Your desktop, ready to use.

It looks good the moment you log in, your apps and games are already there, and it keeps itself up to date.

Thousands of apps, a click away
Steam and your game launchers
Twenty-four themes to switch between
A coding agent, if you want one

The Pulsar desktop in the Pulsar Holo theme: GNOME with the top bar, a terminal and the wallpaper. — The Pulsar Holo theme.

24 themes, or bring your own

Every theme recolors your whole desktop at once: your apps, the terminal and the wallpaper. Import any base16 scheme, or have your coding agent make one.

The Pulsar desktop in the Pulsar theme — Pulsar

Theme docs →

Coding agents, if you want them

Pick Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, opencode or aider at first login, or skip it and nothing gets installed. The ones you pick know how Pulsar works, and a sandbox keeps them to one project.

Agents can:

Read crash reports and logs
Check system health and updates
Create and apply themes
Use a local model on your GPU

Agents can’t:

Modify the read-only system image
Install system packages without your password (guard on)
Read files outside the project (sandbox on)
Change system config without a record (checkpoint taken)

Rollback restores the system, not your home folder. Keep backups. What an agent can access →

Gaming

Steam, Heroic and Bottles install on your first boot, with the performance tools games want already set up. NVIDIA graphics work out of the box.

gamescale

With display scaling on, many games get the wrong resolution and look blurry. gamescale sets the display to 100% while a game runs, and puts your scaling back when it quits.

How gamescale works →

A 2560×1600 display at 133% scaling Your screen What the game renders

GNOME default

1920×1200

Stretched to fit, blurry
GNOME, XWayland native scaling

3840×2400

Shrunk to fit, 2.25× the GPU work
With gamescale

2560×1600

Native, pixel for pixel

Updates with an undo

A fresh version is built every night from the latest Fedora. Pulsar downloads it in the background while you’re plugged in, and it takes over the next time you restart. If it won’t start, you’re back on the old one.

Built nightly

From current Fedora packages.
Downloaded for you

In the background, while you’re plugged in.
Ready at your next restart

A notification tells you, with a Restart button.
Automatic rollback

If the new version fails to boot.

Release 26.10.1 Last night’s build 44.20261014.0 How updates work Build status

Download Pulsar

Pulsar is free, today and always, and its source is open under the MIT license. Choose the download that matches your system, write it to any USB stick of 8 GB or more, and you’re one restart away from your new desktop. The installer ISO is refreshed weekly; once installed, Pulsar updates from the nightly build.

Intel or AMD

Most laptops and desktops.
Not sure what’s inside yours? Start here.

Download for Intel or AMD

pulsar-latest-x86_64.iso 5–6 GB · verify with .sha256, .sig, .json

NVIDIA GeForce

RTX cards, with the driver built in.

With Secure Boot on, you’ll enroll one key after installing. How

Download for NVIDIA

pulsar-nvidia-latest-x86_64.iso 5–6 GB · verify with .sha256, .sig, .json

Write the ISO to a USB stick

Any stick of 8 GB or more. GNOME Disks does it, or Fedora Media Writer on Windows and macOS.
Boot it and install

You pick the disk and the layout. The installer asks before it changes anything.
Log in

Choose a theme and, if you want one, a coding agent. Your apps finish installing in the background.

Questions

Before you install, and the two things only some computers need.

Coming from Windows or a Mac? Check your computer can run it, make the stick, and keep Windows alongside.

Is it really free?

Yes, always. No account, no subscription, no trial, and nothing held back for a paid version. Pulsar is open source, and every nightly build is public.

Can I keep Windows?

Yes. Shrink Windows to make room, install Pulsar beside it, and choose one each time you turn the computer on.

Making room, step by step →

How do updates work?

A new build is made every night, downloads in the background, and is used from your next restart. Nothing restarts on its own, and the build you had stays in the boot menu.

How updates work →

What if an update goes wrong?

Choose the previous build in the boot menu, or run sudo pulsar rollback. If a new build fails its health checks while it starts, Pulsar goes back to the last good one by itself. Your files and apps stay as they are either way.

Rolling back →

Will my games run?

Most will. Steam and Heroic come with it and finish installing in the background after your first login, with Proton, gamemode, and on the NVIDIA image the driver for Flatpak games already set up.

Some online games use anti-cheat that refuses to run on Linux at all. That is the publisher’s choice, and no Linux system can get around it. Check the games you play on Are We Anti-Cheat Yet? and ProtonDB before you switch.

What’s set up for games →

I have NVIDIA and Secure Boot on. What do I do?

Enroll Pulsar’s driver key once, and Secure Boot stays on. Either way works:

Right away. Run this, choose a one-time password, and restart. A blue screen asks you to Enroll MOK and for that password. The NVIDIA driver loads from then on.

Or just log in. The desktop starts on the open-source driver, and a moment later GNOME Software offers to enroll the key. Follow its prompts, restart, and you’re on NVIDIA.

Every screen, step by step →

How do I check the download is really yours?

Each ISO’s checksum is signed with Pulsar’s release key. This checks the signature, then the ISO against the checksum.

--insecure-ignore-tlog skips Rekor, Sigstore’s public transparency log. The ISOs’ signatures aren’t logged there yet (the images’ are), so this check rests on the published key alone.

Already on Silverblue or Kinoite?

Switch in place with one command and a restart. Your files, apps and settings are kept, and the system you had is still in the boot menu.

PULSAR