LeoOS

LeoOS is a Debian-based Operating System distribution for the single-board computer running inside Leo Rover (currently Raspberry Pi 4B). It uses Ubuntu and Fictionlab package archives, comes with a ROS distribution, preconfigured network, a desktop environment, a service for starting base functionalities at boot, and many more.

This repository contains a Nix flake for building LeoOS images (OS images for Raspberry Pi computer running inside Leo Rover).
For the built, compressed images, visit the Releases page.

Versions

The major version (the first part in the three-part version number) is tied to the Ubuntu and ROS distributions the OS is based on. For now, the version semantics look as follows:

• 2.0.0 and up - Ubuntu 24.04 Noble Numbat and ROS 2 Jazzy
• 1.0.0 and up - Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa and ROS Noetic
• Before 1.0.0 - Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver and ROS Melodic

Building

Pre-requisites

• Nix with Flakes enabled
• (optional) Hardware that supports KVM (e.g. Intel VT-x or AMD-V) for much faster builds due to hardware virtualization.
• (optional) ARM64 machine for faster builds. Otherwise, the image will be built in QEMU emulation mode, which is slower.

Prepare the environment

Make sure /dev/kvm is available and the user has read/write access to it.
You can check if KVM is available by running:

ls /dev/kvm

If it is not available, you may need to enable virtualization in the BIOS/UEFI settings.

You might also need to add your user to the kvm group to allow access to the KVM device:

sudo usermod -aG kvm $USER

Then, log out and log back in for the changes to take effect.

Also, make sure you have sufficient disk space available for the build.
The compressed image is around 1.5 GB, but the build process requires more space for intermediate Nix derivations outputs.
At least 20 GB of free space is recommended.

Build the image

To build the image, run the following command:

nix build -Lv .#OSLiteCompressedImage

This will build the image and place it in the result directory.
The first time you run this command, it will take a while to build the image, as it will download all the dependencies.
Subsequent builds will be faster, as Nix caches the dependencies.

Flashing the image

To flash the compressed image to an SD card, you can use the following command. Replace /dev/sdX with the actual device name of your SD card.

WARNING: This will erase all data on the SD card!

xz -dc ./result/LeoOS-<version>-<variant>.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress

Alternatively, you can use programs like balenaEtcher to flash the image.