Dr Kalam OS
A premium, portable, localized live workstation in pendrive.
47 followers
A premium, portable, localized live workstation in pendrive.
47 followers
DrKalamOS is a highly optimized, open-source Debian-based live operating system designed to turn an ordinary USB flash drive into a powerful, secure desktop environment without touching your computer's internal storage. Inspired by the vision of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, this distribution focuses on accessibility, low hardware overhead, and native language localization.
Dr Kalam OS
@divyek_soni A portable, open-source desktop that leaves the host machine untouched is genuinely useful — especially in low-resource environments where Dr. Kalam's vision resonates most.
Two practical questions from someone who'd actually use this:
What's the minimum USB size required? Asking because affordable drives in a lot of markets still cap at 8–16GB and that determines real-world accessibility.
And boot time — how long from inserting the USB to a usable desktop on older hardware? That's usually the friction point that determines whether people stick with a live OS or give up on it.
Dr Kalam OS
@lingha_dharshan_anparasu Thank you so much! These are incredibly grounded, real-world questions that hit the exact core of what we are trying to solve for low-resource environments. Here is how the current architecture performs under those constraints:
1. Minimum USB Size Required: You will be happy to hear that an 8GB or 16GB drive is more than enough! Right now, our compiled Alpha .iso image sits at a highly optimized 2.4GB. This means it easily fits onto a standard, widely available 4GB or 8GB USB stick. If a student uses an 8GB or 16GB drive, the remaining space can eventually be allocated for a "Persistence Partition"—allowing them to permanently save their documents, code files, and personalized settings directly on the remainder of the thumb drive.
2. Boot Time Friction (USB to Desktop): This is the ultimate test for any Live OS. On older hardware, the boot timeline generally splits into two phases depending on the USB standard:
On a USB 3.0 slot/drive: It typically takes about 35 to 50 seconds to reach a fully responsive KDE Plasma desktop.
On legacy USB 2.0 slots (older hardware): The boot time can take between 1.5 to 2.5 minutes, as the bios reads the core image into the system memory.
The Crucial Advantage (The "RAM Magic"): While the initial boot up on older hardware takes a minute or two, the magic happens after it loads. Because DrKalamOS copies the core operating environment entirely into the system's RAM, the desktop experience becomes blazing fast once booted.
It completely bypasses the slowest bottleneck of older computers (aging, spinning mechanical hard drives). Once the desktop appears, opening the terminal, launching a text editor, or navigating the system happens instantly at RAM speeds, resulting in a much faster experience than the host computer's native, bloated OS setup.
Thank you for bringing up these friction points—optimizing that initial decompression and boot sequence is one of our primary milestones as we progress through the alpha!
Mailwarm
Which languages are supported right now, and are you aiming more at schools or personal use?
Dr Kalam OS
@thamibenjelloun Hi Thami! Thank you so much for the encouraging words and for diving into these core aspects of the project. Here is where we stand right now on both fronts:
1. Language Support (Current Alpha State): Our current Alpha build sets English (India) (en_IN.UTF-8) as the system default boot locale. However, from an architecture standpoint, we have integrated the universal fonts-indic and m17n-db (multilingualization input method engine) directly into the core system layer.
This infrastructure lays the foundation for native keyboard layouts and font rendering for major Indian regional languages (such as Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Bengali). Our goal is to make toggling between English and native regional language layouts seamless out of the box, removing the friction of complex terminal setups for students.
2. Schools vs. Personal Use: We are aiming to bridge the gap between both, but our immediate focus is personal use for students within shared or resource-constrained environments.
For Personal Use (The Student): It allows an individual to transform a cheap, ordinary USB drive into their own secure, personalized workstation. They can plug it into any borrowed or older family laptop, work in a fast environment, and simply unplug it when done.
For Schools & Labs: Because DrKalamOS runs entirely in Live Mode (out of RAM), it requires zero installation and carries zero deployment risk. A school computer lab can boot an entire classroom into DrKalamOS via USB for a computer science or localized language class, and then reboot right back into their original host OS (like Windows) without a single byte being modified on the hard drive.
Since we are in early Alpha, we are prioritizing getting the core standalone ISO perfected for independent students and developers first, before building out mass-deployment scripts tailored specifically for school networks.
Would love to know if you have any thoughts or suggestions on this portable approach!