Our Vision

Following company restructuring and the resumption of RadiantOS alpha development, we are proud to share the new direction for the project. RadiantOS is now heading towards becoming a desktop-based operating system — built with one goal in mind: fast, but stable.

RadiantOS will be built on top of either Unix or BSD, giving us a rock-solid, time-tested foundation to build upon. We are positioning RadiantOS as a direct competitor to both macOS and Linux desktop distributions — combining the polish and cohesion of macOS with the openness and flexibility of Linux.

We do not intend to position RadiantOS against Microsoft Windows — and we want to be transparent about why. Our stance is not diplomatic neutrality; it is a deliberate recognition that competing against Windows is, practically speaking, a non-goal.

Windows, particularly Windows 11, presents itself as a modernized system while remaining largely a beautified version of Windows 10 underneath — carrying decades of architectural debt. The roots of many of these issues trace back to the NT 4.0 era, when key components were reorganized in ways that introduced lasting performance and stability regressions compared to NT 3.51. That baggage has never been fully addressed, and the system has continued to accumulate it.

From a security standpoint, Windows continues to ship and depend on applications and subsystems that would not meet modern security standards. We are aware of Microsoft's K2 initiative, but we do not hold strong confidence that it will meaningfully improve the day-to-day experience for the average user in the near term.

Perhaps most critically: competing with Windows would require us to guarantee compatibility with kernel-level anticheat software such as BattlEye — software that operates at the deepest level of the system with broad access to user hardware and data. We are not in a position to provide that guarantee, nor are we particularly motivated to. It is our view that if it were not for kernel-level anticheat systems — which we consider a form of spyware by design — Windows would have significantly less of a foothold in the consumer market than it does today. We do not consider it a worthy benchmark to chase.

Our focus is on building something better — not on tearing down what already exists. RadiantOS will stand on its own merits.

Windows App Compatibility

While we are not building a Windows competitor, we recognize that many users rely on Windows-native software. We are exploring two approaches to address this:

• Compatibility Layer: Building or forking an existing solution that allows Windows applications to run natively within RadiantOS — similar in spirit to Wine or other compatibility layers.
• Integrated Virtual Machine with Unity Mode: Embedding a lightweight VM that can launch Windows applications in a seamless, window-integrated fashion — similar to how VMware Fusion handled Unity Mode prior to its removal in version 13.6. Apps would appear as native windows on your RadiantOS desktop, with no visible VM boundary.

Both approaches are under consideration, and we may pursue one or both depending on technical feasibility and resource availability as development progresses.

Privacy & Offline-First Design

RadiantOS will be designed to support fully offline environments from day one — not as an afterthought. Whether you are air-gapped, on a restricted network, or simply value self-contained computing, RadiantOS will work without requiring an internet connection for core functionality.

For users who are online, we will build in privacy-conscious options — giving users control over what data leaves their system, with transparent defaults and the ability to opt out of any telemetry or network communication.

Driver Support & Hardware Compatibility

RadiantOS will be built to support all open-source drivers out of the box, with broad hardware compatibility as a core design principle. We want RadiantOS to run on as much hardware as reasonably possible.

Additionally, we are building a fully open-source NVIDIA GPU compatibility layer. NVIDIA's historically limited support for open-source ecosystems has been a long-standing pain point across the Linux and BSD communities, and we intend to address this head-on. This project will not be exclusive to RadiantOS — it will be designed to allow NVIDIA drivers to be imported and used on other operating systems as well, making it a broader contribution to the open-source ecosystem at large.

Beyond RadiantOS itself, we intend to extend driver and compatibility support to Linux distributions — including Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) — as well as BSD-based systems such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Our goal is for this layer to be useful well beyond our own platform, and we welcome community involvement as the project matures.

Current Development Platform Requirements

Due to financial constraints and hardware acquisition difficulties stemming from the ongoing trade dispute between Canada and the United States, all x86-64 development has been migrated to macOS-based systems. The following minimum versions are required for development:

Architecture	Minimum macOS Version
x86-64 — 64-bit	macOS Catalina (10.15) or later
ARM — 64-bit	macOS Big Sur (11) or later
x86 — 32-bit	macOS 10.7 – 10.14

Status Summary

• RadiantOS — Development resumed, now in alpha. All previous Base kernel builds are considered obsolete and unsupported.
• ROSGC, RTBuilder, RTGames — Officially abandoned. Listed on the Archived Projects page.
• RTDash — Abandoned, but may return or be picked up by a new maintainer. Prospective maintainers should refer to the security.txt file at the root of the site.
• IDX-11 Tool — Now available. See the Products page for details.

Statement on Bill C-22 (Canada)

Radiant Technologies is aware of Bill C-22 and the obligations it would impose if signed into law. This statement reflects the position of Radiant Technologies and its head, Aidan Scott.

What this means for Canadian users: Should Bill C-22 be enacted, RadiantOS cannot be distributed to Canadian users in the same way it is distributed to the rest of the world. Under Part 2 of the Bill, the government would gain the authority to compel the collection and disclosure of user metadata. To be clear about what "metadata" means in practice — it is not just abstract technical data. If you send a text message, the government would have access to: who you are, who your recipient is, both of your locations, the time and date of the message, and potentially the content of the message itself, along with a great deal more. Radiant Technologies would be legally required to ensure that data is collected and passed to the government.

In that scenario, Radiant Technologies commits to providing all necessary warnings to Canadian users — clearly and prominently — that their system can and will be subject to government tracking under Canadian law. We will not obscure this. Canadian users will know exactly what is happening on their device.

Our position on the Bill: Aidan Scott and Radiant Technologies understand the intent behind Bill C-22 at a basic level. Safety is a legitimate concern, and we do not dismiss that. However, the Bill as written is, in our view, poorly worded and poorly constructed. It conflicts with and violates multiple existing Canadian privacy laws — including those established under MFIPPA (Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act), FIPPA (Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act), and equivalent legislation across other provinces. A law that contradicts the existing legal framework protecting Canadians' privacy rights is not a well-made law, regardless of its stated intent.

When the government frames legislation like this as being "for safety," Radiant Technologies reads that plainly: it is a mechanism to track people. Safety is the justification — surveillance is the mechanism.

On privacy rights and the law: Radiant Technologies does not support Bill C-22 due to the privacy violations it represents. That said, we are a company that operates within the law, and we will comply with whatever is legally required of us. What we will not do is pretend that compliance is endorsement.

We state this openly and without reservation: every person, regardless of what they have done, has a right to privacy. This is not a comfortable position to articulate, but it is the correct one. That right extends to individuals convicted of serious crimes, and yes — legally speaking — even to those who have committed crimes against humanity. We do not support those people. We do not want our system used for illegal purposes. But privacy is a right that exists in law precisely because it cannot be selectively applied based on how much society disapproves of a given individual. Rights are not a reward for good behaviour.

Radiant Technologies hopes that RadiantOS is never used to facilitate harm. We also acknowledge, plainly, that once software leaves our hands, what users do with it is legally out of our control and out of our hands. We will continue to act in good faith, follow the law, and be transparent with our users about everything — including the obligations that governments may impose on us.

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