + RAG over the codebase + voice + tmux awareness + ReAct agent loop + eBPF-aware tool registry. No cloud, no telemetry.
• Observability — Prometheus + Grafana + Loki + Alertmanager, Go + bash exporters, pre-wired dashboards, zed ZFS events bridged to Loki.
• Secure Boot + MOK — per-machine key generation, automatic module signing, DKMS auto-sign on kernel upgrades. Off by default.
• Image export — kexport produces qcow2 / VMDK / VHD / OVA / raw, auto-sealed with cloud-init multi-datasource config. Ready for Packer or direct hypervisor import.
• Offline + Air-gap — RPM and APT mirrors baked in. The USB is the deployment, the recovery, and the air gap.

Live environment:  Fedora 44 (kernel 6.19.x, OpenZFS 2.4.x)
Builder:           CentOS Stream 9 container (lorax + squashfs-tools + xorriso + dracut)
Bootstrap paths:   dnf --installroot  (CentOS / Fedora / Rocky / RHEL)
                   debootstrap        (Debian / Ubuntu)
                   pacstrap           (Arch)
                   apk add --root     (Alpine)

Installer:         Python web UI + ~10 bash libraries (lib/) + backend/bin tools
Web UI:            single HTML file per edition + WebSocket install-log stream
Single-port TLS:   kldload-proxy fronts the web UI, Grafana, Prometheus, Headlamp,
                   Bob, k9s/ttyd, and the libvirt console on one URL (:8443) with one cert

The user picks the target distro at install time. After install the system runs upstream packages from the vendor's public repos. There is no kldload package repository and no kldload-specific runtime updates — dnf update / apt upgrade / pacman -Syu just work.

• GUI-first RHEL 10 workstation: expert ops (ZFS / KVM / K8s / eBPF) as point-and-shoot desktop apps
• Install-time Platform Options — NVIDIA / KVM / Kubernetes / eBPF / golden-image building, desktop-only, default-clean
• Native per-tool app windows (chromeless GTK/WebKit), NVIDIA + Wayland render fixes
• Console (tmux cockpit) promoted to its own application, de-duplicated from every tool window
• RHEL 10 desktop package + TLS fixes (ptyxis, zenity, glib-networking)

• PetClinic Microservices + ArgoCD wired into autodeploy
• sanoid / syncoid on by default with sensible policies
• Web UI Demo Mode with deploy / disaster / recover buttons
• State & reconciliation layer under /var/lib/kldload/state/
• Deterministic install ordering (CP → workers → Cilium → observability → Tetragon → klab)

• Live env cut over from CentOS Stream 9 to Fedora 44 (kernel 6.19, OpenZFS 2.4.x)
• Single-port TLS reverse proxy fronting every internal service
• Tetragon wired through to Grafana panels
• klab graduated to a first-class profile with per-distro goldens
• Install path rewritten end-to-end against real hardware

ZFS on root + ZFSBootMenu, the offline RPM/APT darksites, KVM-on-ZFS with instant zvol clones, kube-cluster (K8s on ZFS-backed VMs with Cilium/Hubble/Tetragon), the Bob agent, the observability stack, and the growth from 4 to all eight distributions.

BSD-3-Clause. See LICENSE.