Legal

Terms of Service

Last updated 18 September 2026.

The short version. SynapseOS is free software you may use, study, change and share under the GPL. It comes with no warranty of any kind. Nobody is operating a service on your behalf, and nobody owes you support. Back up your data before you give an operating system a disk.

What these terms cover

These terms apply to the website at soslinux.org and to the SynapseOS software distributed from it and from the project's GitHub repository. By downloading, installing or using SynapseOS you accept them.

SynapseOS is a personal free-software project by Velle Sinclair. It is not a company and does not sell anything.

Licence

SynapseOS is licensed GPL-2.0-or-later; the kernel module is GPL-2.0-only. The licence text ships with the software and governs your rights to use, modify and redistribute it. Where these terms and the GPL disagree about what you may do with the code, the GPL wins — nothing here removes a freedom the licence grants you.

SynapseOS also bundles third-party components under their own licences, including artwork carried verbatim under CC BY-SA. Those licences continue to apply to those components.

Before you install it

SynapseOS is at version 1.0 and actively developed, as a rolling release. It installs a bootloader, repartitions disks, and replaces parts of the system layer. Used carelessly it can make a machine unbootable or destroy data.

Try it in a virtual machine before you give it real hardware, and keep backups of anything you cannot lose. You are responsible for the machines you install it on.

No warranty

The software is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the software is with you.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the author is not liable for any claim, damages or other liability — including lost data, lost profits, or business interruption — arising from the software or its use. This is the disclaimer the GPL itself carries, restated so it is not a surprise.

No service is being provided

There is no SynapseOS account, no hosted service, and no server that your installation depends on. Consequently there is no uptime commitment, no service level, and nothing that can be suspended or terminated.

The website, the ISO downloads and the git repository are offered as a courtesy and may change, move or go offline without notice.

Support

Support is voluntary. Issues and questions are welcome at the project's issue tracker, and the wiki documents the system in detail. Neither is a guarantee that a problem will be answered or fixed.

Third-party services

SynapseOS can connect to services that other people run — Google Calendar, Microsoft 365, CalDAV servers, the Arch Linux mirrors, the AUR, GitHub. Your use of each of those is governed by that provider's terms and privacy policy, not by these terms. The project is not responsible for their behaviour, their availability, or what they do with data you send them.

What SynapseOS itself does when you connect such a service is described in the Privacy Policy.

Use of this website

The site is static and public. Do not attempt to disrupt it or to use it to distribute anything harmful. Content on the site — text, screenshots and the SynapseOS mark — remains the property of its authors; the software's licence covers the code, not the branding.

Trademarks

“Linux” is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Arch Linux, Google, Google Calendar and Microsoft 365 are trademarks of their respective owners. SynapseOS is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any of them; those names appear only to describe what the software works with.

Changes

These terms may change. The date at the top changes with them, and the previous wording remains in the site's public git history. Continuing to use SynapseOS after a change means accepting the revised terms.

Contact

Questions can be raised at github.com/velle999/SYNAPSE/issues.