The first downloadable Larch ISO

Larch has a public ISO now: download it here.

This is a preview build, not the first official release. That'll be a named version, "Steady Kaizen", once the remaining rough edges are gone. For now, here's what's actually in this one.

The live desktop

Boot it and you're straight into niri + noctalia, no setup required: keybindings wired in, dark theme, kitty as the terminal. Nothing to configure before it's usable.

A real installer

The install button on the bar launches automatically on boot. It's Calamares-based, and end-to-end installs are confirmed working: disk encryption on by default (LUKS, opt-out available), a separate unencrypted /boot partition, GRUB with a custom theme, zram for swap.

Tooling that's actually there

btop, htop, lazygit, paru, uv, k3d, kubectl, herdr all ship in the base system, live and installed alike. See Development tools for what each one does.

Try it

Getting started covers booting it in a VM and what to expect from the installer.