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Deployment on Desktop

A native application for macOS and Linux, with no container runtime. Install steps are in the desktop quickstart; this page is what it is.

What is bundled

Section titled “What is bundled”

The same control plane, console, API and model registry as the container, plus the GGUF engine on every platform and MLX on Apple Silicon.

The tensor engine is not bundled, so the GPU optimization layer and speculative decoding do not apply. On a machine without a supported GPU there was never a tensor engine to use.

Signing

Section titled “Signing”

Both macOS builds are signed with an Apple Developer ID, notarized by Apple and stapled — they open with a double-click, with no security warning, and work offline, because the notarization ticket travels with the file. The disk image contains an Applications shortcut for drag-and-drop.

Linux has no equivalent signing mechanism, so each release carries SHA256SUMS; verify it yourself, taking the checksum file from the release page over HTTPS.

Where things live

Section titled “Where things live”

Under the user’s application-support directory — registry, licence, audit log, per-server logs and the download cache. Back it up if the deployment matters; it carries the cluster identity a licence is bound to.

Models default to a directory under the same root and can be pointed elsewhere.

The console

Section titled “The console”

http://127.0.0.1:30800, bound to the loopback interface. Note this differs from the container’s 8001.

On first run it asks you to create an account. There is no shipped default credential.

The tray

Section titled “The tray”

Open Console, Show Log, Check for Updates…, Quit. No Dock icon and no window by design — it is a background service with a menu, not an app you keep in front of you.

Quitting stops any inference engines it started, so a quit does not leave a model resident.

Headless

Section titled “Headless”

lifeboat-core runs the whole control plane with no desktop environment, which is how to use it on a Linux box with no display. The tray is a separate command and is optional.

Updates

Section titled “Updates”

Check for Updates… compares against the published releases and tells you if a newer one exists. Updating is a download and reinstall; the data directory is untouched, so the registry, servers and licence carry across.

Differences from the container

Section titled “Differences from the container”
Container Desktop
Console port 8001 30800
Tensor engine, optimization layer yes (GPU images) no
MLX no yes, Apple Silicon
Multi-node yes not intended
Install Docker native installer

Sources and references

Section titled “Sources and references”