netboot.xyz

WHAT IS IT?

netboot.xyz is a small iPXE-based bootloader. On startup it opens a menu grouped by family: Linux network installers, desktop and live distros, security and forensics, utilities and rescue, hypervisors and storage, Windows (WIM), plus an iPXE shell. The kernel and install files are fetched over HTTP from upstream mirrors at boot time, so there is no ISO to download, burn or keep current.

WHY IS IT INTERESTING?

• One image instead of a drawer: a single USB stick, ISO or PXE entry covers the whole catalog, rather than one piece of media per distribution.
• Always current: images come from the official mirrors on every boot. You don't rewrite your USB stick because a new Debian shipped.
• BIOS, UEFI, x86_64 and ARM64: builds cover legacy PCBIOS, UEFI, both architectures, and universal multi-arch variants in ISO and USB image form.
• Several ways to launch it: dd to a stick, ISO mounted in a VM or through DRAC/iLO, TFTP/PXE served by your DHCP server, or chainloaded from GRUB, syslinux or an EFI shell.
• Self-hostable: an Ansible playbook or a Docker build renders the templates and compiles the iPXE disks into /var/www/html, so you can serve the menu from your own network.
• Customizable without forking: user_overrides.yml changes mirrors and render settings, and custom/custom.ipxe adds your own entries. Your menus live next to the upstream repo, which keeps updating on its own side.

USE CASES

• Install an OS on a machine with no optical drive and no stick at hand: mount the ISO through DRAC, iLO, VMware or VirtualBox.
• Serve an internal boot menu for a homelab or a fleet, with local mirrors set in the overrides.
• Repair a workstation with Clonezilla, GParted, memtest, boot repair or a rescue disk, all reachable from the same menu.
• Try a distribution live before deciding to install it.
• Provision bare metal over PXE without standing up a full deployment stack.

Published builds ship with SHA256 checksums generated on every compile.