Automated Installation

Essentially, we’ll use ros-installer to automate the installation process from a Live ISO to the machine using the unsquashfs method and some other related techniques during the process.

Note

Currently, only offline installation is supported, and there are no plans to switch the installation process to online for the following reasons:

• Online installation can be quite risky if the network encounters problems during the installation process, such as installing a package, as restarting the process would be very inconvenient.
• The online installation process is not compatible with the original design of this distribution (RengeOS).
• Maintaining other packages and infrastructure using online methods would be quite expensive for me :(

Boot into Live ISO

• First, we need to plug in the bootable USB drive containing the ISO file. Then, depending on your computer’s hardware manufacturer, access the boot menu and boot from that USB drive.

• Then you will see the boot menu will look like this (UEFI). For Legacy BIOS, it will display similarly but with a slightly different interface.

Tip

If you don’t know what to choose, just select Linux Latest.

Note

“If you encounter a black screen error when selecting Linux Latest on Intel 10th generation chips (reported black screen issues), try selecting Linux LTS.

Start the installation process

• After the systemd process is complete, you will see a screen like this (RengeOS is inherently a minimal distribution).

• Next, we will need to begin the installation process with ros-installer

ros-installer

• Immediately after you run the installer, this interface will appear on the screen.

Choose a hard drive to install on

• From here you can see the choice of hard drive to which RengeOS will be installed.

Note

By default, it will automatically detect whether your machine is using UEFI or Legacy BIOS, so you don’t need to worry about this :)

• Here, the drive I want to install it on is sda

Disk partition

• Next, choose your desired size for the /boot partition (the default is 1GB).

• After that, it will ask if you want to enable Recovery Mode.
• If you’re someone who likes to experiment and accidentally messes up your system like me :) then you should probably enable Recovery Mode because it can help restore your system to its original state as when it was first installed using ros-reborn, or you can mount a damaged root partition to repair it or do many other things.

• If you select Yes, after the installation is complete you will see it in the GRUB menu as shown below.

• If you choose No, that’s perfectly fine because recovery mode is essentially a second root partition on the device, created to help users repair the main root partition more easily without needing a Live ISO.

System configuration

• Now it will ask you for your computer’s hostname, so enter the name you want.

After completing that, the next step is to provide the user’s username

Caution

Remember that you will use it to log in as a user.

Timezone and System locale

• Now we need to select the time region, here, I’ve chosen Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh because I live there

• After selecting your region, the next step is to choose your system locale.
• If you’re unsure what to choose, just select English (US) as it’s the default standard on most other distributions, and I chose it too.

Kernel selection

• The next step is to select the kernel that will be installed and used as the default.

• linux-renge-bore is the latest kernel based on the Xanmod Kernel and BORE Schedule, with O3 optimization and other features that make laptops/desktops/gaming significantly smoother, reducing lag and stutter during heavy background tasks. However, it is not optimized for long-term workloads or servers.

• linux-renge-lts is also the latest kernel (in terms of official Linux kernel versions for LTS) based on the Xanmod Kernel, built with O3 optimization. It excels in smoothness, low latency, and better laptops/desktop/gaming performance than the regular kernel, but maintains long-term stability and is less optimized than linux-renge-bore.

Tip

Choose linux-renge-bore if you’re unsure which one to choose, as it offers the most comprehensive support (recommended by the author).

Caution

If you are experiencing a black screen boot issue when booting into Linux Latest but not with Linux LTS, then select linux-renge-lts.

Filesystem

Note

Currently, RengeOS only supports bcachefs and xfs, but in the future it will probably support more :) for example, btrfs, f2fs, etc.

• After selecting your desired kernel, you will see something like this (for the linux-renge-bore option).
• If we selected linux-renge-lts, only the xfs filesystem option will be displayed because it doesn’t support bcachefs filesystem.
• Anyway, that’s your decision, but I still recommend choosing bcachefs filesystem if possible because RengeOS currently has strong support for it.

Wait for the setup process to complete

• Now we need to review and confirm whether it has met expectations.
• If you’re okay with it, you can select Yes. Otherwise, select No, and you can start the process again.

Caution

Note that selecting Yes will begin the formatting and configuration process according to your choices. Make sure you have backed up all important data as it will erase everything.