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Welcome to the Official atomeOS Documentation

This documentation has been subsequently modified from Ubuntu's and Debian's documentation to fit for the purpose.

Copyright © 2004 – 2018 the Debian Installer team.

Copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2015, 2018 Canonical Ltd.

Kernel documentation and the information revolving around it are provided by Swattle.

Copyright © 2020 Swattle Inc. All rights reserved.

This manual is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Please refer to the license in Appendix E, GNU General Public License.

We are delighted that you have decided to try atomeOS, and are sure that you will find that atomeOS's GNU/Linux distribution is unique. atomeOS brings together high-quality free software from around the world, integrating it into a coherent whole. We believe that you will find that the result is truly more than the sum of the parts.

We understand that many of you want to use atomeOS without reading this manual, and the atomeOS is designed to make this possible. If you don't have time to read the whole documentation right now but want need help with installation, we recommend that you read the Installation Howto, which will walk you through the basic installation process, and links to the manual for more advanced topics or for when things go wrong. The Installation Howto can be found in Appendix A, Installation Howto.

With that said, we hope that you have the time to read most of this manual, and doing so will lead to a more informed and likely more successful experience.

Abstract

This document contains instructions for the atomeOS 1.0 LTS system (codename “Bionic Beaver”) that is a derivative of the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS system (codename “Bionic Beaver”), for the 64-bit PC architecture. It also contains pointers to more information and information on how to make the most of your new atomeOS system.

Table of contents

0. atomeOS Compared to Other OSs

• atomeOS vs Windows
• atomeOS vs Ubuntu vs Lubuntu
• atomeOS vs macOS
• atomeOS vs Android

1. Welcome to atomeOS

• 1.1. What is atomeOS?
• 1.2. What is Debian?
  • 1.2.1. atomeOS and Debian
    • 1.2.1.1. Package selection
    • 1.2.1.2. Releases
    • 1.2.1.3. Freedom and Philosophy
    • 1.2.1.4. atomeOS and other Debian derivatives
• 1.3. What is GNU/Linux?
• 1.4. Getting atomeOS
• 1.5. Getting the Newest Version of This Document
• 1.6. Organization of This Document
• 1.7. Your Documentation Help is Welcome
• 1.8. About Copyrights and Software Licenses

2. System Requirements

• 2.1. Supported Hardware
  • 2.1.1. Supported Architectures
  • 2.1.2. CPU Support
  • 2.1.3. Laptops
  • 2.1.4. Multiple Processors
  • 2.1.5. Graphics Hardware Support
  • 2.1.6. Network Connectivity Hardware
    • 2.1.6.1. Wireless Network Cards
  • 2.1.7. Braille Displays
  • 2.1.8. Hardware Speech Synthesis
  • 2.1.9. Peripherals and Other Hardware
• 2.2. Devices Requiring Firmware
• 2.3. Purchasing Hardware Specifically for GNU/Linux
  • 2.3.1. Avoid Proprietary or Closed Hardware
• 2.4. Installation Media
  • 2.4.1. CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/BD-ROM
  • 2.4.2. USB Memory Stick
  • 2.4.3. Network
  • 2.4.4. Hard Disk
  • 2.4.5. Unix or GNU system
  • 2.4.6. Supported Storage Systems
• 2.5. Memory and Disk Space Requirements

3. Installing

• 3.1 Installing and Booting atomeOS

4. Next Steps and Where to Go From Here

• 4.1. Shutting down the system
• 4.2. If You Are New to Unix
• 4.3. Orienting Yourself to atomeOS
  • 4.3.1. atomeOS Packaging System
  • 4.3.2. Additional Software Available for atomeOS
  • 4.3.3. Application Version Management
  • 4.3.4. Cron Job Management
• 4.4. Further Reading and Information
• 4.5. Setting Up Your System To Use E-Mail
  • 4.5.1. Default E-Mail Configuration
  • 4.5.2. Sending E-Mails Outside The System
  • 4.5.3. Configuring the Exim4 Mail Transport Agent
• 4.6. Compiling a New Kernel
  • 4.6.1. Kernel Image Management
• 4.7. Recovering a Broken System

A. Installation Howto

• A.1. Booting the installer
  • A.1.1. Booting from CDROM
  • A.1.2. USB memory stick
  • A.1.3. Booting from network
• A.2. Installation
• A.3. And finally…

B. Partitioning for atomeOS

• B.1. Deciding on atomeOS Partitions and Sizes
• B.2. The Directory Tree
• B.3. Recommended Partitioning Scheme
• B.4. Device Names in Linux
• B.5. atomeOS Partitioning Programs
  • B.5.1. Partitioning for 64-bit PC

C. Random Bits

• C.1. Linux Devices
  • C.1.1. Setting Up Your Mouse
• C.2. Disk Space Needed for Tasks
• C.3. Disk Space Needed

D. Administrivia

• D.1. About This Document
• D.2. Contributing to This Document
• D.3. Major Contributions
• D.4. Trademark Acknowledgement

E. GNU General Public License

• E. GNU General Public License