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Saphira Linux · an AKADATA project

Saphira Linux

A deterministic musl distribution with a traditional filesystem, a complete native toolchain, and an auditable path from source archive to bootable image.

Saphira, the Version 0 mascot
Technical preview

Saphira Linux

Saphira Linux has a home of its own

Saphira Linux is AKADATA’s source-built, musl/OpenRC server distribution for self-hosted infrastructure. Development, downloads, documentation, packages and the Dragon feature sets now live on the dedicated Saphira Linux website.

Visit Saphira Linux saphira.vm2.uk

Saphira Linux

Saphira Linux is booting. It’s so simple it hurts.

A deterministic, from-source musl distribution built for direct ownership: no binary-cache dependency, no usrmerge, and no BusyBox substitution layer.

Build itRelease status

Design position

Correct, not convenient

Saphira Linux is not an attempt to make Linux easy. It is an attempt to make it correct. Where common practice and the published standard disagree, the standard wins, and the reason is written down.

  • /usr is split, not merged. /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin and /usr/sbin are separate directories. Early-boot and OpenRC executables stay in /sbin, and init scripts use #!/sbin/openrc-run.
  • The base utilities are the real tools. There is no BusyBox applet layer standing in for coreutils, util-linux, or the networking commands.
  • Every binary is compiled from a pinned source archive. There is no binary cache to trust and no prebuilt package of unknown provenance.
  • Build policy is recorded per unit. An image can be explained, not just described.

This is a technical preview. Where a figure below is a target rather than a measurement, it says so.

Preview targets

How the preview compares

Saphira Linux preview targets compared with a typical general-purpose distribution
CharacteristicTypical general-purpose distributionSaphira Linux
Runtime baseBroad default package setApproximately 260 MB without sources
Stripped imageVaries by installation mediaApproximately 300 MB distributable image target
Development environmentUsually installed from external binary repositoriesApproximately 4 GB installed; compressed development image target of 1–2 GB
C library and initOften glibc with systemdPatched musl 1.2.6 with OpenRC 0.62.1
Base utilitiesDistribution-dependentPurpose-built package set; no BusyBox
FilesystemFrequently usrmergedDeliberately non-usrmerged; early boot remains in /bin and /sbin

The 260 MB figure describes the runtime base without sources; the approximately 300 MB figure describes the stripped distributable image target. Final downloads will publish measured bytes and SHA-256 values.

Core patches

What is changed in the C library

mimalloc integration

The toolchain and native system integrate an external mimalloc allocator with musl-facing compatibility changes.

Correct errno behaviour

Allocator error paths carry the expected errno semantics instead of silently losing failure context.

Larger pthread baseline

The default pthread stack increases from 128 KiB to 1 MiB, giving concurrent native services more practical headroom.

These are the verified patches in the current source tree. Akadata does not claim an unverified network-buffer expansion or promise that overload can never drop work.

Core specification

Pinned and reproducible

Architecture
x86_64, x86-64-v3 baseline
Compiler
GCC 16.1.0, O3
Kernel
Linux 7.1.5
Target
x86_64-akadata-linux-musl
Reproducibility epoch
1753401600
Boot and services
OpenRC with #!/sbin/openrc-run
Current codename
Saphira · Version 0
Userland
Selected native tools; no BusyBox
Pinned source archives
145
Stage4 APK packages
254, including 105 -dev and -doc splits
Default build policy
2 jobs, load limit 2, -pipe on
Parallel build profile
settings set profile performance uses the host CPU count with a load limit of 1.25×

Counts are read from stage4/sources.lock and stage4/dependencies.tsv. A further 90 locked Rust crates are vendored build inputs for bindgen and are not listed as packages.

Saphira Linux releases

Saphira Linux is one deliberately simple server operating system. Every release uses musl libc, OpenRC, a proper non-usrmerged filesystem and an x86-64-v3 baseline.

Release names come from dragons. They do not represent editions, performance tiers, storage roles or specialised products.

Version 0

Saphira

The first Saphira Linux release.

Version 1

Vermithrax

Planned release name.

Version 2

Ancalagon

Planned release name.

Version 3

Smaug

Planned release name.

Each release advances the same focused system: simple, source-built and designed for modern x86-64 servers.