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pearOS-arch-base 📌

It is pearOS, but with Arch Base. Yes! It uses vanilla arch, less bugs, easier, better etc.

Why? 📌

I had enough with debian-based distros. pearOS with arch base, solve some of the big problems with pearOS, for example:

"this require you to reinstall with every new release"

"sudo apt upgrade would/will destroy your installation"

Not anymore. With arch, there no more base-hopping Now, with arch, the system is now Rolling Release, as it should be :>

You can do now sudo pacman -Syu and you will stil have the pearOS branding.

Ok... How do I build it? 📌

Make sure you satisfy the dependencies in the section below. After that, run sudo ./build-binary and pray wait.

Note: The build script must be run as root (using sudo) since it needs to create chroot environments and install packages.

Dependencies: 📌

Required packages:

# Core build tools
sudo pacman -S arch-install-scripts    # Provides pacstrap and arch-chroot
sudo pacman -S mtools                  # Provides mcopy, mmd for FAT filesystem operations
sudo pacman -S squashfs-tools          # Provides mksquashfs for creating squashfs images
sudo pacman -S xorriso                 # Creates the final ISO image
sudo pacman -S e2fsprogs               # Provides mkfs.ext4 and tune2fs for filesystem creation
sudo pacman -S git                     # Required for cloning pearOS-installer during build
sudo pacman -S pv                      # Required to see progress bars

Optional packages:

# For EROFS image type support (if used in profiledef.sh)
sudo pacman -S erofs-utils             # Provides mkfs.erofs

# For GPG signing of the rootfs image (optional)
# GPG is usually pre-installed, but ensure it's available:
sudo pacman -S gnupg

Quick install command:

sudo pacman -S arch-install-scripts mtools squashfs-tools xorriso e2fsprogs git pv

Verify dependencies:

To check if all required commands are available, you can use:

command -v pacstrap arch-chroot mksquashfs xorriso mkfs.ext4 tune2fs git pv

If any command is missing, install the corresponding package listed above.

Updating Ploader (bootloader) 📌

The live ISO boots via Ploader (custom rEFInd fork, source at pearOS-archlinux/pearos-bootloader) on UEFI, with syslinux kept as a BIOS/non-EFI fallback. build-binary does not compile Ploader itself — it just picks up prebuilt artifacts from pear/efiboot/ploader/. To update the bootloader:

git clone https://github.com/pearOS-archlinux/pearos-bootloader.git
cd pearos-bootloader
make

This needs the gnu-efi toolchain (sudo pacman -S gnu-efi on Arch). Once built, copy the artifacts into this repo:

cp pearos-bootloader/ploader/ploader_x64.efi   pear/efiboot/ploader/ploader_x64.efi
cp -r pearos-bootloader/theme                  pear/efiboot/ploader/theme

pear/efiboot/ploader/ also holds two templates that build-binary sed-substitutes (%ARCHISO_LABEL%/%INSTALL_DIR%/%ARCH%) at build time and does not need regenerating unless boot options change:

• ploader.conf — sets silent_menu false so the picker is always shown on the live ISO (Ploader defaults to silent/seamless boot otherwise)
• ploader_linux.conf — the kernel auto-boot stanzas (FOSS/NVIDIA × Plymouth/no-Plymouth), Ploader's equivalent of a systemd-boot loader entry

build-binary validates all of the above exist before building and errors out clearly if ploader_x64.efi is missing.

Star History

Copyright and Licensing 📌

This project is released under the GNU Pubilc License v3 or later

Copyright: Alexandru Balan @ Pear Software and Services S.R.L. based in Romania, Dacia Boulevard 133, floor D, Sector 2, Bucharest CIF: 50888207