There are many different Linux distributions, which all come with advantages and disadvantages. There is not really a blanket solution for which system you should choose. However, the best way to get into it is to just start, and learn along the way.

For this guide, we recommend installing DietPi. Originally developed as an operating system for the Raspberry Pi, it now supports most Single Board Computers, as well as native PCs. It’s very light-weight, meaning that it doesn’t take much space and doesn’t use a lot of resources like processing power and RAM, ensuring that it will run fine even on slower machines. Since we are recommening to use docker, which works a little bit like a small operating system in a box and doesn’t have many requirements outside of that, we generally want our operating system to take up as little resources as possible. If you prefer to use another Linux distribution, feel free to skip this section and continue at setting_up_ssh.

In order to install DietPi you need a few things:

• A working computer with internet access (as in: a computer to work from (also one that works)) from which to prepare the installation
• A (non-Apple) target computer on which you want to install DietPi. For this guide, we will also assume that you have access to a screen and a keyboard as well (if you are using an old laptop, the internal screen and keyboard suffice). You can read more about hardware choices here. - An empty USB drive of minimum 2 GB capacity (to install from) For now, this guide will not include a tutorial on how to install Linux on an old Apple computer. You can read more about this here, but the tl;dr; is that Apple has made it increasingly difficult to install anything except macOS on their machines. If an old Mac is all you got, there are many tutorial such as this one that you can. Ultimately, your choice in operating system should not change the process in the further guides dramatically.

There are many variations of DietPi available on the official website, depending on what kind of machine you are planning to install it on. There are versions for most common SBCs (Single Board Computers), which is one of the main advantages of DietPi. If you are using an SBC, find the appropriate version of DietPi on their website and download it.

If you plan to install DietPi on a regular (non-SBC) computer, like an old laptop, you first need to find out whether it’s BIOS based or UEFI based. It’s not really important to understand what this means in order to continue, it’s just about downloading the correct installer.

Basically, if your computer is newer, chances are bigger that it’s UEFI based. The older it is, the more likely it’s BIOS based. If it runs Windows 11, you are running UEFI for sure since it doesn’t support BIOS.

If the computer you want to use is running a version of Windows older than Windows 11, you can check whether your machine is UEFI or BIOS based by pressing ⊞ Win + R to open the Windows Run dialog, type in the command msinfo32, and then press Enter. This will open the System Information window. Find the entry BIOS mode. If it’s set to UEFI you are using UEFI, if it’s set to Legacy you are using BIOS.

If you are already running Linux, the easiest way to find out if you are running UEFI or BIOS is to check for a folder called /sys/firmware/efi. One way to do this is to open a terminal and to enter the command ls /sys/firmware/efi. If you are using BIOS, the folder will be missing. If the folder exists, you are running UEFI.

Once you know whether your computer is UEFI based or BIOS based, download the corresponding version from the official website to your working computer.

The file you downloaded in one of the previous steps is packaged in a 7z archive, which you need to extract first. Functionally, this is similar to a .zip or .rar file. You might need to download additional software in order to extract the archive.

If your working computer runs Windows you can use 7-Zip.

If your working computer runs macOS you can use The Unarchiver.

If your working computer runs Linux you can use p7zip, the command line version of 7-Zip. On Debian and Ubuntu-based systems, you can simply open a terminal and type:

$ sudo apt install p7zip

Once p7zip is installed, navigate to the downloaded file and type the following to extract it:

$ 7zr x PUTYOURFILENAMEHERE

Replace PUTYOURFILENAMEHERE with the correct name of the downloaded archive, e.g. DietPi_RPi-ARMv6-Bullseye.7z. This will extract the DietPi image file for you to use.

After all of this, you should be left with an image file. If you don’t know what this means, just make sure you have a file that ends with .iso.

We now want to take this image file, and put it on a flash drive like a USB stick or SD card, which we can then use to install Linux. This process is called flashing.

There are several tools to do this. If your target computer is a single board computer, or a native PC that’s BIOS-based, the easiest way is probably balenaEtcher, which is free and available for Windows, macOS and Linux.

It’s pretty straight forward: after downloading balenaEtcher to your working computer, plug in your flash drive and open balenaEtcher. Select Flash from File, then locate the installer image you extracted in the previous step (it should be an .iso file). Then select your flash drive as a target and click Flash!

This will erase all the data on the selected target. Double check if you have selected the correct target drive and if there are **really** no files on there that you don’t want to lose.

If your target computer is a BIOS-based native PC, you can use balenaEtcher as explained in the previous step. However, if your target computer is UEFI-based, things are slightly more complicated.

If your working computer is running Windows, you can use the free tool Rufus. There is a portable version of Rufus, which you can download and run directly without installing it first. Then plug in your flash drive, and follow these steps:

• Select the USB device
• Select the downloaded DietPi image
• Select GPT as partition scheme
• Select UEFI as target system
• Click on Start button

⚠️ This will erase all the data on the selected target. Double check if you have selected the correct target drive and if there are **really** no files on there that you don’t want to lose.

Sadly, if your working computer runs Linux or macOS, things get a little bit more difficult. For reasons that are related to the distinction between BIOS and UEFI, balenaEtcher is not a good tool for flashing the USB stick for a UEFI-based native PC and the DietPi Instructions specifically advise against using it. However, the recommended alternative Rufus is only available for Windows. This is not a problem per se, but it will require us to start using the terminal.

The first thing we need to do is identify and format the USB stick from the terminal. Start by opening a new terminal window. This part differs slightly from macOS to Linux:

On Linux, use the command lsblk to list all block devices. It’s a bit complicated to explain what a block device is, so we will not go into it, and it’s not important for following this guide. This will present you with a list of all block devices connected to your computer. It might look a bit confusing at first, but don’t worry.

Most likely you are probably looking for a device that’s called sda, sdb, sdc or something like that. The easiest way to identify your USB stick in this list is probably through its size.

Let’s illustrate this on an example. We are looking for our USB stick, which we know has a capacity of 2.5GB. After typing in lsblk we might receive output that looks something like this:

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
...
sda      8:0    0 232.9G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0 975.3M  0 part /boot
├─sda2   8:2    0  15.3G  0 part [SWAP]
├─sda3   8:3    0  36.4G  0 part /
└─sda4   8:4    0 180.3G  0 part /home
sdb      8:16   0   2.5G  0 disk 
└─sdb1   8:17   0   762M  0 part
...

There might be more entries in this list, depending on your configuration. We see here that there is a device called sda that has a capacity of 232GB, and a device called sdb with a capacity of 2.5GB. This tells us that the name of our USB stick is sdb, which means the device path is dev/sdb

Be careful when identifying your USB stick, you don’t want to mess this up as you might end up formatting the wrong disk later. If you’re unsure, unplug your USB stick and run the command again. By comparing the two outputs, you should be able to tell the name of your USB stick!

> In the following steps, we will format the USB stick. This will erase all the data on the selected target. Double check if you have selected the correct target drive and if there are **really** no files on there that you don’t want to lose.