Installation Guide

Follow these steps to install LupineOS on your machine (Bare Metal).

1. Download the **LupineOS ISO** from the home page (Standard or NVIDIA).
2. Flash the ISO to a USB drive (8GB+) using Fedora Media Writer or Balena Etcher.
3. Reboot and enter your BIOS/UEFI boot menu (usually F12, F2, or Del).
4. Select "Install LupineOS" from the GRUB menu.
5. Follow the graphical installer to select your disk and create your user account.

Post-Install Setup

First things to do after you boot into your new Atomic environment.

Once you have booted into your new system, open the terminal and initialize "The Pack".

This command will:

• Install essential Flatpaks (Browser, Media players).
• Sets up the Alpha (Dev) and Beta (Admin) containers.
• Configures your shell prompt (Starship).

Using The Pack (Distrobox)

How to access your Wolf Pack containers.

LupineOS uses Distrobox to manage your "Wolf Pack" environments. You can enter any container instantly from your terminal.

Pro Tip: You can export apps from inside the container to your host menu using distrobox-export --app [appname].

Workflows (Dev/Sec)

LupineOS isolates work contexts to keep your system clean.

• Dev (Alpha): Use for coding projects (Python, Node, Rust). `distrobox enter alpha`.
• Admin (Beta): Use for infrastructure (Terraform, Ansible). `distrobox enter beta`.
• Sec (Omega): Use for security auditing. `distrobox enter omega`.

Files in your home directory are shared automatically with all containers.

Updates & Rollbacks

LupineOS tracks the Fedora Rawhide (Future Fedora 43) stream, providing access to the absolute latest kernel technologies.

Because LupineOS is atomic (using rpm-ostree technology from Project Atomic), updates are safe regardless of how bleeding-edge they are.

Updating

Reboot to apply the update.

Rolling Back

If an update breaks something, simply reboot and select the previous deployment from GRUB. Your system is immutable and resilient.

NVIDIA Drivers

We automatically enable the RPMFusion (Non-Free) repository to ensure you have access to official proprietary NVIDIA drivers.

To verify your drivers are working:

Updates to drivers are handled automatically with system updates via RPMFusion.

Gaming on LupineOS

LupineOS comes pre-loaded with the tools you need to game on Linux.

• Wine & Winetricks: For running Windows applications directly.
• Lutris: Preserves your game library locally.
• Protontricks: Manage Proton prefixes easily for Steam games.
• Steam: Compatible via Flatpak (recommended) or RPM from Fusion.

We enable gamemode by default to prioritize performance.

Privacy & Security

Your privacy toolkit is built-in as a secure Distrobox container.

• Tor Browser & OnionCircuits: Anonymous browsing.
• Mat2: Metadata anonymization tool for your files.
• Gocryptfs: Create encrypted folders to lock away sensitive data.
• Debian Base: A stable, trusted foundation for privacy operations.

To access, run distrobox enter privacy or select usage during system setup.

Core Concepts

New to Linux or just new to Atomic? Here's what makes LupineOS special.

Atomic (Immutable)

In a traditional OS, updates change files live. If power cuts, your system breaks. In Atomic Linux (like LupineOS), updates are built in the background as a separate image. You reboot into the new image. If it fails, you just reboot back to the old one. It's un-brickable.

Bleeding Edge (Fedora Rawhide)

We track Fedora Rawhide. Why? Because casual users deserve support for the latest GPUs, Wi-Fi cards, and game controllers now, not in 6 months.

Flatpak

Think of this as the "App Store" model for Linux. Apps are sandboxed (isolated) from your system. They contain all their own dependencies, so they just work, regardless of what version of Linux you run.

The Tech Stack

Rust

A programming language focused on memory safety and performance. It prevents crashes before they happen. Critical parts of LupineOS (like the Desktop and Welcome App) are built in Rust.

COSMIC Desktop

Built by System76. It's the first desktop environment written in Rust. It features auto-tiling (windows arrange themselves) to help you stay focused.

Helix

A modern text editor for the terminal. It's like Vim, but designed to be helpful out of the box with pop-up menus and built-in language support. It's our default editor for config files.

Markdown

The language you are reading right now! It's a simple way to format text using symbols (like `**bold**` or `# Header`). We use it for all our documentation because it's clean and portable.