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AerynOS Docs

Installation FAQ

Installation Questions

Section titled “Installation Questions”

Which CPUs does AerynOS support?

Section titled “Which CPUs does AerynOS support?”

AerynOS is currently only compiled for the x86-64-v2 target architecture, which means that it will run on CPUs supporting x86-64-v2 or greater psABI feature levels.

Checking the currently supported x86-64 psABI feature level of a system can be done by typing the following command in a terminal as a normal user:

/usr/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 --help | grep "x86-64-"

On an x86-64-v2 based system, you will see the following output:

  x86-64-v4
  x86-64-v3
  x86-64-v2 (supported, searched)

Does AerynOS offer NVIDIA GPU support?

Section titled “Does AerynOS offer NVIDIA GPU support?”

Due to the way NVIDIA distributes its drivers, maintaining them in a distro is labor-intensive and frustrating when they do not work as advertised.

Given AerynOS is in the Alpha development stage, only limited, best effort NVIDIA enablement related to cards supported by the so-called nvidia-open-gpu-kernel-modules is currently offered.

You can check the status of NVIDIA support in AerynOS/recipes#435

Does AerynOS support being installed alongside another OS?

Section titled “Does AerynOS support being installed alongside another OS?”

Officially? Not yet.

You can try, but there is no guarantee that AerynOS won’t eat your other OS.

You have been warned.

Section titled “What is the recommended partition layout for AerynOS?”

In practice, we recommend that you install AerynOS to a separate drive with:

  • A >=256MB ESP FAT32 partition (type 1 in fdisk).
    • This must be manually formatted for the installer to recognize it.
  • A 4GB XBOOTLDR FAT32 partition (type 142 in fdisk, bls_boot in gparted).
    • This must be manually formatted for the installer to recognize it.
    • This partition is large, because it is where the AerynOS kernel+initramfs and (in the future) rescue image files will be saved.
  • A >20 GB system xfs partition
    • This must be manually formatted for the installer to recognize it.
    • The larger the xfs system (/ or root) partition is, the more OS /usr directory rollback states it can support in /.moss/.
ermo@virgil:~
❯ sudo fdisk -l /dev/nvme1n1
Disk /dev/nvme1n1: 931,51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 980 PRO 1TB
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: ED391D3B-7BCC-4407-911F-FF7B2CECB45A


Device           Start        End    Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme1n1p1    2048     526335     524288   256M EFI System
/dev/nvme1n1p2  526336    8914943    8388608     4G Linux extended boot
/dev/nvme1n1p3 8914944 1953523711 1944608768 927,3G Linux root (x86-64)
ermo@virgil:~
❯ sudo lsblk -f /dev/nvme1n1
NAME        FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
nvme1n1
├─nvme1n1p1 vfat   FAT32       CA93-B86A
├─nvme1n1p2 vfat   FAT32       C837-2227
└─nvme1n1p3 xfs                569404f0-74ce-4c9e-936a-96aca25c7cd0  845,6G     9% /
ermo@virgil:~

NB: Remember, there is nothing stopping you from creating an extra partition, formatting it with a filesystem of your choice, and then configuring /etc/fstab to mount it as /home after AerynOS has been installed. You can do this if you want to use a different filesystem than xfs for your /home folders for whatever reason.