← Back to Installing ProteanOS

This guide explains how to use the interactive installer program distributed with prokit, the ProteanOS Development Kit, to install ProteanOS on a PC platform.

It is assumed that you have already built and optionally installed prokit.

Preparation

Make sure you have a computer supported by ProteanOS. If your computer is not supported, you can port ProteanOS to run on it. Currently supported are:

• Lenovo ThinkPad X60, X60s, X60t, T60 (architecture i686-linux-glibc, platform x60)
• Lenovo ThinkPad X200, X200s, X200 Tablet, R400, T400, R500, T500, etc. (architecture i686-linux-glibc, platform x60)
• Libiquity Taurinus X200 and Gluglug Libreboot X200 (architecture i686-linux-glibc, platform x60)

Determine the devices from which your computer can boot, for example an internal SATA drive or a USB mass storage device (e.g. a flash drive).

Pick a storage device on which you want to install ProteanOS and connect it to the computer on which you plan to run the installer. You can either connect the device to a different computer (easiest in the case of a USB flash drive, while an HDD or SSD would require a SATA/PATA-to-USB adapter) or run a live GNU/Linux system on the computer on which you plan to install ProteanOS.

Installation

Decide which "suite" of ProteanOS you wish to install. rel/trunk is a rolling release that receives updates free of known new bugs; it is recommended for regular users. dev/trunk receives direct package uploads and should be used by ProteanOS developers. Replace $suite below with your chosen suite.

If you installed prokit to your system, run:

$ sudo prokit installer-pc -a $arch -p $plat $suite $device

Otherwise, from your prokit build directory, run:

$ sudo ./prokit installer-pc -a $arch -p $plat $suite $device

Replace $arch with the architecture (e.g. i686-linux-glibc), $plat with the platform (e.g. x60), and $device with the device file name (e.g. /dev/sdb). Make sure you've selected the right device; prokit will erase the partition table and write a new file system on the device you specify!