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When it comes to installing Guix System for the first time on a new machine,
you can basically proceed in three different ways. The first one is to use
an existing operating system on the machine to run the guix system
init command (see Invoking guix system). The second one, is to produce
an installation image (see Construcción de la imagen de instalación). This is a
bootable system which role is to eventually run guix system init.
Finally, the third option would be to produce an image that is a direct
instantiation of the system you wish to run. That image can then be copied
on a bootable device such as an USB drive or a memory card. The target
machine would then directly boot from it, without any kind of installation
procedure.
The guix system image command is able to turn an operating system
definition into a bootable image. This command supports different image
types, such as mbr-hybrid-raw, iso9660 and docker. Any
modern x86_64 machine will probably be able to boot from an
iso9660 image. However, there are a few machines out there that
require specific image types. Those machines, in general using ARM
processors, may expect specific partitions at specific offsets.
This chapter explains how to define customized system images and how to turn them into actual bootable images.