Intel has quietly pulled the plug on Clear Linux OS, officially ending support for the once-promising Linux distribution that it had backed for nearly a decade. Effective immediately, the company says it will no longer provide any updates, security patches, or maintenance for the operating system. In a final blow, the Clear Linux OS GitHub repository is now archived in read-only mode.
The move was announced with little fanfare, and for users still relying on Clear Linux OS, there’s no sugarcoating it… you need to move on. Intel is urging everyone to migrate to an actively maintained Linux distribution as soon as possible to avoid running unpatched software.
Clear Linux OS launched with the goal of being a high-performance, cloud-focused distribution optimized specifically for Intel hardware. Over time, it became popular among developers and performance enthusiasts for its aggressive compiler optimizations, fast boot times, and stateless architecture. Despite these technical advantages, it never achieved mainstream adoption, and updates to the distro had slowed in recent years.
In its farewell message, Intel tried to soften the blow by saying it “remains deeply invested in the Linux ecosystem,” adding that the company continues to support and contribute to open-source projects and other Linux distros. But that’s little consolation for those who believed in Clear Linux OS and invested time into deploying or developing for it.
There was no detailed explanation provided for the abrupt termination, nor was a roadmap offered for transition. It’s not clear whether Intel might revive the project in a new form down the road, but for now, the message is simple: it’s over.
The Clear Linux OS community (from developers to curious tinkerers) helped build a distribution that pushed performance boundaries and explored bold design ideas. But those contributions now live in a frozen repository, a digital tombstone marking the end of Intel’s Linux experiment.
For anyone still running Clear Linux OS, this isn’t something to put off. With no more updates coming, it’s time to backup your data and start planning a move to something more stable, such as Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, or one of the countless other active Linux projects still thriving.
If nothing else, let Clear Linux OS serve as a reminder that even corporate-backed Linux distributions can vanish without notice.
Would you trust another Intel-backed distro after this?
