An operating system
with a soul.
We build Golem, a Linux distribution designed around one idea: your computer should notice what you're doing, offer exactly what helps, and get out of the way. One surface. One Brain. Zero friction. For everyone.
The desktop above is alive — it is built with the same design language as Golem itself.
All friction between a person and their intention is a design failure. You should not operate a computer. You should use it.
We build Golem for everyone. Not “anyone could” — everyone can.
The right tool, the moment you need it.
Gone when you don't.
Game designers taught complete novices to master complex systems — no manual, no training, no fear. We apply that philosophy to an OS. The Brain senses your context; the surface offers what is logical; everything else stays out of sight. These are real Golem behaviors, recreated live:
Copy a link → a card blooms
The clipboard understands what it holds. A link becomes a share card — preview, actions, one keystroke away.
The battery ladder
One notification at 10%. The bell turns red. At 7% it beats. At 5% the machine protects your work by itself. No nagging in between.
the occurrence of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. Offline. English & Spanish. Built in.
Select a word → know it
An offline dictionary lives in the shell itself, English and Spanish — a head start no mainstream OS ships.
Windows as pills
Your open work lives in the top bar as living pills — driven by the Brain, not by widgets you configure.
The OS that cannot rot.
Golem stands on NixOS: the whole system is intent written to a file. Installs are declarative. Updates are atomic — they either happen completely or not at all. And every state your machine has ever been in is a generation you can return to.
An update can never break your computer. Not "rarely." Never. If anything is not to your liking, one click takes you back to yesterday's machine. No mainstream OS can say that. Try it — break the one on the right.
wallpaperd: segmentation fault
Your system, as a timeline. Every change is a step you can un-take.
Two screens.
One device.
Mac + iPhone is the moat Apple sells. Google has no desktop; Apple has no openness. That seat is empty — we're taking it.
Golem for Android plugs your phone into the same Brain: notifications arrive where your eyes are, the clipboard is one clipboard, photos land in your folders, your phone becomes your webcam, and the PC unlocks when you walk up to it.
Golem PC + any Android phone. The open ecosystem.
What we refuse to build.
Every one of these exists elsewhere because it makes someone money or saves someone effort. We're not that someone.
The shell meets you where you come from.
Your PC isn't obsolete.
Microsoft left hundreds of millions of machines behind. We didn't. Golem runs where Windows 11 refuses to — without ads, without telemetry, without a Microsoft account.
Coherence without the toll.
One designed surface, motion with intent, a phone that fuses with the desktop — on hardware you choose, at prices you choose.
NixOS, made humane.
Declarative, atomic, reproducible — the superpower you know, with a shell that finally deserves it. The terminal is there. It's just never required.
See Golem measured against Windows, macOS, Ubuntu, Silverblue and NixOS — including where we lose →
Not sure Golem is for you? Our honest guide to which Linux you should install instead →
One organism. Four organs.
The Brain options-engine
Senses your context — windows, media, git, phone, battery — and decides what is logical to offer.
The Body waverunner
The one living surface you see: dock, openbox, the OPTIONS boxes. GPU-rendered, animated with intent, idle at rest.
The Ground NixOS
Declarative and reproducible. Installs are intent written to a file; updates are atomic; any change rolls back. The system cannot rot.
The Reach Golem for Android
Your phone, fused into the same Brain — our answer to the Mac+iPhone ecosystem, on the seat Google and Apple left empty.
Honest software,
honest status.
Golem is developed entirely in public — the code, the plan, the bugs, the roadmap. What works, we show. What doesn't yet, we say.
The climb to the ISO
Then Arc 2: growing the soul — modules, settings, the phone, everything.