Why it exists

The universal sysadmin tax is media management: a drawer of half-labeled USB sticks, ISOs that rot, and the 2 a.m. rescue that needs an installer you don't have. netboot.xyz replaces all of it with a single iPXE bootloader — a 2 MB file you boot from USB, CD, DHCP/PXE or an existing bootloader — that opens a menu of network installers, live distros and rescue tools, fetched fresh from upstream at boot time. For homelabs with a PXE server or a self-hosted copy (Docker), the drawer of sticks becomes a single menu entry.

Main features

• One menu, endless media — Linux network installs (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch…), desktop & live distros, security/forensics suites, utilities & rescue tools, hypervisors, even Windows (WIM) workflows.
• Boots from anything — flash the .img to USB, burn the ISO for VMs and IPMI, chainload boot.netboot.xyz via GRUB/syslinux/UEFI, or DHCP-boot it fleet-wide.
• Fetched from upstream — installers pull their files at boot, so you're always installing current releases without re-downloading images.
• BIOS & UEFI, x86_64 & arm64 — one artifact family for modern machines and old junk-drawer hardware alike.
• Self-hostable — run your own netboot.xyz endpoint with Docker; pin versions exactly when reproducibility matters.
• Interactive demo in-browser — try the menu on the site before touching hardware.

Who it's for

• Homelabbers who install and reinstall operating systems weekly (for fun, for CI, for damage).
• Sysadmins managing fleets: DHCP-TFTP the menu, and provisioning becomes a boot choice.
• The 2 a.m. rescue crowd — Clonezilla, Parted Magic-class tools and rescue distros one menu away.
• VM wranglers who'd rather point an ISO at netboot.xyz than maintain ISO collections.

How it compares

• Hand-burned USB sticks — the incumbent ritual; netboot.xyz is the drawer-collapsing upgrade.
• Cobbler / MAAS / Foreman — full-scale fleet provisioning platforms; netboot.xyz is the personal-team swiss army knife in front of them.
• Ventoy — boot any ISO from one stick (but you still collect ISOs); netboot.xyz removes the ISO collection entirely.
• YunoHost — neighbor energy in the self-hosting stack: pick the OS with netboot.xyz, install services with YunoHost.

Notes

• The public menu requires internet at boot time; self-host the endpoints for offline or high-compliance environments.
• Windows entries need supporting components per their docs — Linux installers are the zero-friction path.
• iPXE's chainloading makes it composable: point your existing GRUB/UEFI config at menu.ipxe and the menu appears in your normal boot flow.
• Apache-2.0 with a friendly Discord and an in-browser demo — the onboarding is as unusual as it is effective.

Useful links

• Official site: https://netboot.xyz/
• Downloads: https://netboot.xyz/downloads/
• Documentation: https://netboot.xyz/docs/
• Source code: https://github.com/netbootxyz/netboot.xyz