chainguard-desktop-workstation-pc

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for chainguard-desktop-workstation-pc

Bare-metal x86_64 bootc-managed Chainguard Desktop Workstation OS for laptops and mini PCs.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/chainguard-desktop-workstation-pc:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The chainguard-desktop-workstation-pc container image is a Chainguard-native bootc OS image, not a repackaged application. It is a rolling graphical developer-workstation root filesystem for bare-metal x86_64 laptops and mini PCs (NUC-class devices, framework laptops, and similar), published as an OCI container and delivered to running hosts via atomic bootc upgrade on top of composefs. It is the bare-metal sibling of the chainguard-desktop-workstation-qemu image (which targets KVM guests) and the chainguard-desktop-workstation-rpi image (which targets Raspberry Pi 5).

Scope of this image is the container: the composefs root that the target device runs from once bootstrapped. The one-time bootstrap disk.raw (with OVMF-loadable ESP, kernel, and initramfs) is produced separately by the companion wolfi-vm pipeline that consumes this image and is then flashed to the device's internal storage (NVMe/SATA/USB) with dd or similar.

• Architecture: amd64 only. The linux-desktop-7.2-bootc kernel is an x86_64 build tuned for real laptop / mini-PC hardware (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPU drivers).
• Init: /sbin/init (systemd).
• Boot chain: UEFI firmware (from the device's motherboard) → systemd-boot → Linux (via linux-desktop-7.2-bootc). No U-Boot or Raspberry Pi VideoCore firmware.
• Root filesystem: composefs-backed ostree deployment. The image declares /boot, /sysroot, /sysroot/ostree, and /ostree so bootc install --composefs-backend can populate them at bootstrap time.
• Container annotation: containers.bootc="1" — required by the bootc container linter to identify the image as a bootc-managed OS.

What is in the Image

Desktop-workstation profile — the bare-metal x86_64 sibling of the chainguard-desktop-workstation-qemu image with the same payload:

• Kernel + boot chain: linux-desktop-7.2-bootc (x86_64 desktop kernel with a matched dracut-composefs initramfs) and systemd-boot (BLS entry management). UEFI firmware on the target device handles first-stage boot directly.
• Bootc runtime: bootc-system.
• Desktop workstation payload: the chainguard-desktop-workstation meta-package pulls in the full Wayland + niri compositor session, kitty terminal, chromium, greetd / regreet login, pipewire audio, fonts, rootless podman, plus the Chainguard developer toolkit (cg, chainctl, claude, git, jq, ripgrep, tmux, vim, and friends). This is the same payload the qemu and rpi siblings ship.
• Nested-VM helper: qemu-system-x86_64 for local iteration on the amd64 host.

Getting Started

This image is not run directly with docker run on a workstation — it is the root filesystem for a bootc-managed x86_64 laptop or mini PC. Typical lifecycle:

1. Bootstrap (one-off, on a workstation): build the disk.raw with the companion wolfi-vm pipeline, which pulls this image and runs bootc install to-filesystem --composefs-backend against it.

2. Flash and boot: write disk.raw to the target device's internal storage (NVMe/SATA/USB) — for example with sudo dd if=disk.raw of=/dev/nvme0n1 bs=4M status=progress from a live USB — then boot the device. UEFI firmware hands control to systemd-boot, which loads the composefs deployment of this image and drops into a greetd / regreet login on tty1 that hands off to a niri Wayland session.

3. Upgrade (ongoing, on the running host): pick up new digests of this image with

   sudo bootc upgrade
   sudo systemctl reboot

   No re-flashing of the internal storage is required after the initial bootstrap.

To inspect the image contents from a workstation you can still pull and mount it read-only:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/chainguard-desktop-workstation-pc:latest
docker run --rm -it --entrypoint /bin/sh \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/chainguard-desktop-workstation-pc:latest

Documentation and Resources

• bootc project
• composefs
• niri Wayland compositor

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.