Aelum logoAelum

Arch Power with Material Elegance

Fully offline installer · No internet required to install

A Hyprland desktop with DankMaterialShell, plus Qt/GTK theming set up for you.

DownloadWatch it install
Install time
~1min
Installed size
4.7GB
Build it yourself

Build the ISO. Install in a minute.

Run one command — make build — and you've got a bootable ISO. Flash it, boot it, and let the installer do the rest.

Build the ISO
Aelum 2026.10.04 · x86_64

Download Aelum.

Grab the ISO plus its checksum and signature. Verifying takes two minutes and makes sure the file you booted is exactly what Aelum shipped — not a tampered or corrupted copy.

Live ISO

aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso

The bootable live ISO. Flash it to a USB drive, boot from it on any computer, and run the installer — it sets up Aelum fully offline, no internet needed.

Download
Before you boot

Flash it to a USB drive.

Any of these writes the ISO to a USB stick in a minute. Ventoy keeps the stick usable for other files; BalenaEtcher does a clean, single-image flash; dd is a built-in command line tool.

Ventoy

  1. Download and open Ventoy on your computer.
  2. Select your USB drive, then click Install.
  3. Copy aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso onto the USB drive.
  4. Boot your computer from that USB drive.
Get Ventoy

BalenaEtcher

  1. Download and open BalenaEtcher on your computer.
  2. Choose aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso as the image to flash.
  3. Select your USB drive, then click Flash!.
  4. Boot your computer from that USB drive.
Get BalenaEtcher

dd (Linux / macOS)

  1. Plug in your USB drive and find its device name with lsblk.
  2. Run dd if=aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso of=DEVICE bs=4M status=progress, replacing DEVICE with your drive (for example /dev/sdb).
  3. Boot your computer from that USB drive.
Verification

How to check the download.

Three things to confirm: the checksum matches, the signature is present, and it was made by the real Aelum key.

SHA-256 checksum

aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso.sha256

Confirm the file wasn't corrupted in transit.

Download

SHA-512 checksum

aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso.sha512

Stronger integrity check, if you prefer it.

Download

GPG signature

aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso.asc

Proves the ISO was made by Aelum and nothing was altered.

Download

Signing key

aelum-release-key.asc

The public key that signed the ISO. Import it before you verify.

Download

The live ISO installs fully offline — once you've verified it, no internet connection is needed to install Aelum.

  1. Download all four files

    Get the ISO, its checksum file, the GPG signature, and the signing key into the same folder. You need the key to verify the signature.

  2. Check the checksum

    Verify the ISO against the checksum file we provided. This catches corruption or a tampered download — any mismatch means re-download it. SHA-256 is enough; SHA-512 is stronger if you prefer it.

     # Linux — check against the .sha256 file:
sha256sum -c aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso.sha256
# prints: aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso: OK

# macOS (shasum is built in):
shasum -a 256 -c aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso.sha256

# Windows PowerShell — then compare to the hash below:
Get-FileHash -Algorithm SHA256 aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso

# Prefer SHA-512 instead:
sha512sum -c aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso.sha512

    On Linux and macOS the command must report OK. On Windows, the printed Hash must equalfc6e0a5759650e3d68d9c9d7bde557839b7cf78e64cc73334c67ba7a00ff803b exactly.

  3. Import the signing key

    Load Aelum's public key into your keyring. After importing, compare the fingerprint shown by GnuPG against the one below — only trust the signature if the fingerprints match.

    On Windows, install GPG4win first — it ships a command-line gpg.

     gpg --import aelum-release-key.asc

# Confirm the fingerprint you just imported:
gpg --fingerprint
  4. Verify the signature

    GnuPG checks the signature against the key you imported. A genuine result names the Aelum key and says the signature is good.

     gpg --verify aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso.asc aelum-2026.10.04-x86_64.iso

    Look for Good signature. The output names the key by fingerprint (using EDDSA key A675F61C22C26FCE187262E448CC48FDFD881E0D) and by owner (Ivan Kornienko <[email protected]>). A BAD signature, or a No public key error, means do notboot the ISO — re-download or report it.

