Garden Linux

Garden Linux is a Debian GNU/Linux derivate that aims to provide small, auditable Linux images for most cloud providers (e.g. AWS, Azure, GCP etc.) and bare-metal machines. Garden Linux is the best Linux for Gardener nodes. Garden Linux provides great possibilities for customizing that is made by a highly customizable feature set to fit your needs.

!! Important !!

Starting with the major version 2017 the versioning scheme has been changed to a semver compliant one comprised of a 3 numerical segment identifier (major.minor.patch). The "old" 2017.0 is now 2017.0.0

Releases

Find all information about our currently maintained and latest releases at our Maintained Releases documentation page.

Documentation

For Tutorials, How-Tos and Explanations around Gardenlinux, its structure and supporting tools, visit our Documentation.

To jump directly into a fresh local Garden Linux VM, check out this section for first boot tutorials using KVM or LIME with one of our currently supported releases.

Community

To stay up-to-date with recent news about Gardenlinux, subscribe to our mailing list:

https://lists.neonephos.org/g/gardenlinux-discussion

For updates and statements regarding security issues, we have a security mailing list for you:

https://lists.neonephos.org/g/gardenlinux-security

For embargoed security related topics, this list is for you:

https://lists.neonephos.org/g/gardenlinux-security-embargo

Contributing

We welcome your contributions to Gardenlinux or any supporting projects.

To find out more, visit our Contributor Documentation.

Licensing

Copyright 2025 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company and GardenLinux contributors. See our LICENSE for copyright and license information. Detailed information including third-party components and their licensing/copyright information is available via the REUSE tool.