Getting Started

Creating a Bootable USB

What you need

  • A USB stick of at least 8 GB. Everything on it will be erased.
  • A RakuOS ISO from the download page. There are ISOs for KDE Plasma, GNOME, COSMIC, niri, Hyprland and a minimal edition.
  • The ISO's .sha256 checksum file, to check the download.

Check the download

On Linux, in the folder with both files:

sha256sum rakuos-*.iso
cat rakuos-*.sha256

The two long checksums must be the same. If they aren't, download the ISO again. On Windows, certutil -hashfile <file>.iso SHA256 in a terminal gives the checksum.

Write the ISO

On Linux, use Fedora Media Writer or dd. With dd, check the device name with lsblk first: writing to the wrong device destroys its data.

sudo dd if=rakuos.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

On Windows or macOS, use balenaEtcher, or Rufus on Windows (choose "DD image mode" if Rufus asks). Pick the ISO, pick the USB stick, and start.

When it's done, eject the stick. It's ready to boot.