What you need
- A 64-bit PC (x86-64). UEFI is the usual case; legacy BIOS is handled only for an installation that takes the whole disk.
- At least 24 GiB of room for etyOS. The installer refuses less.
- A USB stick of 2 GB or more.
- A backup of anything you would miss. This is an early release.
Write the image to a stick
Get the image from the download section and check it against
SHA256SUMS:
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMSThen write it. /dev/sdX is the stick, not a partition on it, and everything
on it is lost:
sudo dd if=etyos-0.2.6-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=syncThe image is a hybrid ISO: the same file boots from a USB stick or a DVD, by UEFI or legacy BIOS.
Start from the stick
Pick the stick in the firmware’s boot menu (often F12, F8 or Esc at power-on).
Secure Boot can stay on. The stick starts the way Debian’s own images do: through shim, signed by Microsoft, then Debian’s signed GRUB and kernel. (Images before 0.2.6 needed Secure Boot turned off.)
The menu offers “Install etyOS” and the same with safe graphics, for a machine whose screen stays black with the first.
The installer
The live system starts straight into the installer. It asks one thing per step: language and region, the disk, how much room, drivers, who you are. Then it shows exactly what will be done and waits for a yes. Nothing on a disk changes before that step.
Where the system can go
- Erase the disk: a new partition table, an EFI partition, the rest for etyOS.
- Next to Windows: into free room, or, when there is not enough, the Windows partition is made smaller first. The existing EFI partition is used, Windows’ loader stays where it is, and the startup menu gets an entry for it.
What it refuses, and why
| It says no when | Because |
|---|---|
| The disk holds the running system or anything mounted | It would be writing under itself. |
| There is less than 24 GiB of room | The system would not fit with room to work. |
| Windows would be left with under 20 GiB of free room | Windows would stop being usable. |
| Windows is encrypted with BitLocker and would have to shrink | An encrypted partition cannot be resized from outside. Turn BitLocker off in Windows first. |
The reason is shown next to the button that cannot be pressed.
Drivers and Secure Boot
The installer looks at the hardware and offers what it asks for: the NVIDIA driver, Broadcom Wi-Fi, Intel and Realtek firmware.
With Secure Boot on, a driver built on the machine (NVIDIA, Broadcom) is signed with the computer’s own key, and the firmware has to be told once to trust it. At the first start a blue screen says Press any key to perform MOK management: press a key within ten seconds, choose Enroll MOK, then Continue and Yes, type the password of the account you created (the screen knows only the English keyboard; nothing shows while you type), and choose Reboot. The installer’s last page shows the screen and the steps. If the moment is missed, the computer starts without the driver; open Drivers, which offers to ask again.
After the restart
The login screen asks for the password you chose. A short welcome comes up once, and then the desktop: see First steps.
Trying it without a spare machine
In a virtual machine: any hypervisor that boots a UEFI ISO will do. Without a virtual GPU the desktop is drawn by the processor, so it runs without blur and with less motion; that is the system adapting, not a fault.