System Requirements

Hardware Requirements

| Component | Minimum | Recommended | |-----------|---------|-------------| | Processor | x86_64 dual-core with VT-x/AMD-V | x86_64 quad-core or better | | Memory | 4 GB RAM | 8 GB RAM or more | | Storage | 32 GB (dual-image architecture) | 64 GB or more | | Firmware | UEFI (required) | UEFI with TPM 2.0 | | Installation Media | 8 GB USB drive | 16 GB USB 3.0 drive |

Why 32GB minimum? Shanios maintains two complete system images (@blue and @green) for atomic updates. However, Btrfs Copy-on-Write shares unchanged data between them, resulting in only ~18% overhead compared to traditional systems.

Disk Partition Layout

Shanios uses a simple two-partition layout — there are no separate /home, /var, or swap partitions. All subvolumes live within the single Btrfs partition.

| Partition | Filesystem | Size | Purpose | |-----------|-----------|------|---------| | EFI System Partition (ESP) | FAT32 | 1 GB | Bootloader, UKI images — mounted at /boot/efi | | Root partition | Btrfs (or LUKS2 → Btrfs) | Remainder of disk | All system subvolumes (@blue, @green, @home, @data, etc.) |

When full-disk encryption is chosen, the Btrfs partition is wrapped in a LUKS2 container (/dev/mapper/shani_root). The ESP is never encrypted — only the root partition is.

Firmware Requirements

• UEFI required — legacy BIOS is not supported
• Secure Boot — optional but recommended; Shanios ships its own MOK key
• TPM 2.0 — optional; required for automatic LUKS2 unlock without passphrase

Not Supported

• Legacy BIOS / CSM mode
• 32-bit (x86) CPUs
• Dual-boot configurations (not recommended — other OSes may break the bootloader)