Installation prepare

The following section will guide you through the steps to prepare all the elements for installing Athena OS.

System Requirements

Athena OS is currently supported on amd64 (x86_64/64-bit) platforms and can be installed as Athena Arch (Arch-based system) or Athena Nix (NixOS-based system).

Athena Arch

The minimum requirements are:

• 20GB hard disk space for installation.
• 2GB RAM.
• A bootable CD-DVD drive or a USB stick.

The recommended hardware specification for a smooth experience are:

• 50 GB of hard disk space, SSD preferred.
• At least 4GB of RAM.
• At least 2 cores.

Athena Nix

The minimum requirements are:

• 30GB hard disk space for installation.
• 4GB RAM + 4GB of swap partition.
• A bootable CD-DVD drive or a USB stick.

The recommended hardware specification for a smooth experience are:

• 50 GB of hard disk space, SSD preferred.
• At least 8GB of RAM.
• At least 2 cores.

Tip

During Athena Nix install, if the system freezes for some minutes (just look the frozen system clock), try to increase resources, for example assign more swap space.

Tip

To install Athena Nix with lower resources, just follow Installing by NixOS guide. This method allows you to install first vanilla NixOS, and after system installation, install Athena Nix over it.

Preparing for the Installation

Before installing Athena OS on your endpoint, you need a set of tasks to prepare.

Download the Image

Download Athena OS as described in Downloading Athena OS chapter.

Prepare Baremetal Installation

Creating a Bootable Athena USB drive

You can use several software for creating a bootable Athena USB drive on Linux or Windows. The USB drive must be atleast 4 GB of size.

Creating a Bootable USB drive on Linux

Balena Etcher

1. Plug your USB drive into your available USB port.
2. Download Balena Etcher. If you download the .AppImage file, assign executable permission by chmod +x balenaEtcher-<version>-<arch>.AppImage and run it by ./balenaEtcher-<version>-<arch>.AppImage.
3. Click Flash from file and select the Athena ISO image file.
4. Click Select target and choose the label of your plugged USB drive.
5. Click Flash for starting the process.

   Note

   You could be asked for administration privileges, so insert credentials and press Authenticate.

At the end of flash process you will get a Flash Completed! message. Close Balena Etcher and reboot the system for booting into Athena OS.

Note

Be sure to have the USB drive boot priority over other drives in the BIOS.

Command Line Interface

1. Plug your USB drive into your available USB port.
2. Detect the drive device label of the plugged USB drive by sudo fdisk -l (i.e., it could be /dev/sdX where X is a, b, and so on).
3. Run sudo dd bs=4M if=athena-<file-version>-<arch>.iso of=/dev/sdX status=progress oflag=sync (replace /dev/sdX by the drive device label of your plugged USB drive).

dd command` will now copy the contents of the ISO file over to your USB driive. Once done, you’re ready to use the USB drive as Athena OS installation media. Reboot the system for booting into Athena OS.

Note

Be sure to have the USB drive boot priority over other drives in the BIOS.

Creating a Bootable USB drive on Windows

Balena Etcher

1. Plug your USB drive into your available USB port.
2. Download Balena Etcher and install it, or run the portable version.
3. Click Flash from file and select the Athena ISO image file.
4. Click Select target and choose the label of your plugged USB drive.
5. Click Flash for starting the process.

   Note

   You could be asked for administration privileges, so insert credentials and press Authenticate.

At the end of flash process you will get a Flash Completed! message. Close Balena Etcher and reboot the system for booting into Athena OS.

Note

Be sure to have the USB drive boot priority over other drives in the BIOS.

Rufus

1. Plug your USB drive into your available USB port.
2. Download Rufus and install it, or run the portable version.
3. On Device, click on the dropdown list and select your plugged USB drive.
4. On Boot selection, click on SELECT and locate the Athena ISO image file.
5. Click START.

6. When the ISOHybrid image detected window appears, select what you wish. DD Image mode provides more compatibility and it should be used in case of issues during boot.

At the end of flash process you will get READY status. Close Rufus and reboot the system for booting into Athena OS.

Note

Be sure to have the USB drive boot priority over other drives in the BIOS.

Prepare Virtual Machine Installation

If you want to deploy Athena OS as virtual machine, refers to the related documentation.

Installing as guest in VMware

Installing as guest in VirtualBox

Installing as guest in Hyper-V

Installing as guest in QEMU/KVM

Installing as guest in Parallels

Installing as guest in UTM