Preparation steps

Getting ready for CachyOS.

The following section will guide you through the steps to prepare your USB drive with CachyOS ISO image for installation and the necessary requirements.

System Requirements

Before you begin with the preparation for installation, you need to make sure that your computer meets the following system requirements in order to run CachyOS.

Minimum requirements

• 3 GB RAM
• 30 GB of Storage Space (HDD/SSD)
• x86-64-v1 capable CPU (64-bit)
• Integrated graphics card
• Stable internet connection

Note

An unstable internet can lead to installation issues and long waits.

Recommended requirements

• 4 GB RAM (Ideally 8GB and more)
• 50 GB of Storage Space (SSD/NVMe)
• x86-64-v3 & v4 capable CPU
• 50 Mbps or better internet speed
• NVIDIA GPU (900+ - e.g: GTX 950), AMD +GCN 1.0 (e.g: AMD R7 240) or Intel (Integrated HD Graphics series or higher. Arc Series)

x86_64 Microarchitecture Level Support

x86_64-v1 Compatible CPUs

• Intel
  • Anything older than Haswell. For example: Intel 3770k, Intel N2600
• AMD
  • Anything older than Zen. For example: AMD FX Series

x86_64-v3 Compatible CPUs

• Intel
  • Haswell and later generations (e.g., Broadwell, Skylake, Coffee Lake, Cascade Lake, Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, Alder Lake, Raptor Lake, Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake)
• AMD
  • Ryzen 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, and 9th generations
  • EPYC 1st-3rd Gen

x86_64-v4 Compatible CPUs

• Intel
  • Knights Landing (Xeon Phi x200), Knights Mill (Xeon Phi x205), Skylake-SP, Skylake-X, Cannon Lake, Cascade Lake, Cooper Lake, Ice Lake, Rocket Lake, Tiger Lake and Sapphire Rapids
• AMD
  • Zen 4, Zen 5, AMD EPYC 4th Generation (Genoa) and 5th Generation (Siena)

Creating a Bootable CachyOS USB Drive

There are several tools and methods that you can use to create a bootable USB drive of CachyOS. The USB drive must have at least 8GB of available space.

balenaEtcher

1. Download balenaEtcher. balenaEtcher supports flashing an image of Linux, MacOS and Windows. If you downloaded the .zip file, extract it and execute the binary using the following commands:

   # Extract zip file:
   bsdtar xvf <zip file name>
   # cd to the new folder:
   cd balenaEtcher-linux-x64/
   # Execute balenaEtcher:
   ./balena-etcher

2. Plug in your USB drive to your system.
3. Select Flash from file and select the CachyOS ISO image file.
4. Click Select target and choose the label that matches your USB drive.
5. Press Flash to start the flashing process.

Note

You may be prompted for administrator privileges. If so, enter your password and click Authenticate.

At the end of flash process you will get a Flash Completed! message. Close balenaEtcher and reboot your system to boot into CachyOS.

Note

Be sure to have the USB drive boot priority over other drives in the BIOS/UEFI or boot it from your Boot Menu.

Command Line Interface (Linux & MacOS)

1. Plug in your USB drive.
2. Detect the plugged USB drive using the following commands:

   # Linux
   # Your USB drive could be identified e.g: /dev/sda, by disk model and size.
   sudo fdisk -l
   
   # MacOS
   # USB drives are identified as "/dev/diskY" where "Y" could be 0,1 etc.
   diskutil list

3. Copy the iso contents to your USB drive by running:

   # Replace <usbdrive> with the label of your drive.
   sudo dd bs=4M if=full_iso_name.iso of=/dev/<usbdrive> status=progress oflag=sync

• dd will now copy the contents of the ISO file over to your USB drive. Once it’s done, you will be ready to use the USB drive as the CachyOS installation media. Reboot your system to boot into CachyOS.

Note

Be sure to have the USB drive boot priority over other drives in the BIOS/UEFI or boot it from your Boot Menu.

Rufus (Windows Only)

1. Plug in USB drive.
2. Download Rufus and install it, or run the portable version.
3. On Device, click on the dropdown list and select your USB drive.
4. On Boot selection, click on SELECT and locate the CachyOS ISO image file.
5. Click START.

Ventoy (Linux & Windows)

Linux

1. Plug in your USB drive.
2. Download Ventoy
3. Untar Ventoy using the following command:

   # Replace version with the correct one e.g: ventoy-1.0.99-linux.tar.gz
   bsdtar xvf ventoy-version-linux.tar.gz
   # cd to the new folder: (version might change)
   cd ventoy-1.0.99/

4. Execute VentoyGUI.x86_64 by either double clicking on it or via terminal:

   # It will ask for administrative privileges, enter your credentials
   ./VentoyGUI.x86_64

5. Select your USB drive by clicking on Device.
6. Click on Install.
7. After it finished installing Ventoy into your USB drive, you can now close the window and place the CachyOS ISO file into the new usable partition of the drive.

Windows

1. Plug in your USB drive.
2. Download Ventoy
3. Run Ventoy2Disk.exe
4. Select your USB drive by clicking on Device.
5. Click on Install.
6. After it finished installing Ventoy into your USB drive, you can now close the window and place the CachyOS ISO file into the new usable partition of the drive.