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What is arkOS?

arkOS is an open-source platform for securely self-hosting your online life. It is designed to help its users take control of their personal data, and to make running a server as easy as using a desktop computer.

arkOS is an operating system and software stack designed to easily host your own website, webapps, email, "cloud", social networks and more, all within arm's reach. It does this by interfacing with existing software and allowing the user to easily update and change settings with a graphical interface. No more need to depend on external cloud services, which can be insecure "walled gardens" that require you to give up control over your data. No more need to rely on proprietary boxes in your house that do fifty different tiny things but not all of them at once. And no more need for volumes of books on system administration, and years of time spent learning the tips-and-tricks. arkOS makes running a server just as easy as running your own desktop PC - no need to touch the command line!

It is far more than just an operating system. arkOS will have several different components that come together to make a seamless self-hosting experience possible, no matter what device you are using it on. Each of these components will work with each other out-of-the-box, allowing you to host your websites, email, social networking accounts, cloud services, and many other things from your arkOS node. Chief among these is the graphical server management application called Genesis.

Genesis is an application that allows you to add, remove, modify and customize the different facets of your arkOS node. From here, you can easily install plugins and server apps, upload files, manage your cloud, update your system and much more. You can monitor the health of your system and get alerts if a problem occurs. Genesis can even back up your information and store it in case you make a mistake.

All source code for arkOS applications is licensed under the GNU GPLv3, and all available on Github.

arkOS in the Media

What can it do right now?

Genesis, and the arkOS project as a whole, has been in development for several months now. It is currently considered in Alpha phase, and runs well on the Raspberry Pi microcomputer, its first focused platform. Despite this, you can already do a good deal of things with it:

• Host your own website using Wordpress, Jekyll, or with your own HTML/PHP. Install these sites and have your system configure them automatically without you having to lift a finger
• Bring your "cloud" home by running an ownCloud instance and syncing your files, photos, music, calendars, contacts and more
• Manage security for these services with an integrated automatic firewall and defense system
• Generate SSL certificates quickly and easily, and assign them to your services with the press of a button
• Install and remove apps or plugins just like you would on your iPhone, with a handy Applications pane that tracks down dependencies for you
• Manage your server with a variety of additional tools, such as Network Connections

All of this is done in an easy and intuitive way using Genesis.

Why Crowdfunding?

arkOS is launching a crowdfunding campaign to support its continued development over the course of the next year. It has been a labour of love up to this point, relying on the developer's income for all of its infrastructure and free time as a side project. As the project grows, it will require more resources if it is to be successful. In order to prioritize development and devote more attention to a stable and secure release, I am seeking to fund one year of full-time development, as well as investments in additional infrastructure and support for the project. Once the one year of full-time development is over, the project should be able to sustain itself through donations and the provision of services that help users with the self-hosting process.

The best way to ensure that arkOS succeeds is to give it the time and attention it needs in order to go from rough-around-the-edges alpha to solid and secure self-hosting solution. That is what this crowdfunding campaign is designed to do.

On the Agenda

Here are the things that your contribution will help achieve for arkOS in the coming months.

Efficiency, security and design

arkOS' central utility is called Genesis. Genesis is an application that interfaces with software running on your arkOS node and allows you to modify it with a easy-to-use and intuitive graphical interface. You have instant access to your decentralized web presence, hosted from home and kept off the "cloud." Simply install the right plugins for the features you want in Genesis and it takes care of the rest. Genesis uses an extensible framework, meaning additional tools can be made to work with it, and installed/removed in a modular fashion. Genesis is a work-in-progress, originally forked from a prior project Ajenti.

In keeping with the project's core values, Genesis is intended to be easy to use and to feature an intuitive design. This is what sets it apart from most server managers out there. Most of them allow you to run your server graphically, true, but they don't actually make the experience easier, using common language and visual styles across the board that enable non-system administrators to host their own services. Genesis changes this.

Genesis is the core of arkOS, and it needs a lot of work before it will be stable enough for everyone to use and rely on. We have already had a good showing from individuals willing to bugtest features, but the aim is to make Genesis a tool that is stable by design. This will require more time spent in shoring up its core frameworks and features, making them more efficient on low-performance devices, and providing security verification.

Get more information about Genesis, or check out its documentation.

The true centre of your self-hosted Internet

As it stands in its alpha version, arkOS already allows you to do some pretty cool things. You can, for example, run a Wordpress blog from home, play with a Jekyll static site, or sync your calendars and files with an ownCloud instance. Generating SSL certificates and assigning them to these services is super easy. Managing access controls via the built-in firewall and defense rules with fail2ban integration is hot off the presses.

