steamos-installer

VaporOS - a modified version of the Stephenson's Rocket SteamOS installer, with a number of modifications.

Improvements

VaporOS supports BIOS and UEFI machines.
VapoOS uses latest build version from steampowered beta repository if available and/or if different from steampowered main repository.
VaporOS has a firewall installed by default, which can be easily configured from the desktop.
VaporOS asks you to set a password for the desktop user when you open the desktop for the first time.
VaporOS has trim support for Samsung and Intel SSD's.
VaporOS offers a better out of the box desktop experience. Things like a text editor, media player, an archive manager and Gnome Tweak Tools are installed by default.
VaporOS has an ssh server installed by default.
VaporOS installs many tools to improve the command line experience. This includes bash completion, iotop, htop, mesa-utils, libav, pastebinit, screen, git and lsof.
VaporOS has XBMC installed by default.
VaporOS has no mouse acceleration.
VaporOS will not freeze on first boot for AMD graphics cards users, SteamOS still has this issue.

For a more detailed list of added package, take a look at the file changes.txt.

Planned improvements

Ideas welcome

How to install?

ISO's for the latest releases are always available on http://trashcan-gaming.nl/

Otherwise, clone this repo, and run ./gen.sh. This will only work on Ubuntu. If you're a Debian Jessie user, you can make this work by install the packages syslinux and syslinux-common from Ubuntu.

Installing from a DVD

Just burn the ISO to a blank DVD from your favourite tool, and boot it.

Installing from USB (Mac)

Open a Terminal window from the Utilities section of Applications.

Type diskutil list to get a list of devices - one of them will be your USB stick (e.g. /dev/disk2). Follow the Linux instructions below, with this /dev/rdiskX entry instead of /dev/sdX

Installing from USB (Linux)

Plug in the USB stick and run dmesg; look for a line similar to this:

[377039.485179] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk

In this case, sdc is the device name for the USB stick you just inserted. Now we put the installer on the stick, as root (e.g. use sudo) run

dd bs=1M if=/path/to/vaporosX.iso of=/dev/sdX

sdX should be the USB stick device from the information you received from dmesg. Be sure to use sdX, not sdX1 or sdX2. Then boot into the stick.

Installing from USB (Windows)

Download Win32 Disk Imager and use it to copy the .iso to your USB stick (1GB minimum size).

Once the installer is up...

Pick the "Automatic Install" option to wipe the first hard disk in your system and install SteamOS to it.

For more sophisticated booting - e.g. dual-boot or custom partition sizes - select the "Expert" option. Use of this mode is documented in the support video here.

Beyond that, just follow Valve's instructions from their site - Stephenson's Rocket should behave exactly like the real SteamOS, except it works on more systems

Known issues and workarounds

Running in Virtualbox is not supported.
On some systems with AMD gpu's you'll have underscan. This is not specific to VaporOS. A fix can be found here.
On some Nvidia systems, sound over hdmi doesn't work. This is not specific to VaporOS. A fix can be found here.

Special Thanks

All contributors to Stephenson's Rocket, Directhex in particular.
[40-1]PvtBalderick, for help with ideas and testing.
Dubigrasu, for help with development, testing and ideas.
Nate Wardawg, for the name.
Jorgën Såagrid, for allowing the continued use of the name VaporOS.
Valve for creating SteamOS in the first place.

Balderick/steamos-installer