APEX-OS v0.1.0Before the rename
First public release
The first public APEX-OS installer: a graphical netinstall ISO in two editions, Daily and Gaming (NVIDIA). It was verified in QEMU but had not yet been installed on real hardware.
Highlights
Two installer ISOs, Daily and Gaming (NVIDIA)
Daily is the general-purpose desktop. Gaming is performance-tuned and includes the NVIDIA driver. Both use the same installer, and each ISO records its own edition as the update origin, so updates keep you on the edition you installed.
Each ISO is about 1.8 GB. Write it to a USB stick with dd, Rufus, or balenaEtcher in DD/image mode, then boot the stick. Check the download with sha256sum -c apex-os-daily-netinstall.iso.sha256. The Gaming edition file is apex-os-gaming-nvidia-netinstall.iso (1,926,615,040 bytes, sha256 f6e808c05c6306f2d1fd2dae7d95f14758e0ca6bb42c62c316b60270fc07e2f8).
A six-screen graphical installer
The installer walks through network, disk, whole disk or a single partition, your account, Secure Boot, and a final confirmation. Your account is created during the install, so the first boot does not lock you out.
A Wi-Fi connection you set up in the installer carries into the installed system. There is no text-mode fallback to get stranded in. The installer runs on software rendering, so it does not need a working GPU driver, and the same ISO boots UEFI and legacy BIOS, with or without safe graphics.
Nothing is erased until you type ERASE
No disk is touched until you type ERASE on a screen that lists every partition and whether it will be erased, kept or shared.
Known issues
Not yet installed on real hardware
Everything was verified in QEMU and by measurement (four boot paths, 33 automated tests, every installer screen at two panel sizes), but nobody had installed this release on real hardware yet.
No ISO for the Gaming-Mesa (non-NVIDIA) edition
A Gaming-Mesa image exists in the registry but has no published ISO. You can build one with EDITION=gaming-mesa.
Secure Boot enrolment depends on a signed kernel
The installer offers Secure Boot enrolment, but it only works if the downloaded image carries a signed kernel. If it does not, the installer says it has nothing to enrol and the system installs and boots normally with Secure Boot off. Once signed images are published, the same ISO enrols without any change.
Tablets without a physical keyboard cannot finish the account screen
There is no on-screen keyboard.
US keyboard layout for passwords
The installer assumes a US keyboard layout when you type your password.
Requirements
- Internet access during the install: each ISO holds only the installer and downloads the OS (about 5 GB) from the registry.
Provenance
- Release
- apex-v0.1.0
- OS revision
- 596aee513107b363270d8ce735e04f34fe6c00bc
- Installer
- apex-os-daily-netinstall.iso · 1,926,746,112 bytes
- ISO SHA-256
- 850b6fd776cb576b503136c56e163d158cd892ac24b27e9bf3df816d964a7749
- Channel
- installer
- Released
- 2026-07-28T07:46:48.000Z
Published as an installer ISO on GitHub. This page explains the release; it is never consulted by an update. What a machine installs is decided by the registry and the image signature (see Security). Machine-readable: apex-v0.1.0.json.
If something is wrong
This release is an installer. If an install goes wrong, see Install and Recovery.
What this release does when you roll back
sudo bootc rollback # if anything broke