Write the USB stick

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The Pithyx installer comes as one image file (.iso) that you write to a USB stick and start your computer from. The image is for 64-bit x86 computers with UEFI. Download it from the releases on GitHub.

Download

The image is called pithyx-<version>-amd64.iso. Next to it is a checksum file, pithyx-<version>-amd64.iso.sha256. The volume label is PITHYX. The installer only needs the stick for the installation and needs no internet connection.

You need a USB stick that holds the image. Everything on it is erased when you write it.

Check the download

The checksum file contains the SHA-256 hash of the image. Compare the hash of your downloaded file with it. The image itself carries no signature, so the checksum only tells you the download is complete and unchanged, not who made it.

On Linux, in the folder with both files:

sha256sum -c pithyx-<version>-amd64.iso.sha256

On macOS:

shasum -a 256 pithyx-<version>-amd64.iso

On Windows (PowerShell):

Get-FileHash pithyx-<version>-amd64.iso -Algorithm SHA256

On macOS and Windows, compare the printed hash with the one in the .sha256 file by eye.

Write on Windows, macOS and Linux

The image is a hybrid image: write it to the stick as a whole disk image, not as files you copy onto the stick. Any program that writes disk images works. Choose the stick as the target and the .iso file as the source, in raw (DD) mode if the program asks.

On Linux you can use the dd command. Replace /dev/sdX with the device of the stick (check with lsblk):

sudo dd if=pithyx-<version>-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

On Windows and macOS, use a graphical image writer of your choice, or dd on macOS. The stick starts in UEFI mode only; it has no legacy BIOS boot.

The installer is tested in virtual machines (QEMU with KVM and UEFI firmware), with the image attached as a USB stick. Starting it as a virtual CD or on a range of real hardware has not been tested.

When the stick is ready, continue with Firmware and boot.