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Machine images

Choose from the machine images below, rebuilt by Frostyard at least weekly. Run nsl images to see what's available in the current authenticated catalogue. By default, it reuses a catalogue checked less than one hour ago. Use nsl images --refresh to check immediately.

Distro Selectors Family
Debian 13 debian:13, debian:trixie debian
Debian testing debian:testing debian
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS ubuntu:26.04, ubuntu:resolute debian
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ubuntu:24.04, ubuntu:noble debian
Fedora 44 fedora:44 rpm
Fedora Rawhide fedora:rawhide rpm
CentOS Stream 10 centos:10, centos-stream:10 rpm
Arch Linux arch:rolling, arch:btw arch
openSUSE Tumbleweed opensuse:tumbleweed, opensuse-tumbleweed:rolling suse
openSUSE Leap 16.0 opensuse:16.0, opensuse-leap:16.0 suse
Azure Linux 4.0 (beta) azurelinux:4.0, azure-linux:4.0 rpm

All images are x86-64. A new distro or release has to pass the same acceptance tests before it's added.

What every image provides

  • Your account, added at creation: your username, UID and GID, a home at /home/USER, /bin/bash and passwordless sudo. Root has no usable password.
  • A login session for shells and commands run as your machine account: a PAM login with a logind session, XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, a user systemd manager and a user D-Bus session. nsl run --root does not create a PAM/logind session or provide XDG_RUNTIME_DIR or a user manager.
  • Networking from the VM. The machine's own networkd and resolved are masked; it uses the VM's network and resolver.
  • Nested containers. A full procfs for nesting and a Podman drop-in, so rootless Podman works.
  • Desktop support. Time-zone data, a font, a cursor theme and the Wayland client libraries.
  • The C.UTF-8 locale. Install other locales with the distro's packages.
  • nsl-open and nsl-path, with nsl-open as the handler for web links.
  • Your directory for new terminal tabs. Interactive bash and zsh report the working directory with OSC 7 when the terminal asks for it, so Igloo ↗ opens new tabs in the directory you were in.
  • An OpenSSH server, with no service enabled, for ssh-config.
  • A unique identity per machine. Each machine gets its own machine ID on first boot. Images ship no SSH host keys and no package-keyring private keys.

Distro notes

  • Debian testing and Fedora Rawhide are development branches. Each week's image is the branch as it was that week, and upgrading packages in your machine keeps it on the branch, so expect the occasional breakage. A Debian testing machine stays on testing after forky is released.
  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ships systemd 255 and Podman 4.9, older than the other images.
  • CentOS Stream 10 enables EPEL, and adds GLES libraries so GTK 4 applications render.
  • Arch Linux initializes and populates its pacman keyring on the machine's first boot.
  • openSUSE images add glibc-locale-base for C.UTF-8.
  • Azure Linux 4.0 is a beta, and its machines install packages from Microsoft's beta repositories. Those repositories offer few desktop applications; GTK 3 applications such as gtk-lshw open windows.

The full machine-image contract ↗ is in the repository.