Installation Steps

Installation takes approximately 10–15 minutes.

Step-by-Step

1. Boot from USB — Press F12, F2, or Del during startup. Select your USB drive from the boot menu.
2. Select "Install Shanios" — Choose the installation option from the boot menu.
3. Keyboard Layout — Always asked, on every edition.
4. Language & Region — This page is skipped on all editions — locale and timezone are configured later by the first-boot Initial Setup wizard instead.
5. Disk Selection — Choose target disk and partitioning scheme (automatic recommended).
6. Encryption (Optional) — Enable LUKS2 full-disk encryption (argon2id key derivation). You'll be asked to enter the passphrase twice to confirm. Recommended for laptops and portable systems.
7. Install — The installer creates Btrfs subvolumes, installs the base system, and configures the bootloader.
8. Reboot — Remove USB drive when prompted and reboot into Shanios.

What the Installer Sets Up

All of the following is completed by the installer (install.sh + configure.sh) before first boot — nothing heavy runs in the background on your first session:

• All Btrfs subvolumes are created: @root, @home, @data, @nix, @cache, @log, @flatpak, @snapd, @waydroid, @containers, @machines, @lxc, @lxd, @libvirt, @qemu, @swap
• The system image is extracted into shanios_base, snapshotted to @blue (read-only), then snapshotted again to @green. The active slot is written to /data/current-slot (blue)
• The Flatpak store is extracted and snapshotted into @flatpak. If Snap seed was included on the ISO, it is extracted into @snapd
• The swapfile is created in @swap using btrfs filesystem mkswapfile, sized to match RAM where the disk allows. If free space is short it is made smaller rather than dropped — never below 1 GiB, and always leaving a 12 GiB reserve for updates — and only below that floor is the step skipped and the system falls back to zram for swap
• Keyboard layout is always configured via chroot; locale, timezone, user account, and autologin are configured the same way, unless deferred to the first-boot wizard (see step 4 above)
• Secure Boot: the MOK signing key is normally already baked into the system image at build time — the installer just verifies the keypair and re-signs the bootloader/kernel with it. Keys are only generated fresh on the spot if they're missing or invalid, which is a fallback path, not the common case. Either way, both UKIs (shanios-blue.efi, shanios-green.efi) are built using dracut --force --uefi and signed with the MOK key, and MOK enrollment is staged automatically so you just confirm it in MokManager on first boot (see First Boot)
• /etc/crypttab is generated with the LUKS UUID and none key field if encryption was chosen
• Firewall rules for KDE Connect and Waydroid are applied via firewall-offline-cmd

On first boot, beesd-setup.service configures the deduplication daemon for the Btrfs volume UUID, then the Initial Setup wizard runs for user-facing personalisation.

Verifying the Installation

After reboot, confirm the install succeeded:

# Check which slot is active
cat /data/current-slot
# @blue (first install always boots into blue)

# Verify Btrfs subvolumes
sudo btrfs subvolume list /
# Should show: @root, @home, @data, @nix, @cache, @log, @flatpak, @snapd, @waydroid, @containers, @machines, @lxc, @lxd, @libvirt, @qemu, @swap

# Check disk usage
df -h /

Troubleshooting

See Also

• System Requirements — hardware and firmware requirements
• First Boot — what happens after installation completes
• Pre-Install Checklist — what to prepare before starting
• Getting Started — download, verify, install walkthrough
• Troubleshooting — general troubleshooting guide