FOUNDRYLINUX
Forged for game makers, level designers, and digital artists of every kind — an Ubuntu LTS desktop with the tools of the trade struck into it from the first boot.
Struck into the iron.
We package the retro, game-dev, reverse-engineering, and authoring tools Ubuntu doesn’t ship — and push the ones worth shipping upstream into Debian. Built for Ubuntu 26.04. Resigned, rebuilt, and re-tested on every push.
World Foundry GDK
Cross-platform engine and 10 CLI authoring tools — cdpack, iffcomp, iffdump, levcomp, lvldump, oaddump, oas2oad, prep, textile, blender-asset-finder-cli. Plus the engine build-deps (build-essential, cmake, libx11-dev, libgl) via worldfoundry-development.
Blender
Blender preconfigured with the WorldFoundry add-ons (editor exporter + level importer/exporter) and the blender-asset-finder.
Retro toolkit
Retro-porting and reverse-engineering toolchain. MAME, Ghidra, radare2, binwalk, and the 6502 / Z80 / m68k / 6800-family assemblers and disassemblers — the bench for getting old code running again.
Emulators
MAME plus a four-way split — light console (mednafen, fceux, stella), heavy console (dolphin-emu, pcsx2, yuzu, retroarch), vintage home computers (dosbox-x, hatari, fs-uae, openmsx), and multiverse vintage (vice, atari800).
Audio & trackers
Audio production stack — Ardour, Audacity, LMMS, Rosegarden, Hydrogen, Qtractor, Mixxx — and the tracker suite (MilkyTracker, Schism, Furnace, openmpt123).
Games & reimplementations
Free games (0 A.D., SuperTuxKart, Widelands, Warzone 2100, OpenTTD, Freeciv, Freedoom, Hedgewars) and FOSS engine reimplementations (VCMI, OpenRCT2, Fheroes2, Exult, Sauerbraten — bring your own data).
Pick your
path.
Five ways in — ordered from least to most disruptive to your current setup. Coming from Windows? Start at Virtual machine or Dual boot.
Already on 26.04? Add the repo — no reinstall.
non-destructive① Add the Foundry archive curl -fsSL https://foundrylinux.org/setup.sh | bash ② Install sudo apt install foundry-anvil # or pick a different edition: sudo apt install foundry-sprite # + heavy graphics + audio sudo apt install foundry-atelier # + everything (~15 GB)
Any host — Linux, macOS, or Windows via WSL.
distrobox create -i ghcr.io/foundry-linux/devbox:26.04isolatedSandboxed — VirtualBox, VMware, or QEMU. Your OS unchanged.
- VirtualBox
- VMware
- QEMU / KVM
Keep Windows. Boot from USB — the installer detects Windows and offers to shrink its partition automatically.
foundry-anvil-latest-amd64.iso → alongside WindowsadditiveReplace everything. Full branded Kubuntu 26.04 desktop from first boot — bare metal or alongside Windows.
Keeping Windows? Boot from USB, and the installer will offer to shrink your Windows partition automatically — no manual partitioning required. Windows dual-boot guide
Signed by the smith.
Every package in the Foundry archive is signed with our long-term maintainer key. Verify the fingerprint before adding the keyring to a production machine.
F0D9 7E1A · C5B2 4A87 · 6E3F 218D · 9C04 BB31System requirements
Three
marks.
One distribution, three nested casts. Atelier pulls in Sprite, which pulls in Anvil. Pick the largest one whose tools you actually want struck in from first boot.
Anvil
Base edition — full WorldFoundry stack, retro toolkit, light emulators, game frameworks, image tools. The Distrobox devbox image installs this and nothing else.
Sprite
Anvil + heavy graphics and audio production: Krita, GIMP, Inkscape, MyPaint, mtPaint, GrafX2, Tux Paint, the DAW stack, and trackers.
Atelier
Sprite + everything else: ROM-bundled vintage emulators, heavy console emulators, FOSS engine reimplementations, free games, mobile development, cross-repo dev deps. Around 10 GB on top of bare Ubuntu.
Find the
source.
Everything is in the open — source, issues, packages, and the signed apt repo. No forums, no wiki, no separate account.