<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xml:id="sec-obtaining">
  <title>Obtaining NixOS</title>
  <para>
    NixOS ISO images can be downloaded from the
    <link xlink:href="https://nixos.org/nixos/download.html">NixOS
    download page</link>. There are a number of installation options. If
    you happen to have an optical drive and a spare CD, burning the
    image to CD and booting from that is probably the easiest option.
    Most people will need to prepare a USB stick to boot from.
    <xref linkend="sec-booting-from-usb" /> describes the preferred
    method to prepare a USB stick. A number of alternative methods are
    presented in the
    <link xlink:href="https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_Installation_Guide#Making_the_installation_media">NixOS
    Wiki</link>.
  </para>
  <para>
    As an alternative to installing NixOS yourself, you can get a
    running NixOS system through several other means:
  </para>
  <itemizedlist>
    <listitem>
      <para>
        Using virtual appliances in Open Virtualization Format (OVF)
        that can be imported into VirtualBox. These are available from
        the
        <link xlink:href="https://nixos.org/nixos/download.html">NixOS
        download page</link>.
      </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
      <para>
        Using AMIs for Amazon’s EC2. To find one for your region and
        instance type, please refer to the
        <link xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/virtualisation/ec2-amis.nix">list
        of most recent AMIs</link>.
      </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
      <para>
        Using NixOps, the NixOS-based cloud deployment tool, which
        allows you to provision VirtualBox and EC2 NixOS instances from
        declarative specifications. Check out the
        <link xlink:href="https://nixos.org/nixops">NixOps
        homepage</link> for details.
      </para>
    </listitem>
  </itemizedlist>
</chapter>
