# Installing WolOS

> Erase a disk, install next to Windows or Linux, or lay out partitions by hand. Nothing is written before you confirm the summary.

Source: https://wolos.pages.dev/manual/install

## What it is

Install WolOS is the installer on the live medium. It asks for language and keyboard, time zone, where to install, encryption and an account, then shows a summary of exactly what will change.

## Why

A wrong step during an install destroys someone's files. So the installer does not act page by page: it writes a *plan* that names every partition it may touch, and the install stops if anything else on the disk moved in the meantime.

## How

1. Start from the USB stick and choose **Install WolOS**.
2. **Language and keyboard**, then **time zone** (searchable, and guessed when online).
3. **Where to install:**
   - **Erase Disk** uses the whole disk for WolOS.
   - **Install Alongside** shrinks Windows or another Linux with a size slider and puts WolOS next to it.
   - **Manual** lets you create, delete and resize partitions, set mount points and file systems, and keep an existing `/home`.
4. **Encryption** with a password, or with the TPM chip so the disk opens on its own at start. A recovery key is shown once: write it down.
5. **Account:** your name, account name and password. This account is an administrator.
6. **Summary.** Read it. Nothing has been written yet. Install starts only when you confirm.

### What the installer will never do

- Write to the medium it started from, a CD, or a read-only disk.
- Touch a partition the plan does not name. If the disk no longer matches the plan, it stops.
- Finish without checking that the boot entry, kernel and system files are in place.

### After the install

The computer restarts into WolOS. On a Secure Boot computer you may see the one-time key screen first; see [Secure Boot](/manual/secure-boot). Manual layouts without btrfs keep one copy of the system instead of two, and the installer says so.

### Unattended installs

For labs and test rigs: add `wolos.autoinstall=<disk>` to the live command line. The installer erases that disk, installs and powers off.