Create a USB stick

The ISO is a hybrid image: write it to the whole stick, not to a partition. A stick of 8 GB or more is enough. Everything on the stick is erased.

With install.sh (Linux)

install.sh verifies the image first and then writes it:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/org-runink/river/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --write /dev/sdX

Before it writes, it shows the stick’s serial number and asks you to type it, so a typo in /dev/sdX cannot erase the wrong disk. For a scripted run, pass the serial you checked with --yes-i-have-checked-serial=SERIAL.

By hand (Linux)

Find the stick, check its size and model, then write the verified image:

lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL,SERIAL,TRAN      # the stick shows TRAN=usb
sudo dd if=runink-river-<date>-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M conv=fsync status=progress

/dev/sdX is the whole device (/dev/sdb), never a partition (/dev/sdb1).

From Windows or macOS

Any tool that writes a raw disk image byte for byte works. Pick “write an image as-is” (dd mode) if the tool asks, and verify the image before you write it.

Boot it

Plug the stick in, open your firmware’s boot menu (often F12, F11, F8 or Esc at power-on) and pick the USB stick’s UEFI entry. Turn Secure Boot off first: the image does not boot with Secure Boot on yet (Secure Boot).

The stick’s live system then starts Plasma and opens the installer by itself: Install. It does not start? Troubleshooting.

Reuse the stick afterwards

The installer never offers the stick as a target and never saves the recovery key to it. To use the stick for files again, recreate a partition table and a filesystem on it with KDE Partition Manager (on the installed system) or any partitioning tool.