Straight answers.
In the GNU/Linux world it names the Gentoo/Nix/Bedrock family: distributions organized around choice and composition of components rather than a fixed opinionated stack. Keru is the anti-opinionated member — its meta is choosing not to choose for you. Details.
No. Keru is a Linux distribution. Its freedom lives above the kernel — init, libc, filesystem, and Linux kernel variants. It won't boot a BSD or illumos kernel; that's not the claim and not on the roadmap.
Gentoo is source-based and highly configurable, but it still picks most of your stack and calls it defaults. Keru extends the same impulse to its logical end: no default init, no default libc, no default filesystem. And its manager, Kama, is a ~225-line shell script — no resolver, no database.
Bedrock stitches multiple distributions together (apt + pacman + xbps side by side). Keru doesn't compose distros — it composes components, one init/libc/fs/kernel/tool at a time, built from source.
The ISO carries only the installer. Your entire system is fetched and compiled during install, so a connection is a hard gate. It's the price of "power to choose anything" — nothing is prebuilt. More.
Stable on the combinations Keru offers you — that's the promise. If you pick something past the proven edge, the installer warns and lets you proceed. You're never blocked. The full stance.
Real. The repos are live, AGPL-3.0, and the road to 0.1 is documented. It's at the "design is public, nothing has booted hardware yet" stage — which is exactly what 0.1 is for.
ける (Keru) and ける・けいとうてき (keru keitō-teki) — "craft your system." Kama (窯) means "kiln." The naming is deliberate atmosphere, not branding gimmick. More.
Because a package manager should be legible, and shell is the most legible thing that can run a build recipe. The real cost of your build is the compiler, not the manager — so the manager gets to be simple.
The first release, 0.1, ships as a bootable ISO. Follow the road to 0.1.
Contact channels — issues first, then the mailing list.