Introduction
Part 4 of the Zero Dollar AI Assistant series- Installing OpenClaw on Linux — Avoiding Every Trap. Part 1 covers the architecture. Part 2 covers Oracle Cloud setup. Part 3 covers Ollama and model selection.
OpenClaw's documentation assumes a Mac. The install script works on Linux, but several things that work automatically on Mac require manual intervention on a Linux server. This article documents every one of them, the right user to install as, the systemd service traps, the config file quirks, and the silent background token drain that will surprise you on day one.
Install as the Right User
This sounds trivial. It isn't.
