A 64-bit OS written from scratch: its own UEFI bootloader, kernel, window system and TCP/IP stack, with an OS-level AI layer that can operate apps and, with your consent, build new ones. The kernel's riskiest parsers are being rewritten one by one in memory-safe Rust, with every advisory that work turns up published in the open. It boots on real hardware other systems have left behind, a 2013 iMac included, and it still runs Windows 3.1 / Win16 and DOS software on the side.
maytera>
Designed to be asked for, through a native chat interface:
Apps and widgets: generated, compiled and run, proven today. Drivers: the same pipeline's next target, gated on consent, not yet proven end to end. See how it actually works.
x86-64 architecture
UEFI boot
C + Rust kernel core
1–16 cores SMP, on by default
TLS 1.2/1.3 / h2 networking
16 advisories closed, in the open
// what makes it different
Every layer was written for this OS, then taught to reprogram itself, to close in on memory safety in the open, and to run on hardware other operating systems have stopped supporting.
Every app publishes a machine-readable tool contract that a built-in AI chat can read and call. Describe a small app or widget in plain English and it can be generated, compiled and run on the desktop, every action scoped by a capability token, gated on your consent, and written to an audit trail.
A native xHCI/USB, PS/2, ATA/AHCI and PCI driver stack means MayteraOS boots to a working desktop on real, deprecated machines, not just a VM: its reference target is a 2013 iMac 14,4, booting entirely from a USB stick.
Security-critical parsers are ported one at a time and differentially tested against the C original under AddressSanitizer before they ship. Then we audit our own port and publish what the audit finds, including the places our own extraction drifted. The port has already found and closed 12 memory-safety advisories, published with build numbers at /security.
Symmetric multiprocessing on by default, verified stable to 16 cores, with the kernel's single global lock narrowed piece by piece; a from-scratch TCP/IP stack with TLS 1.3 and HTTP/2, ext2 + FAT32 filesystems, SSH, and drivers down to USB-Ethernet and USB audio, all under one roof.
// the strangest part of the OS
Not a chatbot bolted on top. Every app on MayteraOS publishes a machine-readable tool contract, and an AI chat assistant reads those contracts to operate the desktop, and even build new pieces of it, entirely under a capability-token and consent system you control.
Each app and widget ships a YAML tool contract describing what it does and what it can be asked to do. The assistant reads a lightweight index of these contracts, then calls them through a loop of actions and observations: reading files, opening the browser, changing a setting, much like a careful, very literal user.
Ask it to build something and it can generate real source code, compile it, and launch the result as a running window on your desktop, with no code shown to you unless you ask to see it. In a verified run, the request “build me a tip calculator” produced a small, correctly-computing app from a single plain-English sentence.
Reading files and system state, operating apps on request, and generating, compiling and running a new small app from a plain-English description, all through the capability/consent/audit gate above.
Asking the AI to revise an app it already built, in conversation, is designed for but not yet proven end to end; today's compile step runs on a separate build machine rather than on the device; and the capability gate currently lives in the userland AI client, with kernel-level enforcement as a protected, un-editable core planned as follow-on work. The same generate-compile-run pipeline is meant to extend to a first attempt at a device driver for hardware that has none, under the same consent gate; that specific case is a design goal, not yet a proven end-to-end run.
The bet: an OS that can extend itself from a plain description, with the permission model designed in from day one instead of retrofitted. Read more in Features.
// rewriting the risky edges
Not a rebrand. MayteraOS ships a growing memory-safe Rust core: the security-critical, input-facing parsers that historically cause the worst bugs are ported one at a time and differentially tested against the C original under AddressSanitizer before they ship, with a plain-C hardening fix landing alongside so builds without the Rust subsystem enabled are protected too. Every shipped seam has since been re-audited against its pre-port original, and we publish what that audit found, including where our own extraction drifted.
Ported so far: the IP/TCP/UDP checksum routines, SHA-256, the ext2 directory parser (read and write), GPT/MBR partition-table parsing, the DHCP client, the ELF loader, FAT long-filename parsing, PNG and JPEG decoding, the TLS handshake, HTTP chunked-transfer decoding, HTTP/2 framing, AAC/M4A audio decode, WAV parsing, extended-attribute parsing, the NFS/XDR client, USB Audio Class descriptor parsing, and Ed25519 signature verification. Two userland apps have followed the same path: the RSS reader now runs on a Rust feed parser, and Task Manager runs on a Rust data core.
By the numbers: ≈2,281 lines of C replaced by ≈5,168 lines of Rust across 39 kernel components in 7 subsystems (crypto, net, fs, exec, gui, media, drivers). Read against an honest denominator, that is roughly 0.61% of the kernel's ≈376,000 lines of C/H/ASM, smaller than before not because the Rust share shrank, but because a separate cleanup pass deleted tens of thousands of lines of unreachable C (see the changelog). This is the untrusted-input parser, crypto and loader tier, done thoroughly; it is not a wholesale rewrite, and the kernel remains overwhelmingly C by design. Performance is a wash: measured cycles-per-operation land roughly a third faster, a third at parity and a third slower than the C it replaced, mostly FFI and bounds-check overhead on cold, once-per-file or once-per-connection paths. The Rust port was never sold as a speed project; the payoff is the advisories below.
