A sealed, sovereign operating system whose code, configuration, and hardening are produced by agents under human architectural supervision. Its role: to carry the ProductivIA platform onto real hardware, as client or as server, by eliminating everything that could stand in the way — unnecessary attack surface, telemetry, imposed updates, drift over time.
Both distributions expose strictly the same agentic capabilities to the platform. Agents work there exactly the same way, with the same power. The difference is not in how it is used — it is in the system underneath.
Boréal for Windows adds the agentic layer to an existing Windows install. The usual environment is kept, but so is everything that comes with it: constant telemetry streams to the vendor, updates scheduled without asking, background services, a wide attack surface, gradual drift of the machine, dependence on a foreign vendor's decisions.
Boréal OS takes the opposite path. It is an operating system designed for this precise mission: no outbound telemetry, no imposed updates, no monitoring sent elsewhere, boot in about ten seconds, minimal memory footprint, security through minimalism, and above all a configuration reinforced through multiple agentic passes. There is no Linux system to administer here: what is delivered is a system prepared, sealed, and verified for this use, able to stay a client workstation or become a ProductivIA server.
Yes. Boréal OS is both a client OS and a server OS. By default, it starts as a sovereign client: a full-screen workstation for using the ProductivIA platform with local host capabilities. From the interface, server mode can be activated; the machine then becomes a complete ProductivIA server, able to serve the platform on-site.
If the server has a GPU compatible with 16 GB of VRAM, it can also serve Matania locally. Otherwise, the ProductivIA server still works, but Matania inference is routed to remote models or to ProductivIA models available elsewhere.
A classic Linux OS requires a competent human to tune system parameters, read logs, apply patches, harden security. Boréal OS is built under a different discipline: no human touches the code, a human supervises the architecture and the outcome, and agents carry out the passes of generation, simplification, optimization, and security.
This approach does not replace human architectural judgment; it concentrates it where it matters. Agents run repeated cycles of correction and hardening, and the result is then validated. Knowing Linux is no longer necessary to live with a Linux system. The complexity has been absorbed by a controlled agentic method.
Because Boréal OS does not ship a GNOME, KDE, or XFCE desktop to administer. That does not mean an application layer is missing: ProductivIA provides the workspace, the applications, the documents, the business tools, and the workflows, in a single web surface.
This architecture is deliberate. The display is 100% web, highly optimized, generated and refined by AI for efficiency. Boréal OS focuses on what the OS must guarantee — display, network, devices, security, persistence, supervision — while ProductivIA provides the user experience.
The agentic layer observes and adjusts the system continuously, under human architectural supervision. It balances internal kernel parameters according to the actual usage profile — memory pressure, disk load, system-call frequency — rather than relying on a fixed configuration. It reviews service logs, catching restart anomalies and failing code paths before they become visible to the user.
It also watches over the machine's network posture: unexpected outbound traffic, unauthorized origins knocking at the platform's interface. It arbitrates user profile persistence between RAM and disk, and defragments local databases when needed. At regular intervals, it checks the integrity of the file system, installed packages, and firmware.
Any x86-64 PC built since roughly 2012 is very likely compatible for client mode, provided its firmware is UEFI (no legacy BIOS / CSM), Secure Boot can be disabled, and it has at least 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage.
To install Matania in residence — a local LLM model that can tune and personalize the OS, in addition to providing local inference — a compatible GPU is required: recent NVIDIA (driver 580 included), Intel iGPU Skylake and later, Intel Arc, AMD RDNA. To serve Matania in server mode, a GPU with 16 GB of VRAM is the target. Without a compatible GPU, the OS remains fully functional and inference is delegated to the platform's models.
Apple Silicon, Mac T2, ARM64, and RISC-V are not supported.
Matania is ProductivIA's LLM model — see matania.ca. On Boréal OS, and on a machine equipped with a compatible GPU, it can be installed in residence. This is optional: Boréal OS works without it. When present, it plays two roles:
When a task exceeds the resident model's capabilities — video production, high-fidelity generation, very long reasoning — Matania switches to orchestrator mode and delegates to one of 12 partner providers or to ProductivIA's own models. In server mode and with 16 GB of VRAM, Matania can also be served locally to the ProductivIA platform. Coherence is vertical: the same model can serve agents inside the platform and personalize the local OS.
Boréal OS and Boréal for Windows are available as direct downloads. Everything is on the Download page: the USB Maker utility that prepares the Boréal OS installation stick (and fetches the image itself), the native Windows installer, verification fingerprints, and release notes.
