Installing JARVIS OS

The fastest way to run JARVIS OS is the pre-built ISO from the Download page, which always shows the latest GitHub release — including its SHA-512 checksum whenever the release publishes one (as a .sha512/SHA512SUMS asset or in the release notes). Verify the ISO against it before installing.

1. Boot from USB

Flash the ISO to a USB drive using dd, Ventoy, or Balena Etcher, then boot from it — you’ll land in the live environment.

sudo dd if=jarvisos-*.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

2. Live environment

The live ISO boots to a text console: root auto-login on TTY1, where the installer launches automatically. No display manager runs in the live environment — KDE Plasma 6 comes up on the installed system, not the live session.

3. Install to disk

The jarvis-install TUI installer (bash + dialog) launches automatically on TTY1 and walks you through a guided installation — partitioning, user setup, and bootloader configuration included.

The installer works but post-install configuration is still being stabilized — see Troubleshooting if something doesn’t come up correctly after first boot.

4. Virtual machine

JARVIS OS runs well in VirtualBox or QEMU/KVM. Allocate at least 4 GB RAM and 20 GB disk for comfortable usage with local LLM inference.

qemu-system-x86_64 -m 4G -smp 4 -cdrom jarvisos-*.iso

Prefer to build it yourself?

See The Build Pipeline to produce your own ISO from source instead of using the pre-built release.

Changelog — corrected claims

2026-07-22:

  • Download-page checksum claim corrected: the page shows the latest GitHub release but does not display a SHA-512 checksum (the checksum block in src/pages/download.astro is hidden and never populated by fetchRelease()); readers are now directed to the checksum published with the release on GitHub.
  • “The Seven-Script Build Pipeline” link retitled to “The Build Pipeline” to match the target page’s actual title and its nine-script table (which includes 03b-build-kernel.sh).
  • Installer and live-environment sections corrected: Calamares was removed from the build — the live ISO boots to root auto-login on TTY1 where the jarvis-install TUI installer launches automatically (no live desktop session; Plasma runs on the installed system). See iso-build-scripts/05-bake-installer.sh in the jarvisos repo.