Why amadeOS
Your computer should work for you, not for the company that made its software. amadeOS is built so that you can see, understand and keep everything it does.
Open source, all the way up
Everything from the login screen to the text editor is free software under the EUPL-1.2, a licence published by the European Commission and valid in every official EU language.
Built on proven foundations
Debian Stable as the base, Linux as the kernel, Xorg as the display. amadeOS adds a desktop, not a new platform you have to trust.
Understandable
The whole desktop is plain Java and Swing: one codebase, one language, readable by anyone who wants to know what their system does.
Open standards, no lock-in
Programs are ordinary Debian packages with Freedesktop entries, files stay in open formats, and any X11 program runs next to the amadeOS applications.
A desktop that stays
A front panel, workspaces and clear window frames in the tradition of CDE, without a redesign every year. What you learn today still works in ten years.
No tracking
No account, no telemetry, no advertising. Firefox comes with telemetry off and an ad blocker on, and your mail, calendar and contacts stay on your computer.
Sovereignty, in practice
Digital sovereignty means that you decide what happens on your computer and with your data. For that you need software whose source code you may read, change and pass on, built from parts that do not depend on a single company, and files in formats that other programs can open too.
amadeOS puts these principles on the desktop. It does not invent a new kernel or a new display system: it takes the proven parts of Debian and Linux and adds a desktop and applications that are small enough to understand. Mail, appointments, contacts and documents are kept in open formats on your own disk, not in somebody's cloud.
Why Java?
Java is one of the most widely taught and used programming languages, it runs the same on every computer, and it is developed in the open as OpenJDK. A desktop in one well-known language can be read, fixed and extended by many people, not only by a few specialists.
Honest about the state
amadeOS 1.0.0 is the first release. The desktop, the applications and the installer work; what comes next, and what is still being tested, is listed in the public roadmap. The first part of the User's Handbook explains the ideas behind amadeOS in detail.