Install NoriOS

NoriOS comes as one image file. Started from a USB stick, it runs entirely from memory: you can look around first, and nothing touches your disk until you choose to install.

1. Write the image to a USB stick

Download the image, then write it to a USB stick of 1 GB or more. Everything on the stick is replaced.

• On Windows or macOS: use balenaEtcher or Rufus, pick the image and the stick, and write.
• On Linux: find the stick with lsblk (the whole stick, like /dev/sdb, not a partition like /dev/sdb1), then:

sudo dd if=norios-0.1.0-installer.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M conv=fsync status=progress

2. Start your PC from the stick

Plug the stick in and restart. While the PC starts, open its boot menu (usually F12, F10, F11 or Esc; it is often shown on screen for a moment) and choose the USB stick. If NoriOS does not start, check that Secure Boot is turned off in your PC's firmware settings.

3. Try it

NoriOS starts with the installer open on its desktop. Choose your language and keyboard, then Try NoriOS to close the installer and look around: open the launcher with the Super key, try Files and Settings. Everything you do lives in memory and is gone when you restart.

4. Install

Open the installer again, or choose Install on its first screen, and go through it:

1. Welcome: your language and keyboard. A field lets you try the keyboard layout.
2. Network: Wi-Fi or a cable. You can skip it.
3. Disk: the disk NoriOS will use. The whole disk is erased. Switch on Advanced to see every step NoriOS will take, written out, before it takes it.
4. Account: your name and password.
5. Summary: what is about to happen, in plain words. Nothing has been written yet.
6. Installing, then Done. Remove the stick and restart.

If your PC starts another system after the install, pick the disk with NoriOS in the boot menu: NoriOS does not add itself to the firmware's boot list yet.

Try it in a virtual machine

On Linux with QEMU and OVMF (UEFI for virtual machines) installed, this starts the image beside an empty 32 GB virtual disk to install onto:

truncate -s 32G nori-disk.img
cp /usr/share/edk2/x64/OVMF_VARS.4m.fd nori-vars.fd
qemu-system-x86_64 -accel kvm -cpu host -machine q35 -smp 4 -m 4G \
  -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly=on,file=/usr/share/edk2/x64/OVMF_CODE.4m.fd \
  -drive if=pflash,format=raw,file=nori-vars.fd \
  -drive if=none,id=stick,file=norios-0.1.0-installer.img,format=raw,readonly=on \
  -device virtio-blk-pci,drive=stick,bootindex=0 \
  -drive if=none,id=disk,file=nori-disk.img,format=raw \
  -device virtio-blk-pci,drive=disk,bootindex=1 \
  -vga std -nic user,model=virtio-net-pci -device qemu-xhci -device usb-tablet

The OVMF files may live elsewhere on your distribution (for example /usr/share/OVMF/). After installing, start it again without the two stick lines to boot the installed system.