Before the speed question comes a simpler one - what exactly is this thing? A theme, a fork, a scam, or a real system? The answer is a clean two-layer story.
Anduin OS confuses people at first sight: the screen says Windows 11, the engine room says Ubuntu. This page explains what the system really is - who makes it, what it is built on, how software installs, and the honest line between a clever project and a Microsoft product.
Every question about Anduin OS becomes simple once you separate the two layers. The top layer is presentation: a GNOME desktop reshaped to behave like Windows 11 - taskbar in the center, a Start-style app menu, familiar right-click places. The bottom layer is Ubuntu: the kernel, the drivers, the package base and the software catalogue of the world's most used desktop Linux.
That is why the project can honestly tell users to search Ask Ubuntu for solutions - under the coat, an Anduin OS problem is almost always an Ubuntu problem with an Ubuntu answer.
The creator, Anduin Xue, is a software engineer at Microsoft who built Anduin OS as a personal project in his spare time, initially for his own use, and published it for free. The project today runs under his Aiursoft banner and is funded by user donations, as the official site states openly.
Two honest conclusions follow. First, a man who works inside Microsoft understands exactly what Windows users expect from a desktop - the polish shows it. Second, this is not a Microsoft product. Microsoft does not ship it, support it or guarantee it. Anyone presenting Anduin OS as "Microsoft's Linux" is stretching the truth.
Graphical apps come mainly through Flatpak - sandboxed packages that stay tidy and permission-controlled - while the classic Ubuntu route of apt remains available for system software. Recent builds deliberately avoid shipping Snap by default, a choice many users prefer. A graphical software center makes installing common apps a search-and-click job, no terminal required for daily use.
The practical benefit of the Ubuntu base: if a program says "works on Ubuntu", it will almost certainly work here - the same cannot be said for small, from-scratch distros.
Anduin OS is released under the GPL-v3 open-source licence: free to use, free to share, source code open to inspect. Releases follow Ubuntu's long-term support (LTS) rhythm, which means a version is built to be a stable daily system for years, not a six-month experiment. For a home user leaving Windows behind, that combination - familiar face, boring-stable base, zero cost - is the entire appeal, stated honestly.
The full install and first look - the Windows-style desktop on the Ubuntu base, shown on a real machine.
▶️ Watch Full VideoIt is more than a downloadable theme but honest people can call it a customised Ubuntu - the desktop is heavily reshaped with its own menu, taskbar behaviour and settings, while the base system, packages and drivers are Ubuntu. That combination is exactly its strength: familiar on top, proven underneath.
No. Its creator Anduin Xue works at Microsoft as a software engineer, but Anduin OS is his personal side project under his Aiursoft banner, funded by donations. Microsoft does not ship, support or guarantee it.
Almost always, yes. The project itself directs users to Ask Ubuntu because Anduin OS issues and Ubuntu issues have the same solutions in nearly all cases, thanks to the shared package base.