Installing

You install CoreDesktop in two stages: first Arch Linux with GNOME, then CoreDesktop on top.

1. Install Arch Linux

Download the Arch ISO from https://archlinux.org/download/ and write it to a USB stick.
Boot from the stick and run archinstall.
Mostly take the defaults, except:
- Graphics: if you have an NVIDIA GPU, choose the proprietary NVIDIA option. Choose the AMD option for AMD GPUs.
- Profile: choose "Desktop", then "GNOME".
- Audio: choose PipeWire.
- Filesystem: keep the default, btrfs. CoreDesktop uses it to take a snapshot before every update (see Updating).
Reboot and log in to GNOME.

Set up Wi-Fi from the installer with iwctl:

device list
station wlan0 scan
station wlan0 get-networks
station wlan0 connect <SSID>

Replace wlan0 with your device from device list, then check with ping archlinux.org. The Arch wiki has more detail.

It's normal to get the Arch install wrong the first time or two. Just start again.

Open a terminal and run:

wget -qO- https://gitea.federated.computer/david/coredesktop/raw/branch/main/install.sh | bash

The installer:

asks for your password once, at the start
updates Arch, then installs yay, the packages, Flatpaks, GNOME extensions, Ruby, Neovim, Claude Code and the sandboxed AI agents
turns on the firewall, Snapper snapshots, update notifications and the system defaults
installs the update, refresh, configure, version and sibling commands into ~/.local/bin

CoreDesktop itself lives in ~/.local/share/coredesktop.

If anything fails, run the same command again. It skips what's already done.

Reboot when the installer finishes.
Run configure to connect to your Federated Computer Core and sign in to the AI agents. See Configure.

Using CoreDesktop

Working on CoreDesktop