Try Linux Distributions Online
Browse Linux distributions, exact releases, and desktops, then launch an available target as a browser virtual machine. No local install required.
92 distribution families1247 available targetsFresh, private session overlay
1368 results
AerynOS4 targets, 4 availableAerynOS is a young independent distribution, previously known as Serpent OS, founded by the original creator of Solus to rethink how a Linux system is built and updated. Its tooling is written fresh: moss, the package manager, applies updates as atomic transactions and keeps earlier system states available for rollback, while boulder builds the packages, and the overall design leans toward statelessness, separating system files cleanly from configuration. The distribution is rolling and unabashedly experimental, with a GNOME desktop on its early images. Nothing here is inherited from an established parent, which makes it one of the rare built-from-scratch projects and a window into current thinking about safely updatable systems. It targets curious enthusiasts more than production use today. An OpenFactory browser VM matches that spirit, offering a costless look at a distribution still being invented.View distribution
Alma Linux16 targets, 16 availableAlmaLinux is a free, community-governed enterprise distribution created when CentOS changed course, and it is stewarded by a nonprofit foundation with corporate and individual members. Its purpose is continuity: each release maintains application-level compatibility with the matching Red Hat Enterprise Linux version, so software built for RHEL is expected to run unmodified, and each major release carries the long support horizon enterprise deployments assume. Packages are RPMs managed with DNF, security advisories are published methodically, and images exist for servers, containers, clouds, and multiple architectures. AlmaLinux has also shown independence, at times shipping fixes ahead of upstream and retaining hardware support its parent dropped. Typical users are businesses, universities, and administrators running production services without license costs. It is a server system first, so an OpenFactory browser VM is mainly a way to explore the administration environment before adopting it in infrastructure.View distribution
Alpine Linux6 targets, 6 availableAlpine Linux is a small, security-minded independent distribution whose fingerprints are all over modern infrastructure, because its tiny base image made it a default choice for software containers. It achieves that size through unusual means: the musl C library instead of glibc, BusyBox utilities instead of the GNU coreutils, and OpenRC for init, with binaries hardened at compile time. Its apk package manager is quick and scriptable, and the distribution can run entirely from memory, a mode appreciated in routers, appliances, and rescue scenarios. Alpine also underpins postmarketOS, the project bringing mainline Linux to phones. A desktop can be installed, but the system's character stays minimal and server-leaning, and musl occasionally changes how mainstream binary software behaves. That makes a disposable environment genuinely useful: an OpenFactory browser VM lets you explore Alpine's spartan defaults before building something on top of them.View distribution
AnduinOS4 targets, 4 availableAnduinOS is a compact project with a single, clearly stated trick: it reshapes Ubuntu's GNOME desktop into a layout that mirrors current Windows conventions, with a centered taskbar, a start-style menu, and system controls arranged where a Windows user's eyes already go. Begun by an individual developer and kept deliberately small, it avoids inventing its own infrastructure; beneath the styling sits ordinary Ubuntu, with APT, deb packages, and the standard repositories, so documentation and software for Ubuntu apply directly. The point is easing the first weeks for people leaving Windows, without the deeper divergence larger Windows-alike projects attempt. Because it tracks Ubuntu bases, maintenance stays predictable, and users who outgrow the styling still have a normal Ubuntu underneath. An OpenFactory browser VM gives Windows refugees a no-risk look at whether the resemblance is close enough to help.View distribution
Antix Linux46 targets, 46 availableantiX is a Debian-based distribution engineered to stay usable on computers most systems gave up on long ago. It boots without systemd, offering sysVinit or runit instead, and its desktops are lightweight window managers, with IceWM, Fluxbox, and JWM among the choices, rather than a full desktop environment. The project is closely related to MX Linux, which grew from a collaboration between the antiX and former MEPIS communities, and it continues to publish 32-bit images alongside 64-bit ones. A signature strength is its live-USB tooling: persistence, remastering, and frugal installs are all supported, so many people run antiX permanently from a flash drive or keep it as a rescue system. RAM requirements are strikingly low. Package management is Debian's APT with antiX's own repository on top. Loading it in an OpenFactory VM gives you a feel for just how light a modern Linux can be.View distribution
