devicefreedom-os is designed for DeviceFreedom Tab and DeviceFreedom Phone, but it can also run on a Raspberry Pi 5. Some features are unavailable on DIY hardware — see DeviceFreedom Tab & Pro vs. DIY for details.
For the best experience, we recommend installing directly onto an NVMe or USB drive rather than a microSD card.
- Raspberry Pi 5
- Official Raspberry Pi power supply
- Ethernet cable
- NVMe drive with a compatible HAT, or a USB drive
- A computer to flash the image
- Download the latest devicefreedom-os image for Raspberry Pi 5.
- Download and install Balena Etcher or Raspberry Pi Imager on your computer.
- Connect your NVMe or USB drive to your computer (use a USB adapter for NVMe drives).
- Open Balena Etcher, select the devicefreedom-os image, select your drive, and flash it.
- Safely eject the drive from your computer.
- Attach the flashed drive to your Raspberry Pi 5.
- Remove any microSD cards — otherwise the Pi may boot from the card instead.
- Connect an ethernet cable to your Pi and your router.
- Connect the official power supply to power on.
- Wait a few minutes for the first boot to complete, then open http://devicefreedom.local in your browser.
See Connecting to your DeviceFreedom if you need help accessing it.
- Early Pi 5 models may need a bootloader update to support NVMe booting. See the Raspberry Pi documentation for instructions.
- NVMe compatibility varies by HAT — check that your drive is compatible before purchasing.
- Always use the official power supply. Third-party supplies can cause stability issues.
You can flash devicefreedom-os onto a microSD card and use an external SSD for storage, but we don't recommend it. microSD cards have a limited number of write cycles and degrade faster, leading to lower performance and reliability over time.