LTR.

Small core.
Open skies.

Lighting the Rain Transform

Linux, brought back to its elements.
Built from source. Made to be understood.
Yours to transform.

Explore the system
DRAG TO ROTATE
Scroll to discover BOOT-CORE / IN DEVELOPMENTx86_64 + i686
The philosophy

Understand the core.
Shape everything
around it.

A system is easier to make your own when you know what holds it together. LTR starts with a deliberate base: musl, dash and s6. Source-built, with the pieces in plain sight.

GNU tools are permitted on the build host. The target image excludes GNU tools and runtime libraries. A small foundation, with room for your decisions.

Three elements.
One foundation.

Each piece has a purpose.
Explore what makes the base.

A lean foundation.

musl provides the C standard library at the heart of the target system. LTR builds its core around this compact foundation, with no GNU runtime libraries in the target image.

LIBRARY / musl

Meet your
package manager.

LPM is LTR’s own package manager, written in Rust with a C filesystem helper. Inspect source recipes, plan builds, and resolve binary package dependencies.

Source recipes: .l1pm   /   Binary packages: .L1P
lpm — recipe workflow

# Check a source recipe

$ lpm check recipes/LLVM.l1pm

# Plan its build dependencies

$ lpm plan recipes/LLVM.l1pm
--repo recipes

Run from the source tree with LPM available. Compiling on the target requires a separate compiler SDK.

Your next
starting point.

Start with the boot-core development image. Build the source, boot a virtual machine, and get to know the system.

Download build-tool sources

Source package · 616.2 MiB · Hosted on MediaFire

SHA-256 checksum Build instructions ↘

Build outputs and caches excluded. Dependencies may need downloading.

Build from source

./build-all.sh --all

Run in the project root on an Artix host with Python 3.12+, a working GCC toolchain, pacman metadata, bsdtar, curl and network access.

OUTPUT out/lighting-the-rain-transform-x86_64-boot-core.iso

Before you boot

What’s in the image?

Linux, musl, BusyBox, dash, s6, Limine, LPM, wired DHCP, curl/LibreSSL, OpenSSH, console Vim, libarchive, selected firmware and BIOS/UEFI installation tools.

What’s still in development?

This is a boot-core development image. Wi-Fi/iwd, mdevd, privilege tools and the on-target compiler SDK still need integration. The host bootstrap currently targets Artix.

How do I test it?

After building, run python3 tools/boot_test.py for the BIOS smoke test, or add --uefi for UEFI. The live image uses an unauthenticated local development console; no SSH server is enabled.