Install on Real Hardware

Arch Silverblue ships a minimal interactive installer: plain prompts and numbered menus on the console — no GUI, no dialog boxes, nothing preselected beyond sane defaults. It asks everything upfront, shows a summary, and only touches the disk after you type ERASE.

1. Get the ISO

Download the latest ISO and checksums from GitHub Releases, then verify:

sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS

(You can also build it yourself: make build-iso → iso/output/*.iso. CI builds on every push to main are available as workflow artifacts.)

2. Write it to a USB stick

# ALL DATA ON THE STICK IS LOST. Replace /dev/sdX with your USB device.
cp path/to/silverblue-*.iso /dev/sdX && sync

dd if=... of=/dev/sdX bs=4M oflag=sync works too, as do tools like Ventoy or GNOME Disks.

3. Boot it — UEFI only

Boot the stick in UEFI mode. Secure Boot is not supported — disable it in firmware setup. If the installer reports “booted in BIOS mode”, switch your firmware from Legacy/CSM to UEFI.

4. Run the installer

Log in lands you in a root shell. Start the installer:

silverblue-install

It checks UEFI mode and network connectivity first (installation pacstraps from the Arch mirrors — for Wi-Fi, bring the link up with iwctl before/when prompted, Ethernet with DHCP just works), then asks, in order:

Prompt	Notes	Default
Target disk	Numbered menu; the live USB itself is excluded	first disk
Hostname		silverblue
Timezone	e.g. Europe/Amsterdam	UTC
Locale	validated against glibc’s list	en_US.UTF-8
Console keymap	empty keeps the kernel default	empty
Bootloader	systemd-boot (primary, CI-validated) or grub	systemd-boot
CPU microcode	detected from /proc/cpuinfo (intel-ucode/amd-ucode)	yes
linux-firmware	needed on most real hardware; skip only in VMs	yes
Network stack	none / systemd-networkd (DHCP, ships with systemd) / NetworkManager	systemd-networkd
Root password	required — the installed system has no passwordless accounts	—
Admin user	optional; created in wheel with a sudoers drop-in (installs sudo)	none

After the summary, type ERASE to proceed. The installer partitions the disk (512 MB ESP + Btrfs), creates the initial root-<timestamp> and @home subvolumes, pacstraps the base system plus your choices, installs the update engine and health-check units, sets up the bootloader, and offers a reboot. The resulting on-disk layout is exactly the one update-flow.md describes.

If a step fails, the installer reports the failing line, unmounts the target, and leaves you in the live shell — nothing is half-mounted and the log is on your screen.

5. First boot

Log in as root (or your admin user) and try the update flow:

silverblue-update --dry-run   # show the plan
silverblue-update             # stage an updated root for the next boot

The first boot is automatically health-checked and marked good by silverblue-mark-good.service; a failed boot of a staged update rolls back to the previous root on its own.

Troubleshooting

• “booted in BIOS mode” — enable UEFI (disable CSM/Legacy) in firmware setup; the ISO and the installed system are UEFI-only.
• “no outbound network” — Ethernet: plug in and retry (DHCP is automatic on the live ISO). Wi-Fi: iwctl station wlan0 connect <SSID>, then retry at the prompt.
• Disk not listed — the installer only offers whole disks (not partitions) and hides the live USB, optical, loop, and zram devices. Check lsblk -d.
• Disk size — keep at least ~12 GB; the ESP holds up to 3 snapshots × ~80–120 MB of kernels, the Btrfs pool holds up to 3 root snapshots.

Scope — deliberately not included

No LUKS encryption, no swap setup, no partitioning schemes beyond ESP + single Btrfs pool, no GUI, no package-set choices beyond the prompts above. Arch Silverblue stays unopinionated: everything else is a normal pacman command away after the first boot.