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First Boot

Installation 2026-04-01

First Boot Configuration

Plymouth BGRT Boot Theme

Shanios uses the Plymouth BGRT boot theme. Plymouth provides a smooth graphical boot experience, suppressing kernel and systemd messages from the screen. The BGRT (Boot Graphics Resource Table) theme reads the manufacturer's logo directly from the UEFI firmware and displays it during boot — providing a seamless transition from firmware to OS.

If LUKS2 full-disk encryption is enabled, Plymouth presents the passphrase prompt over the boot animation. With TPM2 auto-unlock enrolled, even this prompt is skipped and the disk unlocks silently.

Initial Setup Wizard

After first deployment completes, the Initial Setup wizard guides you through:

  • Creating your user account and setting a password
  • Configuring network connections (Wi-Fi, wired)
  • Setting language, locale, and keyboard layout
  • Setting privacy preferences
  • Enabling location services (optional)
  • Customising appearance settings

The wizard runs automatically. If you skip it, re-run with gnome-initial-setup (GNOME) or from System Settings → Welcome (KDE).

After the Wizard — Recommended First Steps

  • Flathub is pre-configured. No flatpak remote-add needed — open GNOME Software or KDE Discover and browse apps immediately.
  • Nix channel: Nix is pre-installed and running. Add a channel before installing packages:
  nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable nixpkgs
  nix-channel --update
  • TPM2 enrollment (if you enabled encryption): Enroll your LUKS key into TPM2 so the disk unlocks automatically at boot — no passphrase prompt. See the TPM2 Enrollment section.
  • Waydroid (Android apps): Run sudo waydroid-helper init for automatic setup. Firewall rules are already configured. See the Android section.
  • Secure Boot: If your BIOS supports it, enroll the MOK key and enable Secure Boot. See the Secure Boot section.
  • Check current slot: Run cat /data/current-slot to confirm whether you booted into @blue or @green.

OEM & Fleet Deployment

Shanios is designed for OEM and fleet use. Every machine imaging from the same signed ISO will boot into an identical, verified state. The Initial Setup wizard runs on first user login per machine, so user-specific personalisation is captured without requiring per-device pre-configuration.

  • Rollback never requires reimaging — the previous OS slot is always in the boot menu
  • The boot-counting pipeline detects boot failures and automatically reverts the slot before the user sees an error
  • All user-facing changes (/etc customisations, systemd units, SSH keys, service configs) are in the @data OverlayFS and survive every update and rollback without reimaging
  • passim (local content sharing daemon) broadcasts available fwupd firmware payloads via mDNS — machines on the same LAN avoid downloading the same firmware repeatedly