Dollarbird Linux

Current prerelease: Dollarbird Linux 0.3.0 Beta 2 uses the official Fedora 44 KDE and LXQt Live profiles with Anaconda. See the Beta 2 release notes for exact verified scope and remaining gates. The Calamares alpha description below is retained as historical documentation and does not describe Beta 2.

Native candidate boot options

• Normal start: BIOS or UEFI. Native Anaconda follows the firmware mode used to boot the ISO; BIOS installation uses GRUB's i386-pc target.
• NVIDIA compatibility: nouveau.noaccel=1, keeping display mode-setting enabled. This uses the included Nouveau driver, not a proprietary NVIDIA installer. Physical GPU coverage and installed-driver setup are not implied.
• UEFI troubleshooting: basic graphics and NVIDIA driver-disabled rescue. These nomodeset routes require a usable firmware framebuffer and are not offered in BIOS mode, where our tests reached a running kernel but no desktop.

Beta 2 is a development prerelease; use its release notes, not the historical alpha claims below, to decide whether to test it. Public milestones follow an Alpha, Beta, stable progression; cumulative rc build numbers stay in git tags and RPM release fields, not in public release names.

Dollarbird Linux is an unofficial Fedora 44-based x86_64 live ISO with a branded KDE Plasma desktop and Calamares installer. It is not sponsored by or affiliated with the Fedora Project or Parrot Security.

Expanded alpha scope

• UEFI/GPT installation through Calamares, with optional LUKS2 encryption.
• KDE Plasma, GNOME, LXQt, and Xfce target desktop choices.
• GRUB (default), systemd-boot, rEFInd, and Limine bootloader choices.
• Korean Hangul/Hanja key mapping and Windows-style desktop shortcuts.

The live session contains KDE Plasma. GNOME, LXQt, and Xfce are downloaded from the Fedora repositories during installation instead of duplicating four full desktops in the ISO.

Disposable 64 GiB QEMU installs reached the installed login screen for all four desktops through GRUB. KDE installations also booted through systemd-boot and Limine with LUKS2. The rEFInd path reached the LUKS prompt and installed login screen after applying the final generated configuration to its installed QEMU disk; it has not had another clean installation from the exact final ISO. GRUB clears stale one-shot EFI BootNext state before registering Dollarbird.

GRUB uses Fedora's signed-shim path. Secure Boot must be disabled for systemd-boot, rEFInd, and Limine in this alpha. Broad physical-hardware compatibility is not a release claim.

The target installation downloads packages, so an internet connection is required. Back up existing data before selecting erase-disk installation.

The 2026-09-02 expanded candidate is 3,518,058,496 bytes with SHA-256 d2c0330688f052206afd292a7f4894002d708ac5028332e07e9feedd9b2ae138.

Build

Build on Fedora 44 or a Fedora 44 WSL2 environment:

sudo dnf install kiwi kiwi-systemdeps distribution-gpg-keys git
bash ./scripts/build-dollarbird.sh

Run the fast source checks:

python3 scripts/validate-dollarbird.py
bash root/usr/libexec/dollarbird/install-base --self-test
bash root/usr/libexec/dollarbird/apply-gdm-theme --self-test

See DOLLARBIRD.md for implementation details and safety gates.

Licensing

The build descriptions and Dollarbird modifications are GPL-3.0-or-later; see COPYING. Modified Parrot Echo, Sweet Mars, Flat Remix, and Plasma layout assets retain their upstream GPL licenses and attribution. Exact source revisions and modifications are listed in THIRD_PARTY.md.