--- title: This Dev Spent 8 Years on Intel's Clear Linux, Now He's... description: Auke Kok, a former Intel engineer who spent eight years on Clear Linux OS, has launched The Ur Project, a from-scratch Linux distribution build system written... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/this-dev-spent-8-years-on-intel-s-clear-linux-now-he-s-undoing-its-biggest-mistake-zth6d3oiu twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: This Dev Spent 8 Years on Intel's Clear Linux, Now He's Undoing Its Biggest Mistake | daily.dev og:description: Auke Kok, a former Intel engineer who spent eight years on Clear Linux OS, has launched The Ur Project, a from-scratch Linux distribution build system written... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/this-dev-spent-8-years-on-intel-s-clear-linux-now-he-s-undoing-its-biggest-mistake-zth6d3oiu og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/Zth6d3OIU.png og:image:alt: This Dev Spent 8 Years on Intel's Clear Linux, Now He's Undoing Its Biggest Mistake og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # This Dev Spent 8 Years on Intel's Clear Linux, Now He's Undoing Its Biggest Mistake **[It's Foss](https://daily.dev/sources/itsfoss)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Auke Kok, a former Intel engineer who spent eight years on Clear Linux OS, has launched The Ur Project, a from-scratch Linux distribution build system written in Rust. He says Clear Linux's biggest failure was making it too hard for the community to contribute, due to painful tooling and a messy release process. The Ur Project uses declarative TOML 'recipes' instead of hand-written build scripts, probes source code to determine build steps, signs updates via TUF, deduplicates files with content-addressed storage, and aims for bit-for-bit reproducible builds. It can output OCI containers, live USB images, cloud images, or plain installs. LLMs are used only to help write test suites and build definitions, not to run the deterministic build system itself. The project is solo, non-corporate, and still working out hosting before publishing bootable images. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why did Intel's Clear Linux OS fail to attract community contributors? The biggest failure was making it too hard for outsiders to contribute, according to Auke Kok, a developer who spent eight years on the project at Intel. Simple tasks like testing a code change or doing incremental development were needlessly painful, and the release process relied on mismatched dashboards and a patchwork of old and new tooling to track daily updates. _Developers weighing distro contribution workflows can follow tooling postmortems like this one on daily.dev._ ### What is The Ur Project and how does it differ from a typical Linux distro? The Ur Project is a from-scratch Linux distribution build system created by former Clear Linux developer Auke Kok, written entirely in Rust for both building and installing packages. It defines packages through declarative TOML 'recipes' that describe requirements rather than build steps, uses probes to determine compilation steps automatically, and targets bit-for-bit reproducible builds with TUF-signed, content-addressed package storage. _Anyone tracking new distro build systems can follow The Ur Project's progress via daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Ikey Doherty Plans To Show How To "Properly" Build A Modern Linux Distro](https://daily.dev/posts/ikey-doherty-plans-to-show-how-to-properly-build-a-modern-linux-distro-c9tt8plbz) · Phoronix · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#rust](https://daily.dev/tags/rust) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/this-dev-spent-8-years-on-intel-s-clear-linux-now-he-s-undoing-its-biggest-mistake-zth6d3oiu) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"This Dev Spent 8 Years on Intel's Clear Linux, Now He's Undoing Its Biggest Mistake","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/this-dev-spent-8-years-on-intel-s-clear-linux-now-he-s-undoing-its-biggest-mistake-zth6d3oiu","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/this-dev-spent-8-years-on-intel-s-clear-linux-now-he-s-undoing-its-biggest-mistake-zth6d3oiu"},"datePublished":"2026-09-01T14:45:20.208Z","dateModified":"2026-09-01T14:46:37.358Z","description":"Auke Kok, a former Intel engineer who spent eight years on Clear Linux OS, has launched The Ur Project, a from-scratch Linux distribution build system written...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/e9a697a74f70d62c0681aa7c9d9dafb4?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/e9a697a74f70d62c0681aa7c9d9dafb4?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"It's Foss","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"It's Foss","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/582e3faed71842bfb9d3840a787d6700","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/itsfoss"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/this-dev-spent-8-years-on-intel-s-clear-linux-now-he-s-undoing-its-biggest-mistake-zth6d3oiu","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"linux,rust","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"It's Foss","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/itsfoss"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"This Dev Spent 8 Years on Intel's Clear Linux, Now He's Undoing Its Biggest Mistake"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/this-dev-spent-8-years-on-intel-s-clear-linux-now-he-s-undoing-its-biggest-mistake-zth6d3oiu#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why did Intel's Clear Linux OS fail to attract community contributors?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"The biggest failure was making it too hard for outsiders to contribute, according to Auke Kok, a developer who spent eight years on the project at Intel. 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