The aptosid distribution is a desktop-oriented operating system and live CD based on the unstable branch of Debian GNU/Linux. Besides full compatibility with its parent, the distribution also offers a custom kernel with support for a wide variety of modern hardware devices, KDE as the default desktop environment, a rolling release cycle, and compliance with Debian's Free Software guidelines. Aptosid was based on Debian's most modern branch, sid. It includes a manual and a collection of tools and scripts to make desktop administration easier. One of aptosid's more notable features is that unlike most other Linux distributions, it uses a true 'rolling-release-cycle', and thus continues to remain current. Users can update all of the system's packages via the command 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. Through this model, there should not, in theory, ever be a need to overwrite an aptosid system by installing an entirely new version. Other Linux distributions that use the rolling release model include Arch Linux, Sabayon and Linux Mint Debian Edition.