Get GoNIX

GoNIX runs as a bootable image under QEMU, VirtualBox, or any cloud. Grab a prebuilt image below for the quickest start, or build it yourself from source.

Prebuilt images

Ready to boot, no build required — published straight from the package repository:

Boot the amd64 ISO directly in QEMU:

$ curl -LO https://pkgs.ulinux.org/images/gonix-amd64.iso
$ qemu-system-x86_64 -m 1G -cdrom gonix-amd64.iso -nic user,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22

arm64 ships two ways: a UEFI ISO (gonix-arm64.iso) that boots under VirtualBox on Apple Silicon and any UEFI firmware, and a bare kernel + initramfs for QEMU’s fast direct boot (qemu-system-aarch64 -machine virt -kernel Image -initrd rootfs.gz). Every commit is also archived under https://pkgs.ulinux.org/images/<rev>/. See the Quick start for the full per-platform boot commands.

Give arm64 VMs a virtio-rng device. GoNIX needs the hypervisor to expose an entropy source to seed the kernel CRNG at boot, or anything needing secure randomness (the SSH host key) will block. QEMU/KVM and cloud providers do; VirtualBox’s experimental ARM target does not, so there GoNIX is console-only — see the Quick start.

Build

Prefer to build from source? The build runs in Docker (it needs an Alpine toolchain), so all you need on your machine is Docker and make.

$ git clone https://git.mills.io/prologic/gonix
$ cd gonix
$ make image              # amd64 → artefacts/boot.iso
$ make image ARCH=arm64   # arm64 → artefacts-arm64/{boot.iso,Image,rootfs.gz}

The build caches aggressively: prebuilt packages, the Go module cache and the Go build cache are all reused, so rebuilds only redo what changed.

Run

$ ./test.sh               # boot the amd64 ISO under QEMU (SSH on :2222)
$ ARCH=arm64 ./test.sh    # arm64 (native under HVF on Apple Silicon)
$ HEADLESS=1 ./test.sh    # no graphics

Then SSH in:

$ ssh -p 2222 root@localhost     # default password: gonix

:: GoNIX is starting up
✓ Mounted core filesystems
✓ Created device nodes
✓ Scanned devices
✓ Configured network interfaces
✓ Set hostname
:: Boot complete in 20 ms
✓ Started network
✓ Started sshd
✓ Started getty
login: ▌

Platforms

GoNIX targets virtual machines and cloud instances: the kernel carries just the drivers common hypervisors need (with virtio as the fast path), everything built in, no loadable modules.

Source

Everything lives at git.mills.io/prologic/gonix — the OS, the package manager, and the ports tree. Packages come from pkgs.ulinux.org.