To use the complete agentic ecosystem — Assistant, Factory, specialized applications, local execution of Matania on a machine equipped with a compatible GPU — an active ProductivIA account is required. The ProductivIA platform is currently available by invitation only. Before downloading and installing Boréal OS, this account should be in place; to request access, use the forms at the bottom of the page or on the About page.
To reach the hosted ProductivIA platform, yes. To boot Boréal OS, display the interface, keep the profile, install the system, supervise locally, and serve ProductivIA in server mode, no. A connection remains necessary for any external services chosen for use, and for remote inference whenever Matania is not served locally.
Note: outside an already configured local server mode, accessing the platform requires an active ProductivIA account. Registration is currently by invitation.
This is one of the concrete effects of the architectural choice: whatever can stay inside the machine or the local network does stay inside the machine or the local network.
Under Boréal OS: no system telemetry, no external crash reporting, no silent updates of third-party components. The browser that serves as the display environment itself starts in a restrictive posture that disables all reporting functions back to its own servers. The only data that leaves is whatever the platform itself initiates when it needs an external service — and even that share drops sharply once Matania in residence takes over inference locally.
Under Boréal for Windows: the agentic capabilities are identical and the platform's policies apply the same way, but underneath, Windows keeps emitting its own telemetry traffic, its updates, its license checks. This is inherent to Windows and cannot be changed.
The browser serving as the platform's display environment is launched with a deliberately restrictive posture. Every function aimed at its vendor's servers is switched off: profile synchronization, silent component updates, crash reports, domain reliability logging, third-party anti-phishing checks, usage-based suggestions.
Modern capabilities that do not serve the platform — automatic translation, external media routing, embedded machine-learning models, ad segmentation — are also removed. What remains active is strictly what the agentic experience needs to function; everything else is disabled to reduce surface, drift, and outbound traffic.
Yes, entirely. The installer copies the system image onto the target disk and cleanly writes a new boot entry into the motherboard firmware. There is no official dual-boot mode — the image takes over the whole disk. That completeness is part of the guarantee against drift: nothing old remains that could interfere.
No. No component of Boréal OS updates itself, and that is intentional. When a new version of the image is available, it is offered inside the ProductivIA workspace. It is applied whenever convenient, by re-flashing. The running OS is never interrupted without consent, and there are no patches silently piling up between versions.
This discipline has a welcome side effect: every Boréal OS machine in a fleet, on a given version, is strictly identical. Which makes support and diagnostics immediately scriptable.
No. Both distributions expose to the platform strictly the same functional surface: screen capture, file system access, shell and keyboard control, audio, Wi-Fi, camera, microphone, web sandboxes, temporary opening of an administration door — all aligned word for word on both sides.
Consequence: whatever an agent can do under Boréal for Windows, it does identically under Boréal OS, and vice versa. The choice between the two is not about the application contract — it is about the system carrying it (telemetry, sobriety, hardening, server capability, local inference).
No, by default. The remote administration door (SSH) is closed and stays off until someone requests it be opened. When a legitimate need arises — assisted troubleshooting, for example — it can be activated on request for a set duration, capped at a few hours, after which it closes itself.
This is the reverse of the usual posture for Linux server systems: a door is not left open "just in case" — it is opened for the necessary duration, on explicit authorization.
Two levels of supervision are possible, depending on what needs to be observed.
By default, nothing leaves the machines. This is the strictest configuration, recommended for sensitive institutions. Supervision then happens through physical visits or through one-off, on-request opening of the remote administration door.
By choice, opt-in local supervision: each machine exposes, on the internal network, a token-protected access point from which an internal supervision tool can read its state. Everything stays inside the perimeter — no signal leaves the network.
When local supervision is activated, each machine exposes an internal, token-protected access point, reachable only from the local network. Three families of interaction are possible.
First, liveness checks: is the machine responding, at what version, for how long. Then, a detailed state: system metrics, latest boot log, service health, persistent profile size, state of agentic controls. Finally, sending targeted actions: restart, forced profile sync, reading a specific log, temporarily opening the remote administration door.
In parallel, the full set of the machine's operation logs — display, browser, file access, audio, security, client-side and platform-side errors, installation, persistence, and local inference if Matania is in residence — is kept on the machine's disk and can be reviewed on demand.
The conceptual technical documentation — system architecture, service surface, host capabilities exposed to the platform, parity between the two distributions, server mode, local inference — is on the Technical page. The presentation of the platform running on Boréal OS is on the Platform page. For any other request, see the About page or write to info@productivia.ca.