The Gentoo-based meta distro.
Your system.
Your signature.
Start with the source. Make the desktop yours. hedronfire brings Gentoo's freedom to a system you can shape, understand, and show off.
In development. Come help shape what's next.
Visual concept, not a release screenshot.
Bring your kind of different.
Good systems start
with curious people.
Rice your desktop. Test a build. Fix the thing that bugs you. Bring your ideas, your questions, and your checked contributions. AI-assisted work is welcome.
#hedronfire on Libera.ChatWant to try it? Ask about current builds. Installation instructions and downloads will be linked here when available.
Curious what’s underneath?
Built from choice.
Gentoo, Portage, and the freedom to change it.
hedronfire, formerly srcux and BaldEagleOS, is an independent Gentoo-based meta distro with a Wayfire desktop, OpenRC-first defaults, and support for booting from ZFS.
Gentoo makes source builds part of everyday package management. With Portage and emerge, you choose package features through USE flags, maintain local patches, and rebuild software around your needs. A rolling system gives you room to keep learning and changing it.
Our direction is a complete, working installable system, followed by Gentoo's source-based package workflow. The installer should make the first step easier; source builds remain part of the experience.
Small community. Useful tools.
Our approach to AI-assisted development.
We welcome AI-assisted development. We see an opportunity for a small community to tackle useful software that once demanded more development time than it could spare: clearer help, better diagnostics, desktop utilities, and tools that explain what the system is doing.
Bring a useful idea, a reproducible problem, or a contribution you've checked. Use AI if it helps. Understand and test what you submit, explain substantial AI assistance, respect licenses, and follow the contribution rules of each upstream project.
What comes next.
Five experiences we’re planning, with room for you.
These experiences are planned. Help us design, build, and test them.
An easier first install.
A straightforward path to a complete working hedronfire system, with useful defaults, clear progress, and help for the next step.
ZFS recovery you can understand.
Build on ZFS boot support with guided snapshots and recovery. Our proposed layout separates the system from root's and your regular user's home, with the goal of preserving personal files during system recovery.
Portage tools for your AI client.
We're exploring an MCP interface that lets compatible AI clients inspect package choices, investigate build failures, and prepare changes you can review. Client compatibility and account requirements will be documented as the integration develops.
A web stack you can learn from.
We plan to include Apache HTTP Server, PostgreSQL, and PHP with a working example application. Follow a request from browser to application to database, read its logs, and make it your own.
An OS webapp that explains the system.
A local home for service status, logs, printing through CUPS, help, and agent tools. The aim is to put useful controls beside the commands, configuration, and explanations that make them understandable.
Behind the builds.
Historical project work from our BaldEagleOS days.
Historical screenshots of repository and image-generation work under the BaldEagleOS name. These show past output, not verification of a current image.
Built on the work of many.
Thanks to Gentoo, Wayfire, OpenRC, OpenZFS, and their contributors. Learn from their work and respect their contribution guidelines.