{
  "id": 4689692,
  "title": "Former Intel Engineer Who Was One Of The Clear Linux Architects Is Starting A New Distro",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/31/former-intel-engineer-who-was-one-of-the-clear-linux-architects-is",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-08-31T18:30:09.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Phoronix",
    "slug": "phoronix",
    "url": "https://www.phoronix.com/news/The-Ur-Project"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Former Intel engineer and one of the Clear Linux architects, Michael Larabel, is launching a new distribution. The objective of this project is to create a mature Linux Distribution building software stack that enables users and companies to build their own secure distro and share or borrow parts from each other. The threshold for participation and creating packages, or even running one's own repository, is expected to be very low. Users can utilize the distribution to build an embedded OS, a desktop OS with or without atomic updates, containers, or any other desired configuration. Key features include reproducible builds, solid provenance, built-in Rust on both producer and consumer sides, composition as a layer, and the update framework TUF capable of staging large amounts of package changes. Clear Linux OS made certain mistakes, such as making it too difficult for the community to contribute, which hindered healthy software development integration flows and iterative development.",
  "summary": "One of the former Intel engineers who was a Linux OS architect on their legendary Clear Linux distribution and before that also driving their Moblin and MeeGo Linux efforts is starting a new distribution project. This new initiative, named The Ur Project, is highly leveraging Rust and will rely on AI/LLMs in part and aims to incorporate some deisng improvements Clear Linux...",
  "key_points": [
    "Michael Larabel, former Intel engineer and Clear Linux architect, launches new distro.",
    "Distribution aims to enable users and companies to build secure, customizable distros.",
    "Key features include reproducible builds, Rust integration, and TUF update framework."
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}