Installation

Boot the USB stick. The live session starts straight into the desktop of your edition (Hyprland or niri, with DankMaterialShell or Noctalia), so you can check your hardware (screen, Wi-Fi, sound) before you install.

Start the installer from the desktop. It's Calamares, set up for Wayland, with its steps as tabs along the top.

Installing in a virtual machine

Use QEMU/KVM (virt-manager) with a virtio graphics card and 3D acceleration turned on. VirtualBox has problems with the desktop shell; see Known Issues: VirtualBox.

The steps

1. Welcome: language, plus a check of memory and disk space.
2. Location: region and time zone.
3. Keyboard: the layout. The live session uses us,be; pick your own here.
4. Partitions: erase a whole disk, or partition by hand.
   • File system: ext4 by default; btrfs and xfs are also available.
   • Swap: none by default. You can choose a small swap file, or swap at least the size of your RAM if you want hibernation.
5. Bootloader: GRUB (default, the safe choice) or systemd-boot.
6. Users: your name, user name, password and computer name.
7. Summary: check everything, then install.

When it's done, reboot and remove the USB stick. Continue with First Boot.