[2] They are packaged in formats for different virtualization platforms, and two builds for installing onto physical media (to non-virtualized hard disk or USB from a hybrid ISO) or onto the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.

According to one of TurnKey Linux's co-founders, the project was in part inspired by a desire to provide open source alternatives to proprietary virtual appliance vendors that would be aligned with user interests and could engage the community.

[17] Early June 2013 saw a significant change of tack with the version 12.1 update release; built with the new "TKLDev" open build infrastructure.

[18] Later that same month, the Turnkey Linux custom application code was moved to GitHub which also included a tracker for appliances bug reports.

Application software is installed on top of the Core, which typically increases the size of a virtual appliance up to approximately 160 MB.

[26] By downloading and installing the appliance package to the hard drive, it is intended by the developers that administrators would gain an easy method of setting up a dedicated server.