LionOs

LionOs is a lightweight, open‑source operating system developed for embedded and IoT devices. It is based on a minimal Linux kernel and aims to combine low memory usage with high reliability. The project is maintained by a community of volunteers and corporate sponsors.

The first public release of LionOs was in March 2019, following a prototype phase that began in 2018. The name refers to the lion symbol used in its logo, meant to convey strength and agility. Since its inception, the project has released several major updates.

LionOs follows a modular design where core services such as process scheduling, memory management, and I/O are kept separate. The user space contains a small set of utilities compiled as static binaries for fast startup. Compatibility layers allow many POSIX‑compliant applications to run unchanged.

Key features include a real‑time scheduler, integrated over‑the‑wire debugging, and a web‑based configuration interface. It supports ARM, RISC‑V, and x86‑64 architectures, and can be cross‑compiled with standard GNU toolchains. The kernel is released under the GPL‑3.0 license.

LionOs has been adopted by a number of hobbyist and industrial projects, especially in sensor networks and smart appliances. Its community hosts an active mailing list and quarterly code sprints.