PLATFORM & APPS

More than a compositor.

Workspace isolation, local AI, a native IDE, a composited browser, studio-grade audio and hardware-accelerated media — all built in, all zero JNI.

THE PLATFORM

Subsystems that usually stay third-party.

Sabas OS ships the subsystems that usually stay third-party add-ons — isolated workspaces, a local AI that knows your machine, a native IDE, and a browser composited by the OS itself.

SABAS-OS-WORKSPACE
Real workspace isolation

Every workspace gets its own OverlayFS upper layer and its own PID, mount, IPC, UTS, network, user and cgroup namespaces — created with unshare(2) called directly through Java FFM, no native helper binary. Apps share a read-only base but can't see each other's writes, processes or network.

OverlayFS · 7 namespace types · unshare(2) / setns(2)
SABAS-OS-AI
AI grounded in your machine

Local-first through native Ollama — no cloud round-trip by default. An LSM-tree index (full-text, vector and temporal) grounds answers in your actual files and history. An agentic loop acts through MCP tools behind a security gate that redacts PII before anything crosses a boundary.

MCP host + server · local Ollama · tamper-evident audit log
SABAS-OS-IDE
GPU-accelerated IDE, built in

A native, Java-first editor with LSP completion, DAP debugging and hot code reload — with the AI subsystem wired in directly, no IPC boundary. It's a Wayland client like any other app, rendered through the same Vulkan pipeline as the desktop.

LSP · DAP · hot reload · zero-IPC AI integration
SABAS-OS-BROWSER
Chromium, composited natively

A CEF-based browser rendered off-screen and handed to the compositor as a DMA-BUF — zero-copy, verified live on real GPU hardware — instead of managing its own window and swap chain outside Sabas's pipeline.

CEF · OnAcceleratedPaint → DMA-BUF · opt-in GPU path
SABAS-OS-AUDIO · ~90% COMPLETE
Studio-grade spatial audio, zero JNI

A full mastering-grade DSP chain plus a license-free immersive ambisonic engine — the same 3D sound field decodes to binaural headphones or a 5.1/7.1/7.1.4 speaker rig, with measured-HRTF convolution from SOFA datasets. No Dolby, no DTS licensing — first-order ambisonics and Panama FFM bindings straight to PipeWire.

FOA ambisonics · SOFA HRTF · 7.1.4 w/ height · RNNoise · EBU R128 AGC
SIGNAL CHAIN
→ RNNoise (voice denoising)
→ Bass / treble EQ
→ Multiband compressor
→ Loudness AGC (EBU R128)
→ Ambisonic spatializer
→ Lookahead limiter
SABAS-OS-MEDIA
Hardware-accelerated media, zero JNI

A full media pipeline built on Panama FFM bindings to FFmpeg 7 — hardware-accelerated decode and encode via VA-API and NVENC, a frame-accurate seek engine, and a subtitle renderer that composites directly into the Vulkan pipeline. Video frames are handed to the compositor as DMA-BUF — zero-copy from the decoder to the display.

FFmpeg 7 · VA-API · NVENC · DMA-BUF zero-copy · frame-accurate seek · ASS/SRT subtitles
DECODE PIPELINE
→ Demux (FFmpeg AVFormat)
→ HW decode (VA-API / NVENC)
→ Frame → DMA-BUF export
→ Vulkan import (dma_buf)
→ Subtitle composite
→ Compositor scanout (zero-copy)
WHY PURE JAVA

The whole graphics stack, one runtime.

Zero native glue

Built on Java 25's Panama FFM and the Vector API. No JNI bridges, no C shims, no wlroots dependency anywhere in the stack.

Direct Vulkan + DRM/KMS

The compositor drives Vulkan and DRM atomic mode-setting itself — a flip-driven frame loop with no intermediate rendering library between the JVM and the GPU.

Zero-copy scanout

Six selectable output paths (A-F) route rendered frames to the display, picking zero-copy whenever the GPU and scanout hardware allow it.

GC-free hot path

Frame execution, damage tracking and buffer reads are pooled and allocation-free — a GC pause never shows up as a dropped frame.

Three-JVM supervision

A minimal-heap supervisor JVM spawns compositor and shell as separate, capability-scoped processes and restarts either on crash.

Multi-GPU aware

OutputPathSelector scores same-GPU and cross-GPU paths per output at hotplug time — laptop iGPU and external dGPU handled automatically.

BUILT IN

A working desktop, out of the box.

Eight native apps ship with the OS — same render tree as the shell, drawn straight through the compositor's Vulkan pipeline. No JavaFX, no Swing, no Electron.

Settings

Wi-Fi, display, sound, power, about.

Files

Cloud storage, high-performance index, multi-pane browsing.

cloud indexed fast
Terminal

Full shell emulator, GPU-rendered glyphs.

System Monitor

Live CPU, memory and process view from /proc.

Software Center

Install, remove and update packages — auto-detects dnf or apt.

Vault

Encrypted secrets store. AES-256-GCM at rest, session-locked.

AES-256-GCM
Notes

Markdown-first, full-text search, optional Vault encryption.

Markdown Vault-encrypted
Trash

Recoverable file deletion — restore or permanently empty.