# Obtaining NixOS {#sec-obtaining}

NixOS ISO images can be downloaded from the [NixOS download
page](https://nixos.org/nixos/download.html). 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. [](#sec-booting-from-usb) describes the preferred method to
prepare a USB stick. A number of alternative methods are presented in
the [NixOS Wiki](https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_Installation_Guide#Making_the_installation_media).

As an alternative to installing NixOS yourself, you can get a running
NixOS system through several other means:

-   Using virtual appliances in Open Virtualization Format (OVF) that
    can be imported into VirtualBox. These are available from the [NixOS
    download page](https://nixos.org/nixos/download.html).

-   Using AMIs for Amazon's EC2. To find one for your region and
    instance type, please refer to the [list of most recent
    AMIs](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/virtualisation/ec2-amis.nix).

-   Using NixOps, the NixOS-based cloud deployment tool, which allows
    you to provision VirtualBox and EC2 NixOS instances from declarative
    specifications. Check out the [NixOps
    homepage](https://nixos.org/nixops) for details.