Handbook

Installing Zen Linux

From the downloaded image to a new system, with or without a network.

Before you start

  • The machine: check what it needs. The installer refuses a machine without UEFI, or with too little disk or memory.
  • The image: download it, check its SHA-256, and write it to a USB stick. The download page shows how.
  • Your data: the installer partitions the disk you choose. Back up what’s on it first.
  • Secure Boot: switch it off in the firmware’s settings. The image boots with Limine and an installed system with systemd-boot, and neither is signed.

Boot the stick

Start the machine from the stick: most firmware has a key for a boot menu at power-on, often F12, F11 or Esc. The image’s boot menu comes up, then a live KDE Plasma session with the installer open. Nothing is written to the disk until the installer does it.

The installer

The installer asks everything first and installs at the end:

  1. Welcome: it checks the machine. Without UEFI, enough disk or enough memory it doesn’t go on.
  2. Edition: Desktop or Server; the download page describes both. On a machine with NVIDIA graphics, the Desktop comes with NVIDIA’s driver by itself.
  3. Language and keyboard: the keyboard layout reaches Plasma, the console and the boot as well.
  4. Disk: where Zen Linux goes, and how the disk is partitioned.
  5. User: your name, user name and password. The installer gives root no password.

Then it installs:

  • it partitions the disk, and copies the edition you chose from the image: a whole system, built and set up when the image was made;
  • it makes the copy this machine’s system: language, keyboard, your user, the network and the clock;
  • with a network, it brings the new system up to date with zenpac (zenpac update and zenpac upgrade). Without one, or if that fails, the new system is as new as the image, and you update it later;
  • it installs the boot loader, systemd-boot.

At the end, restart and take out the stick. The installer keeps its log in /var/log/calamares-install.log on the new system.

The first start

  • Desktop: it starts into the graphical login, with NetworkManager for the network.
  • Server: it starts into the console, with SSH running, and DHCP on every wired interface (systemd-networkd).

Next: the first steps.