Arch Linux5 targets, 5 availableArch Linux is an independent, rolling-release distribution that installs as a minimal base system and grows only in the directions you choose. Packages arrive continuously through the pacman package manager, and the community-run Arch User Repository adds build scripts for an enormous amount of extra software. There is no default desktop: you assemble GNOME, KDE Plasma, a tiling window manager, or nothing at all, which is exactly why many people use Arch to learn how a Linux system fits together. The project follows a keep-it-simple philosophy, favors plain text configuration, and documents nearly everything in the Arch Wiki, a reference that users of other distributions also lean on. Arch expects you to read the news before upgrading and to intervene occasionally, so it rewards attention. A disposable OpenFactory VM in your browser is a low-stakes place to practice an Arch setup before touching real hardware.View distribution
Archcraft5 targets, 5 availableArchcraft takes Arch Linux and turns it into a finished, heavily themed desktop built around lightweight window managers rather than a full desktop environment. Its standard releases center on Openbox and bspwm sessions that come preconfigured with panels, launchers, matching color schemes, and keyboard shortcuts, the kind of polish that normally takes days of manual dotfile work. Underneath, it stays a rolling Arch system: pacman handles packages, the Arch repositories and the AUR remain available, and updates arrive continuously. Archcraft is aimed at people who admire hand-tuned minimal desktops, want fast performance on modest hardware, and prefer keyboard-driven workflows, but do not feel like writing every config file themselves. A graphical installer keeps setup short, and the ISO can run as a live session. Booting it in an OpenFactory browser VM shows you the finished theming within minutes, with nothing to configure first.View distribution
Arco Linux40 targets, 40 availableArcoLinux is an Arch-based project organized around teaching. Rather than positioning itself as a finished product, it arranges releases and long tutorial series into a learning path that walks users from an easy graphical installation toward eventually building a pure Arch system by hand. The project has published several ISO lines, from full-featured desktops with sensible defaults to bare editions where you select every component, and it is known for offering an unusually wide range of desktop environments and tiling window managers to experiment with. Package management is standard Arch: pacman, rolling updates, and access to the Arch User Repository. People typically run ArcoLinux to study how Arch works, to compare window managers quickly, or to rehearse configurations before applying them to a main machine. An OpenFactory session in the browser fits that experimental spirit, since you can wipe the VM and start again freely.View distribution
Artix Linux97 targets, 97 availableArtix Linux is what Arch looks like without systemd. The distribution replaces it with a choice of init systems and service supervisors, including OpenRC, runit, s6, and dinit, and it maintains its own repositories of system packages alongside broad compatibility with the wider Arch ecosystem. Everything else follows the Arch pattern: rolling releases, the pacman package manager, and a preference for minimal, transparent configuration. Installation media range from console-only base images to editions with desktops such as KDE Plasma and Xfce already set up. Artix attracts users who care about init freedom as a technical or philosophical matter, and it doubles as a practical classroom for learning how service management works when systemd is not underneath. Trying it in an OpenFactory browser VM lets you poke at an alternative init system without repartitioning anything you own.View distribution
Bazzite7 targets, 7 availableBazzite comes from the Universal Blue community and rethinks the gaming desktop as a cloud-style image. Built on Fedora's Atomic technology, the operating system updates as a complete tested image rather than as thousands of individual packages, so every machine runs a known state and a bad update can simply be rolled back. On that base it layers gaming essentials: Steam and launcher support, compatibility tooling, driver handling including NVIDIA builds, and images configured for handheld PCs with console-like game modes as well as ordinary desktops in KDE Plasma or GNOME flavors. Day-to-day applications install as Flatpaks, while container tools serve developer needs without breaking the image model. The result is aimed at people who want a game machine that behaves like an appliance. You can inspect the desktop side of Bazzite through an OpenFactory browser VM before choosing an image for real hardware.View distribution
