Install LupiOS

About 30 minutes, most of it waiting. Read it once all the way through before you start.

What you need

• A USB stick of 8 GB or more. Everything on it gets erased.
• A 64-bit PC with at least 8 GB of RAM and an SSD with 64 GB or more for LupiOS.
• Internet during setup. Some apps download on first boot.

Keeping Windows? Install LupiOS on its own SSD. That’s by far the safest way: Windows is never touched, and you pick the system in your PC’s boot menu. Before changing anything:

• Back up your files.
• If Windows uses BitLocker, save the BitLocker recovery key (account.microsoft.com/devices/recoverykey). Changing boot settings can make Windows ask for it.

The full checklist, from Fast Startup to the clock: Keeping Windows.

1. Pick your ISO

Your graphics card	ISO
NVIDIA (GeForce, RTX, GTX)	lupios-nvidia.iso
AMD, Intel, or a virtual machine	lupios.iso

On Windows, you can check your graphics card in Task Manager → Performance → GPU.

2. Put it on the USB stick

1. Install Fedora Media Writer (Windows and Mac) or balenaEtcher.
2. Choose “Select .iso file”, pick the LupiOS ISO, pick your USB stick, and write it.

Optional: to check the download isn’t damaged, run this in Windows PowerShell and compare the result with the -CHECKSUM file that came with the ISO: Get-FileHash .\lupios.iso -Algorithm SHA256

3. Boot from the USB stick

1. Plug the stick in and restart.
2. As the PC starts, press the boot menu key, usually F12, F11, F8 or Esc. It depends on the brand: search for your PC or motherboard model and “boot menu key”.
3. Pick the USB stick. If it’s listed twice, pick the one that says UEFI.

Secure Boot can stay on. If the stick won’t boot at all, turn Secure Boot off in the firmware settings, install, then turn it back on after step 5.

4. Install

1. Choose Install lupios 44 (the first entry) and your language.
2. Installation Destination:
   • Pick the disk for LupiOS. Double-check it’s not your Windows disk.
   • Leave storage on Automatic.
   • Tick Encrypt my data and choose a passphrase. You’ll type it at every boot, and there’s no way to recover it if you forget it.
3. The installer doesn’t ask for a user name or password. You create your user on the first start.
4. Click Begin Installation, wait, then Reboot and take the USB stick out.

5. First boot

1. A blue “MOK management” screen may appear. It lets LupiOS’s drivers work with Secure Boot, and it only shows once. Be quick, it has a 10-second timer.

   1. Choose Enroll MOK, then Continue, then Yes.
   2. Type the password universalblue (nothing appears while you type), then choose Reboot.

   If you miss the timer, run ujust enroll-secure-boot-key later and reboot.

2. Type your disk passphrase.

3. KDE asks you to create your user. This first user is the administrator: it can install software and change system settings.

4. LupiOS Welcome opens and walks you through your security level, gaming and the Lab.

6. One restart to finish

About 5 minutes after you start LupiOS, it adds extra kernel hardening by itself, and a “Kernel hardening added” message pops up. Restart once after that message. Then open the terminal (Konsole) and run:

lupi check

You should see ✔ on everything, and a full score if Secure Boot is on.

If something goes wrong

• An update broke something: restart and pick the second entry in the boot menu. That’s the previous version.
• In VirtualBox, the screen is black with only a mouse cursor: VirtualBox’s 3D acceleration can break KDE’s display, especially after an update. Power off the VM, untick Settings → Display → Enable 3D Acceleration, and start it again.
• lupi lab says crun: ptsname: Inappropriate ioctl for device: the lab’s first setup was interrupted. Run podman stop lupi-lab, then lupi lab again and let it finish.
• Anything else: open an issue at https://github.com/vukkz/lupios/issues with a photo of the screen.