We audited our own port, and we publish what it found. All 36 shipped seams have been re-checked against their pre-port C original under a three-way oracle across roughly 25 million differential vectors, because “we lifted the C verbatim” is a claim, not a proof. Equivalence to the original C holds for 29 seams, several proven by byte-identity of the extracted code rather than by testing alone. It does not hold for three (the DHCP, ICMP and MP4 parsers), where the shipped Rust accepts slightly more than the C did on inputs our own self-tests could not express: low security impact, but they were labelled as confinements and they are not, so the labels were wrong. Three more (the ELF, PE and TLS seams) are deliberately stricter than the code they replace. And two of our extracted C references drifted from the original, so they are not a faithful rollback target. All 12 advisories were re-witnessed and all 12 remain valid; three carried wording errors, now corrected in the open.
The Rust port itself found all 12 of these advisories: real out-of-bounds reads and writes in the C parsers, several remote and pre-auth, surfaced by porting each parser and differentially testing the new Rust code against the old C code on hundreds of thousands of inputs under ASan. Ten are confined by the Rust; two were fixed in plain C, and are credited that way rather than to the port. Each is published with a CWE class, severity, affected build range and fixed build at /security, the day it was fixed, not after the fact.
Most of the kernel is still C. The port is ordered deliberately: crypto hashes and parsers first, then data structures, then drivers, with core kernel primitives last. Ports of code already proven correctly bounded (inflate, ARP, DNS, URL parsing, ExFAT, BMP) are defense-in-depth only and are not counted as advisories, since no reachable defect was found in them.
Signed OTA updates: updates.maytera.net is a live update and
package server. It serves a signed manifest and a package index, so a MayteraOS install can
check for and fetch updates over the network with the manifest's signature verified rather
than trusting a bare download. The manifest's advertised build number moves as new images are
cut, so it is deliberately not quoted here to avoid going stale; see
Downloads for the live server and its current manifest.
// inside the desktop
A userland compositor with translucent glass windows over an animated, window-reactive wallpaper, drop shadows, a taskbar, desktop widgets and live themes, all in a CDE/Motif aesthetic.
A real settings application with live-applied themes, wallpaper, display resolution, fonts, date and time, users, networking and a screensaver picker.
Maytera Studio is being built out to GIMP 3-class scope: selection tools, layers, curves and a growing filter registry (blur, distort, noise, light and shadow effects), tracked openly against that goal rather than declared finished early. What sets it apart is that the AI is not a plugin bolted on after the fact: a native LLM sits in the app to orchestrate edits and analyze images over the network.
MayteraOS also runs software from other eras on the side: Windows 3.1 / Win16 NE applications through a KERNEL/USER/GDI translation layer with 16-bit OLE2/COM, a DOOM port on id Software's own engine source (bring your own DOOM.WAD), and a growing DOS compatibility layer. Command & Conquer: Red Alert is playable end to end, intro through the first Allied mission, with a working sidebar, map scroll and unit selection; Discworld II reaches its animated main menu. Commander Keen, SimCity, Monkey Island (with working FM music), NetHack, SkyRoads, Stunts and The Incredible Machine all run. Bring your own copies; MayteraOS does not include or distribute any of them. See Features for the full compatibility layer.
// it comes with software
The Python app is a MicroPython port with MayteraOS-specific
os, socket and maytera window/file/network modules; mvi
is a terminal vi. Maytera Squadron is an original side-scrolling shooter built for the OS. Two
ported first-person shooters, AssaultCube and OpenArena, have run with real 3D rendering in
development builds but are withheld from the current public repository and release pending an
open-source license compliance pass; see Licenses.
// not mockups, the real framebuffer
The current desktop and its first-run welcome screen, read directly off a real framebuffer.
Captured from a throwaway VM booting a byte-identical copy of the current golden image, driven through its own deterministic test-input channel rather than a mockup: no image here is edited beyond a crop. These are static images, not video. More screenshots »
// what it needs
MayteraOS runs comfortably on modest hardware, virtual or real, and its driver stack has grown well past the original bring-up boxes.
| Minimum | Recommended | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 1 core, x86-64, UEFI firmware | 2+ cores; SMP is on by default |
| RAM | 512 MB | 2 GB (comfortable headroom for the desktop, apps and browser) |
| Graphics | UEFI GOP framebuffer (any GPU it enumerates) | same |
| Storage | ≈1 GB, USB / IDE / SATA / virtio | AHCI/SATA or virtio-blk |
| Input | PS/2 or USB HID keyboard and mouse | same |
| Network | optional | e1000, virtio-net, or USB-Ethernet |
Driver coverage: UEFI GOP framebuffer · USB xHCI with HID (keyboard/mouse), Mass Storage and hub support · USB-Ethernet (CDC-ECM/NCM, ASIX AX88179/772) · USB Audio Class DACs and Intel HD Audio · PS/2 keyboard and mouse · ATA/IDE and AHCI/SATA · e1000 and virtio-net · PCI enumeration · ACPI shutdown · multi-core SMP, 1–16 cores.
Real-hardware target: a 2013 iMac 14,4 boots to a working desktop from a USB stick, keyboard and trackpad included.
It boots on real UEFI hardware and in a virtual machine. Point an OVMF firmware at the disk image and go.
Tip: machine type pc (i440fx) gives the legacy IDE path the ATA driver expects. SMP is on by default on 2+ cores; drop an empty /NOSMPSCHED.TXT at the root of the ESP to force single-core.
# QEMU, UEFI firmware, one disk image
qemu-system-x86_64 \
-machine pc -m 2048 -smp 16 \
-bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd \
-drive file=maytera.img,format=raw