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Raspberry Pi OS based

Raspberry Pi Imager is the quick and easy way to install MainsailOS to a microSD card, ready to use with your Raspberry Pi.
We strongly recommend that you use a high-quality SD card of class "A1" (or better) from a reputable manufacturer such as Sandisk, Kingston or Samsung. Low end cards might fail pretty quickly in this kind of application.
FLASHING WILL DESTROY ALL DATA ON YOUR SD CARD AND CANNOT BE REVERSED

Preparation

Of course you need an SDCard reader of some kind and Raspberry Pi Imager.
  • Download and install the latest Raspberry Pi Imager. There are versions available for Windows, Linux and MacOS.
  • Insert the SD card into your card reader.

Flashing MainsailOS

Please launch your freshly installed Raspberry Pi Imager. You will be presented with the main screen.
Raspberry Pi Imager

Choose OS

Select "CHOOSE OS" and click through the dialog until you reach MainsailOS.
1 - Select “Other specific-purpose OS”
2 - Select “3D printing”
3 - Select "Mainsail OS"
4 - Select OS type
32bit or 64bit, which should I take?
We ran a few synthetic benchmarks and we could not confirm that there is a benefit in performance for our use case, so we recommend to use the 32bit version. The 64bit version would be only the better choice, if you have a Raspberry with more than 4GB RAM.

Choose Storage

After that is done click “CHOOSE STORAGE” on the main screen and select your desired SD card. Be sure to choose the right one, as the data on it will later be completely erased.

Select Settings

Attention! In this section there are important steps to take!
The gear wheel in the lower right corner allows you to adjust various settings.
  • Ensure to setup your Wifi credentials Also setup your region code to ensure, your wifi uses the right settings for your country regulations
  • Ensure to enable SSH SSH is required if you need to login on the device at some point without a keyboard and display connected. This should be set by default, but we can't respond quickly to changes due Raspberry Foundation.
If you change your Username the "First Boot" will take up more time!
Everything thats preinstalled as user pi, which is the default user, must be converted to your new username.
Please take note that your device is later reachable under the hostname you set here.
Default is http://mainsailos(.local)
When you are ready to continue, click on "SAVE".

Write Image to SD Card

On the main screen press "WRITE". You'll need to confirm that you want to continue, as all data on the selected card will finally be erased.
The whole process will take some time. When the writing has finished successfully, a corresponding message will be displayed that you need to confirm.

Finished
🎉

Remove safely the SD card from your card reader and continue with First Boot.