Hey all !
I have been using Linux-based operating systems for years, and I have also spent a long time with mixed reality headsets. Right now, I use a Meta Quest 3, and for a while I have been experimenting with the idea of using it as a partial replacement for a laptop. Surprisingly, the experience has been smoother than I expected. Even though I still feel the need to carry a laptop with me, mostly as a fallback for things like sideloading apps through ADB, the overall experience has been genuinely promising. It has made me feel that this kind of technology has real potential to become a serious alternative to traditional laptops. If headsets become lighter, more comfortable, and more socially wearable, I could even imagine them one day competing with smartphones for certain everyday uses.
The main issue, though, is Horizon OS. It is not completely terrible, but it often feels underdeveloped in ways that are hard to ignore. There are so many areas where the system feels lazy, unfinished, or unnecessarily limited. The ecosystem is also extremely closed. Outside of sideloading, there is very little freedom to do anything meaningful beyond the boundaries Meta has decided to set. That means the whole experience is constantly shaped by the company’s decisions, priorities, and inconsistencies, which is frustrating when the hardware itself feels like it could support something much more ambitious and open.
Because of that, I have been thinking for a long time about the idea of an open source XR operating system built on Linux. I find the concept incredibly exciting. A platform like that could open the door to a much richer ecosystem, more transparency, more user control, and potentially far better long-term innovation than what we currently get from locked-down corporate systems. In theory, if such an operating system could eventually support Linux applications directly, it could turn XR devices into genuinely flexible computing platforms rather than highly restricted consumer gadgets.
Of course, I am fully aware that this would be an enormous technical challenge. Building any operating system is already difficult, and an XR OS would require an entirely different level of complexity. It would need to handle hand tracking, spatial interaction, window placement in 3D space, performance constraints, hardware compatibility, input systems, and countless other issues that most developers, myself included, are not really equipped to solve alone. If I am not even capable of building a simple operating system from scratch, it is hard to imagine taking on something this advanced. Still, even with all those obstacles, I cannot help thinking that the idea is worth taking seriously.
To me, the bigger point is that XR hardware feels like it is ahead of the software. The devices are already good enough to hint at a different future for personal computing, but the operating systems holding them together still feel immature, restrictive, and too dependent on corporate control. That is why the idea of a Linux-based open source XR OS keeps coming back to me. It may be difficult, maybe even unrealistic in the near term, but if it ever became viable, I really think it could be something special.
Here are a few resources I found while searching for this that I find inspiring :
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