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Documentation › Getting started

Get Aurora OS

Download or build the ISO, check it, and write it to a USB stick

The ISO

Aurora OS is an image named aurora-os-VERSION-amd64.iso that boots on BIOS and UEFI computers. Download it from the website or build it yourself (Building Aurora). GitHub limits files to 2 GB, so a larger image is published in numbered parts. Download every part and join them first:

cat aurora-os-VERSION-amd64.iso.part-* > aurora-os-VERSION-amd64.iso

Then check the reconstructed image against its checksum file before writing it:

sha256sum -c aurora-os-VERSION-amd64.iso.sha256

The output must say OK. If it doesn't, download the ISO again.

Write it to a USB stick

Use a stick of 4 GB or more. Everything on it is erased.

On any system

  • balenaEtcher or Fedora Media Writer: choose the ISO, choose the stick, write.
  • Ventoy: copy the ISO onto a Ventoy stick like any file; Ventoy shows it in its menu.
  • Rufus on Windows: choose DD image mode when it asks.

On Linux, from a terminal

Find the stick's device name with lsblk (for example /dev/sdb), then write the image. Check the name twice: writing to the wrong disk destroys its data.

sudo dd if=aurora-os-VERSION-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync

Try it without a USB stick

Boot the ISO in a virtual machine: QEMU, GNOME Boxes, virt-manager, VirtualBox, VMware or Hyper-V. See Virtual machines.