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This guide walks you through downloading AmnesiaOS, writing it to a USB drive, and booting into a zero-trace Linux environment where everything runs in RAM and nothing is ever written to your disk. From the moment the kernel starts to the moment you power off, your storage device is left completely untouched.
1

Download the ISO

Grab the latest amnesia-os.iso from the AmnesiaOS GitHub releases page:https://github.com/damianiglesias/amnesiaOS/releasesDownload the amnesia-os.iso asset from the most recent release. Verify the file size is consistent with the release notes before proceeding.
2

Check Your Hardware

Before flashing, confirm your machine meets the minimum requirements:
ComponentMinimumRecommended
CPUx86_64x86_64
RAM512 MB1 GB+
MediaUSB drive or bootable mediaUSB drive or bootable media
FirmwareBIOS or UEFIBIOS or UEFI
AmnesiaOS loads its entire ~10 MB initramfs into RAM at boot, so even a 512 MB machine will have roughly 470 MB of free working memory after the OS is running.
3

Flash to USB

Use dd to write the ISO to your USB drive. Replace /dev/sdX with the actual device node for your USB drive (e.g. /dev/sdb):
dd if=amnesia-os.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress
/dev/sdX must be replaced with the correct device for your USB drive — not a partition (e.g. /dev/sdb, not /dev/sdb1). You can identify the device with lsblk or fdisk -l. The dd command will completely erase everything on the target device with no confirmation prompt. Double-check the device path before running the command.
Wait for dd to finish and for the write cache to flush (sync) before removing the drive.
4

Configure Boot Order

Insert the USB drive into the target machine and enter the BIOS or UEFI firmware setup. Consult your motherboard or system documentation for the key to enter firmware setup at power-on.In the firmware setup:
  1. Navigate to the Boot or Boot Order section.
  2. Move your USB drive to the first boot position.
  3. Save changes and exit (usually F10).
The machine will reboot and attempt to boot from the USB drive.
5

Boot AmnesiaOS

GRUB will present a boot menu. Select AmnesiaOS and press Enter.What happens next:
  1. GRUB loads the kernel (vmlinuz) and initramfs (initramfs.img) entirely into RAM.
  2. The kernel initialises and hands control to the init script.
  3. The init script mounts proc, sysfs, and devtmpfs, then starts the udhcpc DHCP client to configure the network.
  4. A BusyBox shell is started on tty1.
You will see the following message as the system comes up:
AmnesiaOS - RAM boot OK
The system is now fully running in RAM. No further disk access occurs.

​
What You Get

After boot you land in a BusyBox shell with:
  • 300+ Unix utilities — BusyBox 1.35.0 provides sh, ls, cat, grep, sed, awk, find, tar, vi, ip, ping, df, free, ps, kill, dmesg, and many more, all from a single statically linked binary.
  • Automatic DHCP network — udhcpc has already negotiated an IP address on the first available interface and written /etc/resolv.conf for DNS resolution.
  • Full RAM working space — the root filesystem is a tmpfs mount, so you can write files, install scripts, and work freely. Everything lives in memory and disappears on shutdown.

​
Shutting Down

To shut down AmnesiaOS, run either of the following from the BusyBox shell: 
poweroff

halt
Either command halts the system. Once power is removed, RAM is cleared and no trace of the session remains on any storage device. The USB drive is unmodified and ready to boot again immediately.

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