Getting started

Core concepts

Machines, live filesystems, and immutable backups are the foundations of launching and sharing on brintOS.

Machines

A machine is a versioned root filesystem that boots. It behaves like a repository — you can fork it, share it, and track its history — but launching it gives you a running Linux environment.

Snapshots

Every machine starts with a writable live version. A clean shutdown or successful image import publishes latest. Owners can save a named snapshot of latest to preserve that version. One engine can use live at a time; many engines can launch a published snapshot concurrently. Forks are created from published snapshots, with latest selected by default.

Launch version selection chooses live when you can write and it is idle, otherwise the latest backup. You can select a different version before booting.

Filesystem

Browse, upload, and download files through the web UI, or work in the machine's Linux shell with the Node launcher. Web edits and transfers remain available while an engine runs. In Node, Ctrl-] powers off and flushes cloud writes. Use ext4 import/export to transfer a complete filesystem.