You can run GNOME OS on real hardware now, with a few caveats: Hardware support is limited, there is no dedicated security team, and some features are missing, including disk encryption.
This is bleeding edge, in-development software, and not recommended for daily usage if you're not a developer.
The standard GNOME OS Nightly ISO can be installed and should just work on many computers, depending on how well the hardware components are supported by Linux. If you have Intel graphics and Wifi it's likely to work without problems. We are constantly trying to improve hardware support, so if you run into issues with your specific components, please report them here.
⋮ menu select Restore Disk Image..., open the ISO and click Start Restoring.... Warning: This erases all data on the USB drive.In order to run GNOME OS you need UEFI to be enabled, and secure boot to be disabled.
Now you should have a working GNOME OS setup on real hardware. Since GNOME OS is quite different from a regular distro, here are some tips for how to do common stuff.
GNOME OS doesn't have a traditional package manager, it does system updates via OSTree. GNOME Software should work just fine for that, but you can also do updates via terminal like so:
sudo ostree admin upgrade
After that you can directly reboot into the new image.
There are two different versions of GNOME OS, user and developer. The developer one has additional things developers need, including git, toolbx, podman, and debug symbols. You can switch to the other branch by changing the active branch and then rebooting.
Switch to devel tree:
sudo ostree admin switch gnome-os:gnome-os/master/x86_64-devel
Switch to user tree:
sudo ostree admin switch gnome-os:gnome-os/master/x86_64-user
If an update breaks something, you can always boot into an older version. You can do this quickly by pressing any key during boot to enter the menu, and then choosing a different image from the list.