Linux Kodachi

Reader supplied reviews for Linux Kodachi Average rating 7.5 from 50 review(s) What are your thoughts on Linux Kodachi? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 9.0.18.277.66.24.13.7 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 9.0.1 Rating: 4 Date: 2026-08-21 Country: Türkiye Votes: 2 Kodachi 9.0.1 is a distribution that stands out quite noticeably from previous versions in terms of both visual design and ease of use. In particular, bringing privacy and security tools together within a single desktop environment makes these tools more accessible even to users without a very high level of technical expertise. The customized appearance of the XFCE-based desktop also makes the distribution feel somewhat different and more modern compared with traditional Debian-based systems. However, since privacy and security are at the core of Kodachi's claims, it is natural to expect a higher level of transparency in these areas. From my perspective, this is also where one of the most important question marks surrounding version 9.0.1 arises. Kodachi 9.0.1 places considerable emphasis on the current kodachi.cloud infrastructure. Installation, updates, certain online services, and various system components are connected to this infrastructure. This does not, by itself, constitute a security vulnerability or indicate malicious intent. However, it creates an important element of trust for users of a privacy-focused operating system. Users should be able to clearly understand, as much as reasonably possible, what information the operating system communicates to external servers while it is running, for what purposes that information is processed, and how long it is retained. Another important issue is the project's approach to open source. It is no longer easy to describe all components of Kodachi 9.0.1 as open source. In the official Kodachi documentation, the licenses of some important components are explicitly listed as “Proprietary.” For example, components such as ai-admin, integrity-check, health-control, and online-auth are listed as proprietary. This is particularly significant for security-oriented distributions. Users have to place a certain degree of trust in the operating system's security mechanisms, and it is not possible to independently audit the behavior of a closed-source component. Of course, proprietary software is not automatically insecure. However, in a system designed around security and privacy, making the source code and data-processing mechanisms as auditable as possible would significantly increase user confidence. Overall, I do not consider Kodachi 9.0.1 to be an unsuccessful distribution. On the contrary, it is an interesting project in terms of ease of use, the privacy tools it provides out of the box, and its overall user experience. However, given the distribution's security and privacy claims, its reliance on the kodachi.cloud infrastructure, the need for more detailed explanations of its online data-processing practices, and the fact that some important components are proprietary are significant drawbacks in my view. Therefore, rather than viewing Kodachi 9.0.1 as “a completely open-source privacy distribution that does not require users to trust any centralized infrastructure,” it would be more accurate to describe it as a system that provides users with a wide range of privacy and security tools out of the box, while still relying on closed-source software for some critical components and on its own online infrastructure. It is also important to correct points that could otherwise be misunderstood: we do not have sufficient evidence to claim that Kodachi definitely collects or stores user data. The actual criticism is the need for greater transparency and independent auditability in this regard. In my opinion, that is precisely the biggest point of discussion surrounding Kodachi 9.0.1. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 9.0.1 Rating: 10 Date: 2026-03-25 Country: United States Votes: 41 As this review is written, all other reviews seem to do with Kodachi 8.27 or earlier; I would agree with them about 8.27, and even the dev at his Github or Discord will and does say 8.27 is EOL years ago, don't use it. I tried to construct a really good summary of the very new Kodachi 9 Desktop Edition; I wouldn't know how to condense it to make sense or not leave out important notes. This new Kodachi 9 is based on Debian 13, and most of its numerous features are tied together with dashboard et al written in Rust. It is well-featured and includes a few AI capabilities, with the best way to see what they are and understand them being to visit the well and copiously documented wiki at the dev's Kodachi 9 Github listings. I guess I would summarize the meaning of all the bells and whistles you can discover is that they are not intended to give you some sort of "James Bond" invisibility and secrecy from Interpol or something. Rather, Kodachi 9 to me seems to aim for providing its own shield against common hacks, on device and while "on the wire". It affords some ability to work in AI locally, in a way that some AI agent doesn't just usurp what you're doing "in the name of training AI". In that spirit, I think it's another good option for just people who want to be secure on the user end without high cost or very advanced computer sciences knowledge. My personal like is that Kodachi 9 actually can install and run tirdad-dkms. True, every reboot you have to re-enable it, but every time you do lsmod it will prove it is actually running. Kodachi 9 makes tirdad available system-wide, which generally increases encryption entropy. In an age where quantum is just around the corner in ability to unravel AES 256, increasing entropy in AES 256 for key security re blockchain and other transactions is nice to have. You could get some more entropy available with someone else's AI clients running around your os, but at the risk of copying and retaining for its "boss" in the LLM-training cloud. In all, I was very satisfied with Kodachi 9.01 desktop being what it promises, and it satisfies my particular needs. My only caution would be that it runs best if installed on at least a Haswell-era CPU and at least 32GB RAM. I hope it works as well for others as it did for me, but if not, so far the dev's Discord is very responsive to support/bugs, and also if not, people can post their own reviews to the contrary. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 8.27 Rating: 1 Date: 2024-04-09 Votes: 16 Quite frankly, at this moment using this distribution is a bad idea. Outdated software, lots of unnecessary modifications and bloat, not even mentioning maintenance-related questions. Meanwhile you can use this in a virtualized environment, it still doesn't provide better security, or privacy for that matter, than other anonimity-focused distributions. It compares itself to Tails, but Tails is meant to be minimalistic, in a sense, and reliable, which Kodachi isn't. Now, comparing distributions is a controversial topic, although comparing Kodachi to others, i.e. Qubes, Tails, Whonix, doesn't show any real benefits. So, if one really wants to browse privately and securely Kodachi isn't the best option for sure. Additionally, it relies on custom scripts for some of its functionality, which I find a questionable decision, amongst other ones: - dnscrypt with tor/vpn/etc (dnscrypt doesn't really provide anonimity, it only encrypts your DNS queries) - tor with vpn even (VPN doesn't increase your anonimity if you use TOR, it might actually compromise it) - providing their own centralized vpn service (at least don't use it) But let's be fair here. All things considered, it does provide a relatively good experience and tooling. So, is it a good distribution for privacy purposes? Not really. Complexity brings lots of points of failure for your private browsing, it also depends on your VPN (if you're planning to use that). Even if it is still a fine attempt at making a customized solution, all the configuration on top of it make you an easier target for fingerprinting. Is it good for security then? For 2000's - perhaps. For modern usage - not quite. I wouldn't have said so if it at least had up-to-date packages. But modern standards demand modern methods. If you objectively look at the distribution it doesn't do anything more for security than the average small distribution, one might even say less. If you look at real privacy and security focused operating systems like QubeOS or GrapheneOS that, despite making lots of custom changes to the base, make a gigantic amount of effort to make their software secure, you'll see the difference. If you want actual strong security on the desktop take a look at the aforementioned QubeOS. If you want anonimity, then Whonix and Tails are great choices. Please do note that this is just a look at the technical side of the distribution and some things may be subjective. Also, this was fun to play around with :) Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 50 reader reviews of Linux Kodachi...