Big Linux3 targets, 3 availableBigLinux comes from Brazil's Linux community and currently builds on a Manjaro base, inheriting Arch-family rolling packages through pacman while adding an unusually thick layer of convenience. Its KDE Plasma desktop is deeply customized, with theme packs, layout switching, and a large collection of first-party graphical tools covering drivers, kernels, backups, and everyday maintenance, so common tasks rarely require a terminal. The project has a long history spanning several earlier bases, and its documentation and community are strongly Portuguese-speaking while the system itself is multilingual. Particular attention goes to the details newcomers hit first, such as codecs, printing, and hardware detection working immediately after installation. BigLinux fits users who want rolling Arch-world software wrapped in guardrails and personality. Sampling it through an OpenFactory browser VM shows how much character a downstream distribution can add to a familiar base.View distribution
blendOS3 targets, 3 availableblendOS is an Arch-based experiment in having every distribution at once. The base system is immutable and updated atomically, while software installs happen inside containers that can speak several packaging dialects, letting tools and applications from the Arch, Fedora, and Ubuntu worlds coexist on one machine through a unified command. Configuration is declarative, with the system described in a file that can regenerate a machine's setup, and Android applications are supported through Waydroid integration. Desktop choices are offered in multiple flavors at installation time. The project is led by the developer who also maintains Ubuntu Unity, and it moves quickly, absorbing new ideas from the atomic-desktop wave as they appear. blendOS appeals to tinkerers who want one stable core under many software worlds. Its layered design is easier to grasp interactively, and an OpenFactory browser VM provides exactly that kind of consequence-free look.View distribution
Bodhi Linux6 targets, 6 availableBodhi Linux pairs an Ubuntu long-term-support base with Moksha, a desktop the project forked from an earlier generation of Enlightenment and continues to develop itself. Moksha keeps the compositing effects and modular design of its ancestor while staying frugal with memory and processor time, which lets Bodhi run comfortably on aging machines. The distribution's other defining habit is restraint: the default install includes only a small set of applications, on the theory that users should add what they want rather than strip out what they do not. Additional software comes through Ubuntu's APT ecosystem and Bodhi's AppCenter, a web-based catalog of one-click installs. Releases follow the Ubuntu LTS rhythm, so the foundations change slowly and predictably. Bodhi suits people who like Enlightenment's aesthetic lineage or want an ultralight desktop with mainstream package availability. An OpenFactory session in the browser puts Moksha in front of you without any commitment.View distribution
BunsenLabs Linux4 targets, 4 availableBunsenLabs Linux continues the lineage of CrunchBang, a minimal distribution with a devoted following whose community rebuilt it on current Debian stable after the original wound down. The design has stayed recognizable: an Openbox window manager session with a tint2 panel, a conky status readout on the desktop, and a right-click menu for launching everything, all tuned to feel quick on limited hardware. Underneath sits ordinary Debian, so APT, deb packages, and Debian's documentation apply directly, while BunsenLabs layers on its own themes, helper scripts, and a post-install routine that fetches common extras. Releases track Debian's stable cycle rather than chasing new software. The audience is people who want a quiet, keyboard-friendly, distraction-free environment they can understand completely. Because it is rare to see Openbox configured this thoughtfully out of the box, opening a BunsenLabs VM through OpenFactory is the easiest way to experience the workflow.View distribution
CachyOS6 targets, 6 availableCachyOS is an Arch-based distribution organized around performance. It rebuilds packages with compiler optimizations aimed at newer x86-64 processor feature levels, ships kernels carrying scheduler and responsiveness patches, and applies tuning that stock Arch leaves as an exercise for the user. Despite that focus it remains approachable: a graphical installer offers a long list of desktop environments and window managers, with KDE Plasma as the flagship choice, and it selects sensible defaults for you. The system stays rolling and uses pacman, so day-to-day administration feels like Arch, including access to the Arch User Repository. CachyOS has found an audience among gamers, benchmark enthusiasts, and owners of recent CPUs who want measurable gains without compiling everything themselves in Gentoo fashion. An OpenFactory VM in the browser is a quick way to look around the default desktop before deciding whether the tuning matters for your hardware.View distribution
