What LosOS is
LosOS turns a small computer, typically a repurposed mini-PC, into an appliance. You plug it into your network and power, install it once from a USB stick, and from then on you only ever meet it through a web browser.
What runs on it
| What you see | What it is |
|---|---|
| LosOS cloud | Your files, photos, calendar, contacts, notes and tasks. Built on Nextcloud. At /nextcloud. |
| LosOS Git | Your code repositories, on by default. Built on Forgejo. At /forgejo/. |
| The admin pages | Where the box is set up and looked after. At /, reachable only from your local network. |
| The mesh | Optional. Spare disk and CPU lent to other LosOS boxes, and borrowed from them. |
| Remote access | Optional. A public address for the box through an edge server, with no port opened at home. |
What makes it different from a NAS
- It forgets everything it does not need. The system disk is rebuilt from scratch on every boot. Only your data, the settings you chose and a short list of system directories survive, on an encrypted volume. Whatever an attacker, a bug or a bad day changed elsewhere is gone by the next morning.
- It restarts itself every night at 00:07 and updates itself at 03:00. That restart is how it repairs itself, which is why there is no shell: there is nothing a shell would be needed for.
- It encrypts its disk and keeps the key in its own chip. On a machine with a TPM, the disk alone, pulled out and plugged into another computer, is unreadable.
- One password. The password you set for LosOS cloud is the password that unlocks the admin pages. A printed spare key covers the day LosOS cloud is not running.
- It can lend what it is not using. Within hours you choose, and only while it is idle, a box can share its spare disk and CPU with other boxes. The market that pays owners for that is built and will open once the business behind it exists.
What it is not
- Not a general-purpose server. There is no shell by design, and that is a feature: the box cannot be configured into a state that nobody wrote down.
- Not a backup. The box is one copy. Keep another copy of anything you cannot lose; LosOS cloud's desktop and phone clients make that easy.
- Not finished. The project page says what is done and what is planned.