NixOS live boot

The live boot is based on NixOS and is coded in Nix, you can find the source code for it on the MTKClient-NixOS-Live-Boot GitHub

Prerequisites:
  1. A PC
  2. A USB flash drive with at least 3 GB of storage

The live boot supports both 64 bit and ARM, although at the time of writing this the ARM build is untested.

Creating the live boot

  1. You'll first need to download the live boot image. Make sure that you download it for your computers CPU architecture (x86_64 is x64 and aarch64 is ARM): https://drive.proton.me/urls/DKTPCA86QR#g7CKnFBF6K4i

  2. You will need a program to write the ISO to the flash drive. Balena Etcher can be used for this and is available on all major platforms, you can download it here: https://etcher.balena.io/. After installing, launch the program and write the ISO to the flash drive.

Your flash drive should now be ready and bootable!

Booting into the live boot

Using the live boot can depend on your specific computer. But the overall process will require you to:

  1. Access BIOS/UEFI.

  2. Turn off “Secure boot”.

  3. Change the boot order to boot into the flash drive.

This process differs across computers, and because the NixOS manual already has a description for how to go about this, it is recommended that you read that.

Read steps 1 and 2 in the “Booting from the install medium” section, pay special attention to the notes below these steps.

NixOS “Booting from the install medium” section: https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-installation-booting

If all goes well you should be greeted with the xfce desktop.