CentOS Stream12 targets, 12 availableCentOS Stream occupies a deliberate position in Red Hat's pipeline: it is the continuously delivered branch that runs just ahead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, where changes destined for the next RHEL update become public first. That inverts the old CentOS model, which rebuilt RHEL after release; Stream is instead the place where the enterprise platform is assembled in the open, and where outside contributors can actually land fixes. For users it behaves like familiar enterprise Linux, with RPM packages, DNF, and SELinux, but its contents move steadily between major versions rather than freezing at minor releases. That profile makes it valuable for developers validating software against what RHEL will soon become and for partners tracking the platform, while conservative production shops often choose downstream rebuilds instead. An OpenFactory browser VM offers a quick look at Stream's current state without dedicating lab hardware.View distribution
Chimera Linux4 targets, 4 availableChimera Linux is one of the most structurally unusual distributions in active development: a Linux kernel wearing a userland largely taken from FreeBSD, compiled across the board with the LLVM and Clang toolchain, linked against the musl C library, and supervised by the small dinit init system rather than systemd. Packaging uses the next-generation apk tools associated with Alpine's ecosystem, and the project builds natively for several processor architectures beyond x86. These are not contrarian choices for their own sake; the stated aim is a coherent, hardened, legible system that sheds historical baggage from both the GNU userland and mainstream init design. A capable GNOME desktop is available, which makes it more livable day to day than its specification sheet suggests. Chimera amounts to a fresh answer to what a Linux distribution even is, and an OpenFactory browser VM makes inspecting that answer cheap.View distribution
Debian89 targets, 89 availableDebian is one of the oldest and most influential Linux distributions, an independent project run by volunteers under a written social contract. It packages tens of thousands of pieces of software in the deb format, managed by APT, and its archive feeds an entire family of descendants that includes Ubuntu and, through it, hundreds of further derivatives. Debian maintains three main branches: stable, prized on servers because packages change only for security and serious bugs; testing, a preview of the next release; and unstable, where development happens. New stable releases appear roughly every two years and carry Toy Story character names. Installer images offer a choice of desktops, with GNOME, KDE Plasma, Xfce, and others supported, and the project builds for many processor architectures. Stability is the trait people cite first. Booting plain Debian in an OpenFactory browser VM takes minutes and requires no spare hardware.View distribution
Deepin Linux12 targets, 12 availableDeepin is a Chinese desktop distribution whose central asset is the Deepin Desktop Environment, an in-house creation built with Qt that the project polishes to an unusual visual standard, complete with its own control center, dock, and animations. Around the desktop sits a family of first-party applications, from a music player to a screenshot tool, designed to match the house style. The base is Debian stable with APT and deb packaging, though Deepin maintains substantial repositories of its own, and the desktop environment has been packaged by several unrelated distributions, which says something about its appeal. Development is led by a company that also produces UOS, a commercial operating system for the Chinese market, with Deepin as the community edition. Users come for the aesthetics above all. Viewing that famous interface through an OpenFactory browser VM takes less time than reading a review of it.View distribution
Devuan Linux11 targets, 11 availableDevuan is the Debian fork that exists for one clear reason: to provide Debian without systemd. It emerged when a group of developers disagreed with Debian's init decision and committed to preserving what they call init freedom. The distribution defaults to sysvinit and also packages alternatives such as OpenRC and runit, while everything else remains deliberately close to its parent: APT and deb packages, the same archive layout, and releases that shadow Debian's stable cycle under different codenames. Because compatibility is a stated goal, most Debian software runs unchanged, and Devuan in turn acts as the foundation for a number of smaller systemd-free distributions. Typical users include administrators with strong opinions about service supervision and people maintaining older or unusual setups where a simpler init is a practical advantage. You can compare its boot and service behavior against stock Debian in an OpenFactory browser VM.View distribution
