# ⛔ STOP — READ THIS FIRST — THIS IMAGE CAN ERASE A DRIVE

**ALPHA OS RC1 is a COMPLETE DISK IMAGE for a VIRTUAL MACHINE.**
It is **NOT** an installer. It does **NOT** set itself up beside
another system. **There is no dual-boot setup in RC1.**

**NEVER write this image to a real drive** — not with dd,
balenaEtcher, Rufus, or any other "flash an image" tool, and
**never** to the drive your computer boots from. Writing a disk
image REPLACES EVERYTHING on the drive it is written to. If you
write this image to the drive that holds your Windows or Linux
system, **that system — and its files — will be destroyed.**

**The safe way to run RC1:** inside a **virtual machine**
(QEMU/KVM, VirtualBox, or VMware), exactly as the steps below
describe. Your real system stays untouched. If you truly want
ALPHA on bare metal, use a **separate, spare drive that holds
nothing you want to keep** — never your main drive.

A dual-boot-safe installer — one that puts ALPHA *beside* your
existing system and leaves it bootable and untouched — **is in
the works. Until we ship it and prove it, ALPHA OS does not
claim dual-boot safety.** Anyone who tells you otherwise about
RC1 is wrong, including any older page or manual of ours.

---
# ALPHA OS RC1 — READ ME FIRST

**ALPHA OS** by 777 Software. Free forever. Your machine, your data.
FREEDOM · TRUTH · SOVEREIGNTY · AI+HUMAN COLLABORATION

This is a complete virtual-machine disk image. Load it in QEMU/KVM,
VirtualBox, or VMware and it boots to a fresh-machine setup — you create
your own user on first boot. **No account, password, or personal data
from anyone is inside.** It has been census-scanned and proven clean.

## What you downloaded

- `ALPHA-OS-RC1-FULL-DISK-IMAGE.img.zst.part-000` … `part-007` — the image archive, split
  into 8 parts (7 × 512 MiB + 1 × ~169 MiB) so downloads can resume.
- `SHA256SUMS.txt` — the hash of every file. **Check your copies.**
- `SIZES.md` — sizes beside hashes.

## 1. Reassemble + verify (Linux/macOS terminal)

```bash
cat ALPHA-OS-RC1-FULL-DISK-IMAGE.img.zst.part-* > ALPHA-OS-RC1-FULL-DISK-IMAGE.img.zst
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS.txt        # every line must say OK
```

(Windows: verify the same hashes with `certutil -hashfile <file> SHA256`,
and join the parts with `copy /b ALPHA-OS-RC1-FULL-DISK-IMAGE.img.zst.part-* ALPHA-OS-RC1-FULL-DISK-IMAGE.img.zst`.)

## 2. Decompress → you get the disk image

You need **zstd** (Linux: `apt install zstd` / `dnf install zstd`;
macOS: `brew install zstd`; Windows: the zstd release binary).

```bash
zstd -d ALPHA-OS-RC1-FULL-DISK-IMAGE.img.zst        # produces ALPHA-OS-RC1-FULL-DISK-IMAGE.img
```

`ALPHA-OS-RC1-FULL-DISK-IMAGE.img` is a **qcow2** disk image (64 GiB virtual). Its
SHA-256 must be:
`bdec83a848180bde2913c90543d80fc77bc18a9a102cb3f1c549119460fb2928`
(the build name was `alpha-rc1-v3.qcow2` — same bytes.)

## 3. Load it in your VM

**QEMU/KVM** — use the qcow2 directly:

```bash
qemu-img info ALPHA-OS-RC1-FULL-DISK-IMAGE.img      # sanity check
# attach it as a virtio disk to a new VM, 4 GiB RAM, 2 CPUs
```

**VirtualBox** — convert the qcow2 to VDI:

```bash
qemu-img convert -O vdi ALPHA-OS-RC1-FULL-DISK-IMAGE.img ALPHA-OS-RC1.vdi
```

Then create a VM (Type: Linux, Version: Fedora (64-bit)), **do not**
create a disk — attach `ALPHA-OS-RC1.vdi` as the existing disk.
Settings: 4 GiB RAM (2 GiB minimum), 2 CPUs.

**VMware** — convert to VMDK:

```bash
qemu-img convert -O vmdk ALPHA-OS-RC1-FULL-DISK-IMAGE.img ALPHA-OS-RC1.vmdk
```

Create a new VM (Other Linux 6.x 64-bit), attach the VMDK as the
existing disk, 4 GiB RAM, 2 CPUs.

Need qemu-img? It ships in the `qemu-utils` package (Debian/Ubuntu),
`qemu-img` (Fedora), Homebrew's `qemu` (macOS), and the QEMU for
Windows installer.

## 4. First boot

The machine boots to the **GNOME Initial Setup** ("Welcome!"). Pick
your language, keyboard, and time zone, then create **your own** user
name and password. That's it — the desktop, the app grid, and the
Security Center are already installed. Nothing phones home; everything
on the machine is yours.

## Honest notes

- The download is ~3.9 GB in parts. On a slow connection it takes a
  while — every part is resumable and hash-checked, so a dropped line
  loses nothing.
- This is Release Candidate 1: the house has tested it hard (clean-
  room scans, boot proofs, all 12 included apps launch-verified), and
  the flagship's own personal test program continues. Report anything
  odd to 777 Software.