Your contribution will help take self-hosting with arkOS to the next level. Here is a list of things on the agenda to add over the course of the next year:

• Host your calendars/contacts and sync them effortlessly across devices (using Radicale)
• Host your own "Dropbox"-like clone, accessing your files from anywhere
• Host your own email on your custom domain
• Get started with decentralized social networking, using Diaspora, Pump.IO, StatusNet, or Tent
• Host your own XMPP chat server on your custom domain, or run a private Cryptocat server to talk with your friends
• Share your arkOS services as Tor Hidden Services
• Register a domain from inside Genesis, instantly setting it up to work with your running services, or use a dynamic DNS address for the same purposes (see below)
• Integration with RetroShare, Tahoe-LAFS, CJDNS and much much more

This is just the tip of the iceberg - there are many more features planned in addition to these with the aim of truly making self-hosting a snap.

Branching out with arkOS CONNECT

Ask anyone and they will tell you: self-hosting is not easy. arkOS intends to change that, but there are many obstacles that exist these days that one simply cannot fix without some outside help. This is where arkOS CONNECT comes in.

arkOS CONNECT is the name given to a suite of planned and actively-developed tools that will allow users to self-host their data but still rely on certain services for availability and stability concerns.

The first tool is called DelugeDNS, which will provision dynamic DNS addresses and automatically set this up within Genesis at the user's behest. DelugeDNS will also be able to proxy requests to different ports on the user's device, should the required ports not be accessible normally. A working prototype is already being tweaked and will be improved over the next six months.

Another tool in the works is called Drydock. Drydock will be a simple backup sync service only for arkOS-powered servers. Backups can be made transparently in the background on your server, to ensure that your data is safe in the event of power outages, data corruption, hungry pets or any other problem your self-hosted server might encounter. All data will be encrypted locally on the device before being stored on central servers, available for restore anytime (provided you have the encryption key you used to first save it).

More tools will follow after that. All of these services will be entirely optional, and will be offered to help the self-hosting process be as easy and secure as it can be while still providing for decent reliability. Your contributions will go toward making these exciting new options a reality.

Running on anything

One of arkOS' goals is to make self-hosting accessible, no matter what you are running. If you have an old desktop PC collecting dust in your closet, but don't have access to a Raspberry Pi, you should be able to refurbish that PC and run arkOS on it without any troubles.

We are hoping to extend support first to armv7, then to armv5, then to full-sized platforms like x86/64. In order to achieve this, new repositories and management systems need to be devised in order to provide for the different architectures. This takes time, effort and network capacity to get off the ground. Your contributions will help in making these new repositories a reality.

About Me

My name is Jacob Cook. I'm a 23-year-old software developer and student based out of Montréal, Québec, Canada. I am arkOS' project leader and main developer. Decentralization and distributed services are causes I'm passionate about. My work on arkOS brings these interests together with my knack for Linux system administration (my day job) and a growing interest in the fields of software development and security.

In addition to myself, there are other contributors to arkOS who have worked on core functionality, plugins and new tools, who are based all over the world.

I hope that you find this project and its goals worthy of your hard-earned donations. Please leave a comment via the Questions tab above if you have any, I appreciate constructive criticism and am always willing to engage with interested parties.

Open Project with an Open Philosophy

arkOS isn't merely an idea on paper: viable alpha versions of many of its tools are already available for download and testing. When you back this campaign, know that your contribution rests with an established project that is growing by leaps and bounds.

At its core, arkOS is a community effort to push forward the technical capability of self-hosting and decentralization of services. It is not a business, it will never operate on a for-profit basis, and will always encourage and value input/contributions from any interested user. arkOS source code is licensed under the GNU GPLv3, and all available on Github.

The project has many different forms of contact that are very actively updated with project news and updates of all shapes and sizes. I frequently post development updates to let people know the things I'm working on on the forums, even when no software is being released or major news comes up. You can expect constant and timely updates and responses to inquiries, just like I've always done, should you decide to back this campaign.

Thank you for your support!

Campaign Ended

Reward Levels

All contributions of $2 or more get the donor's name (or appropriate pseudonym) on a special Donors page of the website.

• USD
• BTC
• EUR
• GBP

Currency rates subject to change. Contributions are made in either USD or BTC.

Campaign Ended