DragonFlyBSD5 targets, 5 availableDragonFlyBSD releases and editions tracked in the OpenFactory public operating-system catalog.View distribution
Edubuntu7 targets, 7 availableEdubuntu is Ubuntu's official education flavor, a project with a long history that community maintainers revived to serve schools, teachers, and families. It takes the standard Ubuntu GNOME desktop, so classroom machines behave exactly like mainstream Ubuntu, and layers on a curated bundle of learning software spanning early-childhood activities, mathematics, science, programming for children, and creative tools, with the GCompris suite among the best-known inclusions. Because the base is unchanged Ubuntu, releases follow the familiar April and October rhythm with long-term-support versions for institutions that upgrade rarely, and administration relies on APT, deb packages, and ordinary Ubuntu documentation. The included software can be trimmed or extended through ordinary package management. Edubuntu answers a practical need: one install that leaves a computer classroom-ready. Trying it in an OpenFactory browser VM lets educators audit the included software from any machine at hand.View distribution
elementary OS5 targets, 5 availableelementary OS treats design as its core discipline. Built on an Ubuntu long-term-support base, it ships Pantheon, a desktop environment developed by the project itself, along with first-party applications for mail, files, music, photos, and code that follow one written set of human interface guidelines. The result feels closer to a single coherent product than a bundle of parts, with animations, typography, and spacing treated as seriously as features. Its AppCenter store emphasizes independent developers and pay-what-you-can pricing, and third-party software is generally delivered as Flatpak packages. Under the surface, APT and Ubuntu's repositories remain available for those who want them. elementary OS is a natural fit for people who value visual consistency, for households sharing a computer, and for developers curious about a curated Linux app platform. OpenFactory can boot it in your browser so the Pantheon workflow can speak for itself.View distribution
EndeavourOS36 targets, 36 availableEndeavourOS exists to make Arch Linux reachable without diluting it. A graphical Calamares installer handles partitioning and setup, offering an offline Xfce desktop or an online mode that installs GNOME, KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, MATE, Budgie, or several tiling window managers. What lands on disk stays close to vanilla Arch: the standard repositories, rolling updates through pacman, and an AUR helper included from the first boot. The project describes itself as terminal-centric, and its unusually friendly forum has become a defining feature, filling the support role that raw Arch leaves to documentation alone. EndeavourOS grew out of the community around the discontinued Antergos distribution and inherited its goal of a welcoming on-ramp. It suits people who want real Arch with the sharp edges of installation filed down. In an OpenFactory browser VM you can inspect the result before committing a machine to it.View distribution
How it works
From a browser test to your own Linux image
1. Choose a target
Pick a distribution family, release, desktop, and an available launch target.
2. Launch a clean VM
Use the real desktop in your browser. The temporary machine is discarded when the session ends.
3. Build what you need
For supported targets, select packages and settings, test the result, and download the built image.
Questions about trying Linux online
- Can I try Linux online without installing it?
- Yes. Choose an available distribution, release, and desktop, then open its launch page. OpenFactory starts a remote virtual machine and renders it in your browser, so you do not need to repartition your computer, create a USB installer, or install local virtualization software.
- Do files and settings persist between browser VM sessions?
- No. Each launch uses a fresh overlay over an immutable source image. Files and settings work normally during the session, but the machine state is discarded when the session ends. Each visitor gets a separate environment and never inherits changes made by another visitor.
- Does every catalog release have an exact launch image?
- No. Use the availability filter and the target page to confirm what can launch. Some historical catalog entries can use a current or compatible launch source. If an exact release matters for testing, verify the reported version inside the guest before relying on the result.
- Can I customize a distro after trying it?
- For supported build targets, yes. OpenFactory provides a separate builder where you can select packages, services, users, and security settings, test the generated image in a browser VM, and download the completed artifact. Build and output options vary by target.