The blendOS v4 alpha is now out! Here’s how you can install and try it out.

Installing v4

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blendOS v4 is a lot more declarative than v3. The current beta must be installed on top of Arch.

What you’ll need

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• An Arch Linux VM (or real PC, if you dare) using mkinitcpio for the kernel image, GRUB as the bootloader, and no disk encryption¹.
• An internet connection
• Time
• Basic YAML knowledge

Steps

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Add the breakfast repo

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At the end of your /etc/pacman.conf add the following lines:

 [breakfast]
 SigLevel = Never
 Server = https://pkg-repo.blendos.co

* Yes, I am aware this has a SigLevel of never, this is very insecure. I’m assuming this is just a testing thing and will be fixed.

If you’d like to browse our small repo, feel free to do so.

Create your system config

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Create a file in / named system.yaml.

This is YAML so indentation is important. All indents are 2 spaces (no tabs).

Add the following to it (or something similar, THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE!):

 # /system.yaml

 repo: 'https://pkg-repo.blendos.co/'

 impl: 'https://github.com/blend-os/tracks/raw/main' # or an alternate track repo

 track: 'plasma' # or 'xfce' or 'mate'

                 # GNOME isn't recommended
                 # at the moment as it is
                 # known to be be buggy.

 packages: 
     - 'firefox' # stuff to install using pacman
 #   - 'nvidia-dkms' if you're using an NVIDIA GPU

You can add repos and things to this file, as documented here (Again, just an example):

repo: 'https://pkg-repo.blendos.co/'

impl: 'https://github.com/blend-os/tracks/raw/main'

track: 'gnome'

packages:
    - 'micro'
    - 'caddy'

services:
    - 'caddy' # what services to start

package-repos:
    - name: 'chaotic-aur' # the name as it would appear in pacman.conf
      repo-url: 'https://cdn-mirror.chaotic.cx/$repo/$arch' # the Server

Configuration customization

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Track repo

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Currently there are also alternate track repos:

T2Linux track repo:

For T2Linux users.

Avalible tracks:

• All tracks from the standard repo. modified for T2Linux
• blendos-base renamed to blendos-base-t2

impl: 'https://github.com/NoaHimesaka1873/blendos-tracks-t2/raw/main'

ico277 stripped base track repo:

This repo modifies blendos-base to be more stripped down, and creates a blendos-dekstop track.

Avalible tracks:

• All standard tracks are unmodified, except for blendos-base
• blendos-desktop added

impl: 'https://github.com/ico277/blendos-tracks/raw/main'

track: 'blendos-base' # one of two tracks that differ from the standard repo

* you can also use ico277’s blendos-desktop track with this repo, which adds a very minimal (like just pipewire and xorg) desktop setup to blendos-base.

Adding custom track repos

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Your repo must have a series of YAML files, look at the main track repo for examples.

Your base track must have a track: of custom, as shown here. Desktop tracks must have their track set to your base track.

Tracks are like mini system.yaml files, and have the same structure.

The easiest way to get started is to just fork the main repo, but impl URL structures for common Git forges are shown below:

Steps (cont.d)

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Wifi firmware (T2 ONLY!)

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If you are on a T2 Mac, please follow this guide to copy your wifi firmware over from MacOS BEFORE continuing with the rest of this guide.

Installing akshara

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Run sudo pacman -Sy akshara.

Adding akshara into mkinitcpio

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Edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and add akshara after the base udev bit in the HOOKS part of the file.

Run sudo mkinitcpio -P; sudo akshara update.

Reboot your system.

Post-Install

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Adding repos

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Add a line to the end of system.yaml like so (using the chaotic-aur as an example):

package-repos:
    - name: 'chaotic-aur' # repo name as it would appear in pacman.conf
      repo-url: 'https://cdn-mirror.chaotic.cx/$repo/$arch' # Repo URL as it would appear in pacman.conf

(the Chaotic AUR’s package list can be found here, and packages can be manually downloaded from here)

If you add repos, run sudo akshara update and reboot afterwards.

Adding AUR packages

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Add stuff under the aur-packages tag. They will be installed via paru automatically (paru is in our repo, don’t add it as a package here). You will need to run sudo akshara update a lot more often.

aur-packages:
  - '1'
  - '2'

Reference

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system.yaml

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system.yaml structure (preserve all single quotes and the order of items):

repo: 'https://pkg-repo.blendos.co' # Do not change this.

# the track repo
impl: 'https://github.com/USER/REPO/raw/BRANCH'

track: 'plasma' # The track you want

packages:       # Packages to install using pacman
  - 'package_1'
  - 'package_2'

aur-packages:   # AUR packages, installed via paru
  - 'package_1-git'
  - 'package_2-bin'

services:       # Enable these systemd services
  - 'service_1'

package-repos:
  - name: 'REPO_NAME' # as it appears in pacman.conf
    repo-url: 'REPO_URL' # the Server variable in pacman.conf for this repo


commands:       # List of commands to run at system build, will execute with root permissions, more file-related stuff like git is tricky
  - 'echo command_1'
  - 'echo command_2'

repo

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Type: string value

Don’t change this. Repo where the core blendOS packages (and akshara) are stored.

impl

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Type: string value

The repo where the tracks are.

track

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Type: string value

The track yaml file, without the extension (i.e. blendos-base.yaml -> track: blendos-base).

packages

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Type: array

Add packages to install from the repos (including set custom ones) via pacman, one per-line.

packages:
  - '1'
  - '2'

aur-packages

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Type: array

Same as packages, but for packages from the AUR.

aur-packages:
  - '1-bin'
  - '2-git'

services

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Type: array

Services to start via systemd.

services:
  - 'service-1'
  - 'socket-2.socket'

custom-repos

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Type: object array

Custom repos to add. Consists of their name and URL as they would appear in pacman.conf.

custom-repos:
  - name: 'NAME'
    url: 'MAIN_REPO_URL'

Support for mirrorlists is coming in the future. For now, you can just pick a mirror or use a geolocator URL if applicable.

commands

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Type: array

Commands to be run at system build, run as root.

commands:
  - 'echo 1'
  - 'echo 2'

akshara

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Update system (new arch packages, edited config)

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sudo akshara update

* You will need to reboot after this.

Help menu

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akshara help

Version

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akshara version