Distributions/Flashing

This page walks you through flashing a flashable image to a USB drive on various platforms. You can obtain one from a distribution's page or by building it yourself by following the instructions at Distributions/BuildingImage.

Prerequisites
This page assumes you have the following:
 * A linux-wiiu flashable image
 * A device with Windows, Linux, Android or Mac OS
 * A USB drive at least 1 GB in size
 * An internet connection
 * Administrator privileges (Windows, Linux and MacOS only)

Recommended:
 * Basic knowledge of how to use your device

Operating systems
Step-by-step guides are available for these operating systems:
 * Windows
 * Linux WIP
 * Android WIP
 * Mac OS

Windows
First navigate to rufus.ie to download the latest version of Rufus. (At the time of writing, this is version 3.11)

Let's open Windows Explorer by pressing Win+E.

Now let's open the Downloads folder.

Now click Date Modified to sort by newest first. You should now see Rufus-x.xx.exe (x.xx being the version number you downloaded) at the top of the list.

Let's double-click it.

First you'll see a pop-up asking for administrator privileges, click yes. (you may need to enter the password of an account with administrator privileges if the current account does not have them)

Now you'll see a pop-up asking about automatic updates, you can click no.

This is the main interface of Rufus:



Select the drive letter of your USB drive from the Device list.

Now click the button labelled SELECT and navigate to your flashable img file, select it and click open in the bottom right corner.

Now it will look something like this. (debian-wiiu-2020-03-07 will be replaced by the name of your image file)



Now we can press START.

This box will pop up:



Press OK if you are sure that this is the correct device. Otherwise press Cancel and select the correct device.

The process is finished once the Status bar is completely green and says READY.

Now you can click CLOSE.

Congratulations, you now have a USB drive with a linux-wiiu rootfs.

Linux
Coming soon...

Android
Coming soon...

Mac OS
Thank you to nicl83 for providing me a Mac environment.

First navigate to balena.io/etcher

Click the green button button labelled "Download for macOS".

This windows might pop up, press allow:



This will download balenaEtcher-x.xx.xxx.dmg (x.xx.xxx will be the version number, 1.5.100 at the time of writing)

We will now click the Downloads folder on the Dock and then the downloaded file.

Something like this should pop up:



You can just double click the balenaEtcher icon.

A windows like this might pop up:



Click Open

Now the balenaEtcher main window will pop up, it looks like this:



Click "Flash from file"

Navigate to the location of your flashable image, select it and press Open

Next, the Select target button should light up blue, click it and select your USB drive

Now the "Flash!" button should light up blue

Click it to start flashing

It will now ask for your password:



Enter it and press OK (currently, if your account doesn't have administrator rights, Etcher will just go back to the state of having the image but no drive selected)

This window might pop up, press OK:



While flashing, there will be a pink progress bar and then it will switch to validating with a green progress bar

Once it is done, the Etcher window will look like this:



And this window will most likely pop up: (this is because macOS cannot read the file system used by linux-wiiu (ext4))



You can just press Eject.

Congratulations, you now have a USB drive with linux-wiiu!