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Sculpt OS version 26.04

(published in April 2026)

Sculpt is an open-source general-purpose OS. It combines Genode's microkernel architecture, capability-based security, sandboxed device drivers, and virtual machines in a novel operating system for commodity PC hardware and the PinePhone. Sculpt is used as day-to-day OS by the Genode developers.

The administrative user interface ("Leitzentrale"): The panel at the top gives access to a live view of the system structure (shown), a file browser, network connectivity, power control, and system update/rollback. The interactive graph at the center presents the running components with their relationships and allows the user to interact with a variety of components offered by Genode Labs and federated software providers.

Instructions

Sculpt 26.04 documentation (printable version)

Download disk image

sculpt-26-04.img (35 MiB) (signature, public key)

SHA256 6064cf06b0e5cffb077f0cc6d142bf7c79940a20414c084071a9cfef57c1313a

Mobile-OS version

An experimental phone variant of Sculpt OS tailored for the PinePhone is available at https://depot.genode.org/genodelabs/image. Information about installing and using this variant are available in the form of a dedicated article at https://genodians.org.

MNT-Reform version

Sculpt OS is available for the i.MX8 variant for the MNT Reform laptop at https://depot.genode.org/skalk/image/ and at the system-update dialog when selecting skalk as provider.

Download disk image for the MNT-Reform laptop

sculpt-mnt_reform2-2026-05-04.img.xz (signature, public key)

SHA256 c1eb0ae2005e23f048d8709744feb085854fc0d1b5c5fb0050726d9481bf06da

Preparing a bootable USB stick on Unix

On Unix-based systems, use the dd command to copy the disk image to a USB stick: 

 sudo dd if=sculpt-26-04.img of=/dev/sdx bs=1M conv=fsync

Here, /dev/sdx refers to the device node of your USB stick. To determine it, you may inspect the output of dmesg after plugging it in.

Preparing a bootable USB stick on MS Windows

Option 1: Rufus

  1. Download and run Rufus (alternative portable executable available)

  2. Plug in your USB thumb drive and select it under "Device"

  3. Download the Sculpt OS image linked above and select it under "Boot selection"

  4. Write to the USB drive by clicking "START"

Option 2: Win32 Disk Imager

  1. Download, install, and run Win32 Disk Imager

  2. Download the Sculpt OS image linked above and select under "Image file"

  3. Plug in your USB thumb drive and select it under "Device"

  4. Write to the USB drive by clicking "Write"

Running Sculpt as VirtualBox appliance

  1. Download the sculpt-26-04.ova (signature) appliance that contains the Sculpt 26.04 image along with a known-to-work VirtualBox configuration.

    SHA256 38ef68715b5e64e7135793be4304dce0b7548fdbd2a5d75fe7b8b4932682666b

  2. Start VirtualBox and import the OVA file as appliance.

  3. After boot, you will be presented with one AHCI boot disk, which you should expand via the administrative user interface before using it.

Running Sculpt 26.04 in Qemu

You may take the following command line as starting point for experimenting with Sculpt 26.04 on the Qemu emulator. 

 qemu-system-x86_64 -display sdl -cpu Skylake-Client -machine q35 \
                    -m 1024 -drive format=raw,file=sculpt-26-04.img \
                    -netdev user,id=net0 -device e1000,netdev=net0

For better performance, you may also try the options -accel kvm -cpu host.

Previous versions

All previous releases are available at the dedicated Sculpt OS archive page.

© 2026 Genode Labs