Documentation
Hardware requirements.
LeivOS is engineered around a specific reference machine. Anything materially close to it should run cleanly. Check the lists below before you buy.
Minimum requirements
Every machine running LeivOS meets these minimums.
- Architecture
- x86_64 (64-bit Intel or AMD)
- Firmware
- UEFI (no legacy BIOS)
- CPU features
- SSE2, AVX, AES-NI, RDRAND, NX, SYSCALL, PAE, TSC
- RAM
- 1 GiB minimum, 4 GiB recommended
- Disk
- 40 GiB free; UEFI ESP for the loader
- Display
- UEFI GOP framebuffer (built-in panel or external HDMI/DP)
- Input
- PS/2 or i8042-emulated keyboard and pointing device
- Network
- Intel Wireless 8265 (PCI 8086:24fd) or virtio-net under QEMU
Reference machine
The configuration our engineering and release tests run on.
- Chassis
- HP Spectre x360 Convertible 13-ae0xx
- Form factor
- 13" 2-in-1 convertible
- Firmware
- AMI UEFI F.36 (2022-03-19)
- CPU
- Intel Core i7-8550U (Kaby Lake R, 4 cores / 8 threads)
- RAM
- 16 GiB LPDDR3 2133 MT/s, dual channel
- GPU
- Intel UHD Graphics 620 (PCI 8086:5917)
- Storage
- Samsung PM981-class NVMe SSD (PCI 144d:a808), 512 GB
- Wi-Fi
- Intel Wireless 8265 / 8275 (PCI 8086:24fd)
- Display
- 13" eDP panel, full-HD class
Machines whose PCI IDs and firmware closely match this reference run LeivOS as it ships. Anything further out is best-effort. If you are unsure about a specific model, write to us before you buy.
Supported on the reference machine
Boot & kernel
- UEFI boot path: ESP → BOOTX64.EFI → UUSIKRNL.BIN
- Authoritative UEFI memory map preserved across handoff
- 4-level paging, kernel-owned page tables
- Preemptive scheduling across all 8 logical CPUs
- Per-process address spaces with hard memory limits and guard pages
CPU features
- SSE2 used by the Tape JIT for f64 arithmetic
- AVX used by the SHA / TLS path
- AES-NI accelerating AES-128 in TLS GCM and Wi-Fi CCMP
- RDRAND seeding the userspace CSPRNG
- NX, SMEP, SMAP enforced where the CPU exposes them
Storage
- NVMe boot: kernel and loader load from the EFI System Partition
- In-tree on-disk filesystem (uusifs) for application data
- Targets the Samsung PM981-class NVMe controller (144d:a808)
Display
- UEFI GOP linear framebuffer at firmware-set mode
- Compositing window manager with damage-rect updates
- Software cursor, focus, drag, hover, close
Input
- PS/2 keyboard via the i8042 controller
- Synaptics PS/2 touchpad (basic pointer events)
- Per-event input ABI shared between keyboard and pointer
Networking
- Userspace Ethernet, ARP, IPv4, ICMP, UDP, TCP stack
- DHCPv4 client and DNS stub resolver
- TLS 1.3 with X25519, AES-GCM, ChaCha20-Poly1305
- X.509 chain validation against RSA-PSS and P-256 ECDSA certificates
- WPA2-PSK Wi-Fi on the Intel 8265 with verified 4-way handshake
- virtio-net driver for QEMU and equivalent virtual environments
Runtime
- Tape language: interpreter, JIT, AOT to native PE
- Standard library: io, string, dyn — REPL included
- Capability manifest gating privileged ioctls per binary
Not in v1
Features intentionally out of scope for the first release. We list them so you know what you are not getting.
- USB host controller (no xHCI, so no USB-attached storage, USB Ethernet, USB-Audio, or USB-HID input)
- Thunderbolt enumeration
- Audio output (Intel HDA codec discovery is not in v1)
- Internal webcam (UVC over USB)
- Bluetooth
- SD / Card reader
- Touchscreen and pen input on convertibles (I²C-HID is not driven)
- GPU hardware acceleration (the compositor runs against the UEFI framebuffer)
Not sure?
Tell us your machine. We'll tell you if it boots.
Send us your model and the output of lspci -nn.
We will tell you whether LeivOS will run on it before you spend a euro.