melon 0.5.2 “Esfahan” · 19 October 2026

Download melon

Pick a file, write it to a USB stick, boot it. The desktop ISO is a live session and installer in one, so you can try melon before you install it. Builds are test releases for now.

melon desktopx86_64 · 626,405,376 bytes (about 626 MB)

KDE Plasma on Wayland, live session and graphical installer. melon-desktop-20261019-x86_64.iso
SHA-256 2b717d6fd52d30a559e771d2f3090641441dd18121cae57824c15551f3b933e8
Download
melon consolex86_64 · 248,393,728 bytes (about 248 MB)

No desktop, with a quick text installer. melon-20261019-x86_64.iso
SHA-256 f786203ad897d934c9dd044573101aad9d1c0abfde0cf009f21c6691cbc0cd32
Download
melon 32-bit desktopi686 · LXQt · test build · 632,825,856 bytes (about 633 MB)

LXQt on Wayland for old netbooks and 32-bit laptops, live session and graphical installer. Tested in QEMU only so far. melon-desktop-20261007-i686.iso
SHA-256 4854ffad6b51f9c86e94874c6f6a7d7fc11c4a91578a20801a6cfd4c1d423b9b also from GitHub
Download
melon 32-bit consolei686 · test build · 378,738,688 bytes (about 379 MB)

No desktop, for 32-bit machines, with the quick text installer. Tested in QEMU only so far. melon-20261007-i686.iso
SHA-256 d0501153f56181675b59c6c267feb2bf5b24fb5f331448d520daf05ec1c50f86 also from GitHub
Download

Most of these files are downloaded from SourceForge; the rest are on GitHub for now, and every file is also there. The checksum is the same wherever you get a file. The checksums are also in SHA256SUMS (melon 0.5.2), SHA256SUMS (i686-20261007).

Check it

A download can break on the way, and a checksum tells you whether yours is whole. Compare the result with the SHA-256 above.

# Linux and macOS
sha256sum melon-desktop-20261019-x86_64.iso
# or, with SHA256SUMS next to the files
sha256sum -c --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS

# Windows (PowerShell)
Get-FileHash melon-desktop-20261019-x86_64.iso -Algorithm SHA256

Write it to a USB stick

Use Rufus, balenaEtcher or Ventoy, or on Linux:

# replace sdX with your stick, and check with lsblk first: dd overwrites it
doas dd if=melon-desktop-20261019-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

Keeping Windows? Shrink it first and leave at least 20 GB free: the install steps. Older releases are on the releases page.