1. Step 1: Boot from the USB stick

   Plug in the USB, power on, hit your system’s boot-menu key (usually F12, F11, F2, or Del), select the USB device. You’ll land in a live session — you can try Shadowfetch before installing.

   Secure Boot: the Shadowfetch ISO isn’t Secure-Boot-signed yet. If the USB doesn’t appear in the boot menu or refuses to boot, enter your firmware (UEFI) setup and disable Secure Boot first.

2. Step 2: Launch the installer

   From the desktop, double-click “Install Shadowfetch Linux” (or run calamares from a terminal). Calamares walks you through region, keyboard, partitioning, user account, and a final summary.

3. Step 3: Partition

   For most users, pick “Erase disk” with default options. If you’re dual-booting, use “Manual partitioning” and shrink an existing partition. Shadowfetch defaults to ext4; pick btrfs if you want snapshots. To encrypt the whole disk, tick “Encrypt system” and set a strong passphrase — you’ll enter it at every boot (it’s LUKS; the keyboard at the unlock prompt uses your installer keyboard layout).

4. Step 4: Wait ~10 minutes

   The installer copies the live system to disk, installs the bootloader (GRUB), and configures your user. Make a coffee.

5. Step 5: Reboot into your installed system

   Remove the USB when prompted, boot back up. On first login the Shadowfetch Welcome wizard runs — pick your accent colour, optionally install curated Flatpak apps, and choose the recommended one-model local AI setup. A Browser Migration assistant validates bookmark and password exports before import.

First-boot notes

NVIDIA

If your system has an NVIDIA GPU, the proprietary driver is already installed. If not, a first-boot service detects this and removes the NVIDIA stack to reclaim ~2 GB.

Multi-GPU laptops

PRIME is set to on-demand mode automatically. Run apps with __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia <app> to use the discrete GPU.

Updates

Run sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade, or use Discover (KDE’s app/update store). Shadowfetch updates flow from https://www.shadowfetch.com/linux/apt/; Debian updates flow from the usual mirrors.

Flathub

Pre-configured. Open Discover, search, install — works.

Add the Shadowfetch APT repo to an existing Debian system

If you already run Debian and just want the Shadowfetch metapackages without reinstalling, you can pull them via apt:

curl -fsSL https://www.shadowfetch.com/linux/apt/shadowfetch.gpg.asc \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/shadowfetch.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/shadowfetch.gpg] https://www.shadowfetch.com/linux/apt/ umbra main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/shadowfetch.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install shadowfetch-desktop      # full creative workstation
# or pick à la carte:
sudo apt install shadowfetch-themes shadowfetch-defaults
sudo apt install shadowfetch-creative-base

Hardware notes →Download shadowfetch-2.1.4-amd64.iso

Debian is a registered trademark of Software in the Public Interest, Inc. Shadowfetch Linux is an independent derivative and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Debian project.