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Installation

Installation

How to write the ISO, boot the installer and finish the setup.

SkillFishOS installs from a live ISO that contains the Calamares graphical installer. The whole process is done with the mouse, no terminal required.

The 26.06.4 «Aetherium» ISO is available — download it from the Download page. It boots in English to stay universal and lets you pick your language and keyboard during installation.

Requirements

  • an AMD BC-250 board (see hardware);
  • an SSD/NVMe to install onto;
  • a monitor connected via DisplayPort (a passive DP→HDMI adapter can work, but see the display/audio notes in Troubleshooting);
  • a USB stick of at least 8 GB for the installer;
  • a keyboard and mouse for the installation.

1. Write the ISO to USB

Download the ISO from the Download page and write it to a stick with one of these tools:

  • balenaEtcher (Windows/macOS/Linux, graphical, recommended);
  • Ventoy (lets you keep several ISOs on the same stick);
  • from a Linux terminal with dd:
sudo dd if=SkillFishOS_amd64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync

Replace /dev/sdX with the correct device for your stick. Warning: dd writes without asking and erases everything on the target device.

2. Boot the BC-250 from USB

Insert the stick, power on the board and enter the boot/UEFI menu to select the USB as the boot device. The SkillFishOS live environment (KDE Plasma) will start: you can explore the system before installing it.

3. Install with Calamares

From the live desktop launch the installer (Install SkillFishOS icon). Calamares guides you step by step:

  1. Language and timezone.
  2. Keyboard.
  3. Partitioning. SkillFishOS uses Btrfs with separate subvolumes — @ (system), @home (your data), @cache and @log (kept out of the snapshots), @games (the games library): this lets you roll back the system without touching your files. A small EFI partition completes the layout, and swap is a file, not a partition. For most users the automatic install option (“Erase disk”) is fine.
  4. User. Create your account (it will be in the right groups for gaming, audio, render, etc.).
  5. Summary and install.

When installation finishes, reboot and remove the stick.

4. First boot

On first boot everything is already configured: optimized kernel, governor, overclock, theme, gaming and snapshots are active. No manual tuning needed.

From here you can:

  • pair your controllers (DualShock 4 over Bluetooth or a USB controller);
  • add your games to Steam/EmuDeck;
  • enable the local AI stack when you need it;
  • tune the hardware with the Tuner if you wish.

Disk layout

Partition Filesystem Content
nvme0n1p1 FAT32 (EFI) GRUB bootloader
nvme0n1p2 Btrfs @ (system) · @home (data) · @cache · @log · @games · @swap

There is no swap partition: swap lives in a file inside the @swap subvolume. On Btrfs it can be resized without touching the partition table, and it stays out of the snapshots.

Sources