Hyperbola Linux install

[nevj (Neville Jackson)]

The current version of Hyperbola Linux is hyperbola-milky-way-v0.4.2-dual.iso.
This is not the BSD kernel version referred to in the topic

Hyperbolabsd project

This is not recent news, but the hyperbola linux distro is planning to become an OS with a BSD kernel and a mix of Debian and Arch software repos. There is an ItsFOSS article on the topic It is significant because , if they achieve their goal, it would be an incursion of GNU licensing into the BSD world. I like the project for a number of reasons it embraces software freedom… I like to have choices for components of a system it is a different direction… definately not just another debian…

This version has a Linux-libre kernel.

I started my install with a torrent download of hyperbola-milky-way-v0.4.2-dual.iso, started a new virtual machine in virt-manager, set it up with 8G of memory, 4 CPU,s, and 50G of file space.
When I load the .iso file, I get a screen as follows

Choose the top line boot option and the installer starts and runs down to a root login, as follows

Then the fun begins. You complete the install by typing in linux commands… like in Gentoo but not as difficult ( not sure what Arch does, never tried it)

First command does disk partitioning
cfdisk /dev/vda
You get a screen to make partitions… I chose GPT partition table and made 3 partitions , as follows

Quit that , and then comes a number of typed commands

mkfs.ext4 /dev/vda3
mkswap /dev/vda2
swapon /dev/vda2
mount /dev/vda3 /mnt
pacstrap /mnt base
genfstab -V -p /mnt  >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt
nano /etc/locale.gen
    enable EN US.UTF-8 UTF-8
locale-gen
echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
nano /etc/conf.d/keymaps
   check keymap="us"
rc-update add keymaps default
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Sydney /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc --utc
echo localhost > /etc/hostname
passwd
    set the root passwd
pacman -S grub
grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck /dev/vda
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot

It boots and you get a login prompt as follows

You can see I logged in as root, setup a user account, and had a look around.

No DE you say. Well be patient, I have not got to that yet. I think I have to learn pacman first.

So what do you get?
An Arch-like distro with OpenRC init system and all free software.
Quite small… root filesystem used about 1Gb.

Links
https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:manual:beginner_installation

https://www.hyperbola.info/

More to come when I learn to use pacman.

Oh, and I did the whole thing while my other VM running tinyW11 was busy doing a shutdown with updates !

An interesting variation. It will not allow a VM shutdown, only a save.