Hi, Doug (doug_armory) and I are the people working on Gitian builds.

There are two OSes: the base OS and the build OS that runs in a VM. The base OS hosts the build OS VM and the build OS VM is where the actual building of Armory takes place.

It is important that the OS of the VM be consistent so that everyone gets the same results from the build. In Armory's case that is Ubuntu 14.04. The OS of the VM is specified in the descriptor under suites.

So when you create the VM for Armory, you want to run something like:

It should be possible for the base OS to be any OS that has the prerequisite programs for gitian-builder. I personally use Debian Jessie. The only prerequisite not available from Debian is python-vm-builder, so I downloaded the .tar.gz from Ubuntu and installed it.