"Running Urbit" consists of two core steps:
- Acquiring an Urbit ID, your self-sovereign digital identity that is used to interact across Urbit's encrypted peer-to-peer distributed network.
- Using that identity to boot and run Urbit OS, an open source, purely functional operating system designed to run forever.
While these are the two key steps, Urbit's nature as a open and permissionless system means there are many ways to actually satisfy these steps. You can run acquire and run 'galaxy' level infrastructure and Azimuth governance node, perhaps in a cloud datacenter, routing packets for nodes in your sponsorship hierarchy; or you can quickly boot a comet locally on your laptop in order to get quick troubleshooting support on the network. You can run your urbit on an old laptop, a homelab, a virtual server, or even on a raspberry pi in a custom 3d printed case. It's up to you, because your urbit is yours.
The following pages will help walk you through your options, the nature of Urbit as a practice in building a forever computer, and how to get started on your journey of digital self-sovereignty. And it will be a journey on which you learn why you might want a computer that you trust. A computer that is yours. And a network for it all. Welcome, we're glad to have you.
As a note, since you are here, we assume you are interested in reading and not scared of being 'a little into computers'. If it ever becomes too daunting, just know there is always the Quickstart Option.
