Write the installer to a USB stick

The installer is a small live system, about 900 MB. It has to be written to the stick as a disk image, not copied onto it as a file.

1. Download the installer (CouchPotatOS-Installer.x86_64.iso).
2. Optionally, verify the download.
3. Write it to a USB stick with one of the tools below. Everything on the stick is erased.

Windows: Rufus

1. Download Rufus and start it.
2. Under Device, pick your USB stick.
3. Click Select and choose the CouchPotatOS ISO.
4. Click Start. When Rufus asks how to write the image, choose Write in DD Image mode.
5. Wait until the status bar says Ready.

Windows, macOS or Linux: balenaEtcher

1. Download balenaEtcher and start it.
2. Click Flash from file and choose the ISO.
3. Click Select target and choose your USB stick.
4. Click Flash! and wait for the check to finish.

Linux: the command line

Find the stick’s device name with lsblk: it’s the disk whose size matches your stick, for example /dev/sdb. Make sure it’s the right one: dd overwrites whatever you point it at.

sudo dd if=CouchPotatOS-Installer.x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync

GNOME Disks works too: select the stick, open the menu and choose Restore Disk Image.

Tools that don’t work

Tools that copy files onto the stick instead of writing the whole image, such as Ventoy or Rufus in ISO mode, aren’t supported. The installer recognises its own stick by the stick’s name, COUCHPOTATOS.