A desktop that tells you the truth.

Borrowed where it's sensible. Original where it's seen.

Writing a kernel would be a worse operating system, not a better one. So S3eidat OS takes the same shape as every shipped product in this category — SteamOS, webOS, Chrome OS — and spends all of its originality above the compositor, where you actually look.

What works, what half-works, and what never will.

Every distribution's website has a features list. This is the other list. If something doesn't work, you should find out here rather than three days after you've wiped Windows.

One image, two ways to get it.

The image is a live USB: boot it, try the whole desktop without touching your disk, and install only if you like it.

Getting the image onto a stick.

You need a USB drive of 8 GB or more. Everything on it will be erased. Verify the checksum first — a half-downloaded image fails in confusing ways much later.

# Verify the download first, in PowerShell:
Get-FileHash .\S3eidatOS-1.0-x86_64.iso -Algorithm SHA256

# 1. verify
shasum -a 256 S3eidatOS-1.0-x86_64.iso

# 2. find the disk — check the SIZE column, twice
diskutil list

# 3. unmount it (replace N with your disk number)
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN

# 4. write it. rdiskN (raw) is far faster than diskN
sudo dd if=S3eidatOS-1.0-x86_64.iso of=/dev/rdiskN bs=4m status=progress

# 5. eject
diskutil eject /dev/diskN

# 1. verify
sha256sum -c S3eidatOS-1.0-x86_64.iso.sha256

# 2. identify the stick — by size, and confirm it twice
lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL,TRAN,MOUNTPOINT

# 3. write it (replace sdX with the WHOLE disk, not a partition)
sudo dd if=S3eidatOS-1.0-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync

# 4. flush and eject
sync && sudo eject /dev/sdX

From live USB to a machine that boots on its own.

The live session is the whole desktop — open apps, poke around, decide. When you're ready, the installer is one command and asks before it does anything irreversible.

1. Boot the stick and try it

   Firmware POST, the S3eidat splash, then the desktop. Nothing has touched your disk yet. Check that Wi-Fi, sound, and your display resolution all work — that's what a live session is for.

2. Open a terminal and run the installer

   It detects UEFI or BIOS, lists your disks with what's currently on them, and asks for a filesystem, hostname, username and time zone.

3. Confirm twice

   It will not write anything until you type the disk's name and then the word ERASE. The disk you booted from is never offered.

4. It partitions, copies, and installs the bootloader

   GPT with a 1 GB EFI partition, btrfs with subvolumes (or ext4), optional LUKS encryption, genfstab, GRUB with the S3eidat theme, and an initramfs with early KMS for all three GPU vendors so there's no flicker between stages.

5. Reboot

   Pull the stick. It comes up on its own into the S3eidat boot menu, then the setup wizard, once.

$ sudo s3eidat-install

Nine screens, then it's yours.

The setup wizard runs once, before there's any account to sign in to. Every choice is a live setting you can change later — nothing here is a one-way door.

The image is one command.

mkarchiso needs a Linux host. If you're on Linux already it's one line; from Windows or macOS, a container gives you the same result.

From Windows — one script

Right-click distro\build-on-windows.ps1 → Run with PowerShell. It enables the two Windows features WSL2 needs, asks you to restart, then finishes on its own: pulls an Arch root filesystem, installs the build tools, and writes the image into out\. It touches no disks and asks before the restart.

# or from a terminal, if you prefer
> powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File distro\build-on-windows.ps1

On Arch Linux

$ sudo pacman -S archiso librsvg imagemagick
$ git clone https://github.com/s3eidat/s3eidat-os && cd s3eidat-os
$ sudo ./distro/build.sh
# → out/S3eidatOS-1.0-x86_64.iso

From Windows, with WSL2

# in an Administrator PowerShell — this reboots
> wsl --install

# then, inside WSL, get an Arch container going
$ sudo apt install -y docker.io && sudo service docker start
$ cd /mnt/c/path/to/s3eidat-os
$ sudo docker run --rm --privileged -v "$PWD:/src" -w /src archlinux bash -c \
    "pacman -Sy --noconfirm archiso librsvg imagemagick python && ./distro/build.sh"

With Docker Desktop, on Windows or macOS

$ docker run --rm --privileged -v "${PWD}:/src" -w /src archlinux bash -c \
    "pacman -Sy --noconfirm archiso librsvg imagemagick python && ./distro/build.sh"

Two things to know. The container needs --privileged because mkarchiso mounts loop devices. And [multilib] must be enabled in /etc/pacman.conf — Wine and Steam need the 32-bit libraries, and the build warns you if it isn't.

Where this isn't the right answer.

A page that only lists strengths isn't much use when you're deciding whether to wipe a working machine. Here is where S3eidat OS is genuinely the wrong choice.