    A warning that the key is not certified with a trusted signature is normal for a freshly imported key and does not by itself mean the signature is bad. As long as the fingerprint above matches, Good signature is what you want.

  5. Know the real key

    The signature is only meaningful if the key is really Aelum's. Check the fingerprint against a second, independent source — the GitLab releases page, a maintainer, or a key server — before you trust it.

    Signing key fingerprint
    A675 F61C 22C2 6FCE 187262E4 48CC 48FD FD88 1E0D
    Key owner
    Ivan Kornienko <[email protected]>
    Key expiry
    Expires 2029-08-27
The installer

A few questions. That's it.

Just boot the ISO and answer a few questions in a clean wizard. No terminal to touch, no network needed to install.

Aelum installer — answering questions and completing installation

Pick a language

Choose from 28 languages. This sets the installer UI, your system locale, and the mirror country.

Create your user

Set up your username and password in a couple of fields.

Choose a disk

Select the target drive and pick between ext4 or btrfs.

Confirm

Review the summary, then hit install. That's it.

Watch it go

The installer runs entirely from the live ISO — no internet needed.

Boot into it

Reboot into a finished Hyprland + DankMaterialShell desktop.

ext4 or btrfs?

Btrfs ships with a sensible automatic subvolume layout — root, home, and snapshots are laid out for you. That means automatic CoW compression, transparent snapshots, and easy rollbacks, so your system stays clean and recoverable out of the box. Pick ext4 only if you don't need snapshots or have workloads that btrfs doesn't handle well, such as some database setups.

btrfsrecommended
ext4
The live ISO

A painless install

No mirror fetches or missing packages during install — everything is baked into the ISO. It's a curated desktop, not a bare Arch you have to theme yourself.

Fully offline installer

Every package is embedded in the ISO and served from an embedded local mirror. Zero network dependency during install.

Zero-touch boot

Greetd launches a barebones Hyprland that starts the installer automatically on first boot. No manual commands, no thinking about it.

Silent boot

A clean UEFI splash with the Plymouth BGRT theme shows your OEM logo — no console spam, no boot-time noise.

Auto monitor scaling

Live ISO detects the connected monitor and applies the right Hyprland scale automatically, so the installer is crisp on 1080p, 1440p, or 4K.

~1 minute install

Because every package is already included, install takes about a minute and the complete OS uses roughly 4.7 GB after install.

Minimal live ISO

The live ISO is intentionally barebones — its only job is to boot and launch the installer.

What you install

A finished desktop

The installer hands you a complete, pre-configured system — ready to use the moment install finishes. GTK and Qt apps get matugen-themed automatically, so there's no manual theming to do.

Hyprland

Dynamic tiling window manager.

DankMaterialShell

A complete desktop shell for Wayland compositors.

DMS Greeter

A fast login screen that matches the desktop theme.

GTK + Qt theming

Matugen-themed automatically — no manual theming.

Matugen

Generates matching color schemes from your wallpaper.

Firefox

The browser, pre-configured and themed to match.

Plymouth BGRT

Silent boot splash reading your OEM logo from UEFI.

ZRAM swap

Compressed RAM swap instead of a swap file.

The installer speaks 28 languages

EnglishDeutschFrançaisEspañolItalianoPortuguêsРусскийУкраїнська简体中文繁體中文日本語한국어Tiếng ViệtPolskiNederlandsSvenskaNorskMagyarΕλληνικάTürkçeעבריתفارسیالعربيةБългарскиCatalàEsperantoSuomiBahasa Indonesia
aelum-installer-cli
# GUI
sudo /usr/local/bin/aelum-installer-cli

# CLI — full install
sudo /usr/local/bin/aelum-installer-cli --install /dev/vda

# CLI — btrfs root instead of ext4
sudo /usr/local/bin/aelum-installer-cli --install /dev/vda --filesystem btrfs

Prefer headless or scripted installs? The live ISO also ships a CLI.