Steam OS on the Alienware Alpha

[Deus Maximus]

There's a few pre-requisites to running Steam OS on the Alienware Alpha.

• You'll need two USB sticks to perform this. One that's at least 4GB (Steam OS), and another that's 8GB (Recovery) or higher.
  
• If you haven't done so, log into Steam at least once if you care about your bundled games. If you proceed with these steps before doing so, you may not get the games included with the Alpha.
  
• Get an 8GB or higher USB stick, and under desktop mode, run Alienware Respawn. From here, you can create a recovery disk. Be warned that this won't save any personal information, or backup any existing Steam games you may have downloaded. It just allows you to set the Alienware Alpha back up to its factory defaults.

Now, for the installation steps.

• Download the Steam OS DVD image from http://repo.steampowered.com/download/. I don't recommend using any other Steam OS image you may come across (including those on the official Steam OS page).
  
• Use a second 4GB USB disk, and download Rufus at https://rufus.akeo.ie/. Open Rufus, and select the 4GB USB disk under "Device" if it's not selected already (I recommend removing all other USB drives at this point). Next to "Create a bootable disk using" and the drop down menu, you should see a disk drive icon on a button. Click on that, and navigate to your downloaded SteamOSDVD.iso file. If Rufus asks about updating files, click 'Yes'. Finally, click 'Start' to proceed.
  
• When you're ready to install, keep the USB drive in, and reboot the machine. Be sure to hit F2 ASAP to get into the BIOS. You'll need to hunt down and change the "Secure boot" option, and turn it OFF (I'll update this guide with the exact location of this setting later. It's not hard to find).
  
• Finally, run through the Steam OS setup and follow the prompts. Be sure that you're connected to the network, or your Wifi network is available whilst installing. Steam OS WILL recognise your wireless network whilst installing, but it's much easier if you use a wired connection for setup.
  
• Installation should take a while, so be sure to grab a coffee or something while it's going at it. ;)

Performance on the entry level Alpha with no memory or HDD upgrades is pretty good so far. In a couple of days, I'll be running Metro 2033/Lost Light Redux on it and seeing how it's going. As for other AAA titles, there's Borderlands 2, Borderlands the Prequel, and Bioshock Infinite will be coming very soon (you can already download the content for it, just not the binaries).

Let me know if you have any questions!

[Balderick]

why not spend time creating separate / /boot/recovery /home partitions? this would then allow easy restoration of system files using the clonezilla restore image in /boot/recovery.

You could then use the "clonezilla live " grub menu option to create images of your /home partition on external media after installing steamos.
Partitioning looking something like / 10GB as ext 4 with boot flag, /boot/recovery 10GB as ext4, /home as big as you want as ext4 and swap 10GB would allow restore image to be created at install time automatically

ooh n.b.

I don't recommend using any other Steam OS image you may come across (including those on the official Steam OS page).

Valve took communtiies work and applied to their custom installer. No SteamOSDVD iso would exist if it were not for "unofficial installers" SteamOSDVD is itself an "unofficial installer" afaik.

[Deus Maximus]

Originally posted by 40-1PvtBalderick:

why not spend time creating separate / /boot/recovery /home partitions? this would then allow easy restoration of system files using the clonezilla restore image in /boot/recovery.

I felt doing more advanced partitioning was outside of the scope of this article. I wrote it more for the average PC gamer, who doesn't necessarily have a lot of experience when it comes to Linux.

Originally posted by 40-1PvtBalderick:

Valve took communtiies work and applied to their custom installer. No SteamOSDVD iso would exist if it were not for "unofficial installers" SteamOSDVD is itself an "unofficial installer" afaik.

I was referring to Valve's other images on their SteamOS page, not necessarily the unofficial installers, like VaporOS or Stephenson's Rocket. Both are good options, though! :)

Anything based off alchemist 145 or later should work fine, and I haven't personally tested it with anything earlier.

[Deus Maximus]

Oh.. one thing to note. All the hardware features of the Alienware Alpha (including HDMI audio or Optical out) work fine with the current release of Steam OS EXCEPT for the HDMI input.

The HDMI input does currently work under the alchemist_beta 148 branch. You can opt into the alchemist_beta branch by reading the Steam OS FAQ here, under the header "Q: How often does SteamOS get updated?". Doing so gives you more frequent updates, but at the possible expense of stability. (On the plus side, when something breaks, it usually gets fixed pretty quickly)

Or you can wait for the next stable alchemist release.

[Balderick]

Or use VaporOS installer and boom your hdmi in will work out of the box because it installs buuild 148 steamos ;)
I would highly recommend VaporOS installer.

More info on VaporOS can be found here http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/626329187004438923/

[Dudeman6802]

I really don't understand the desire to install SteamOS. I mean, sure, you can get away from Windows, and then enjoy one-tenth of your steam library at reduced framerates. ???

[MuthaBuffer]

Can you dual boot SteamOS? I never used to bother dual booting in Windows as I never found games I couldn't get to work in Win 7, so I don't have any experience. Anything stopping partitioning and dual booting on the Alpha?

[Deus Maximus]

Originally posted by scottmacfar:

I really don't understand the desire to install SteamOS. I mean, sure, you can get away from Windows, and then enjoy one-tenth of your steam library at reduced framerates. ???

Actually, you get about the same or higher framerates and performance under Linux with nVIDIA GPU's (which the Alpha has).

Also, the one tenth thing would be true if I didn't already have a Windows gaming PC in my house that I could stream from, and didn't intend to use the Alpha purely in the living room. As it stands, the Alpha is running far faster for me under Steam OS, than it would if I was running Windows and everything locally. I haven't even needed to upgrade the RAM in the base model yet, it's working so good.

You cannot tell the difference between streaming and locally over a gigabit network at 1920x1080. It's that good.

I'd argue the use of having a SteamOS machine without already owning a gaming PC, sure.. but it makes a great addition, and a good alternative over a console system with established PC gamers.

Originally posted by MuthaBuffer:

Can you dual boot SteamOS? I never used to bother dual booting in Windows as I never found games I couldn't get to work in Win 7, so I don't have any experience. Anything stopping partitioning and dual booting on the Alpha?

You can dual boot. I haven't tried it yet, but the option is there.

[Balderick]

Originally posted by MuthaBuffer:

Can you dual boot SteamOS? I never used to bother dual booting in Windows as I never found games I couldn't get to work in Win 7, so I don't have any experience. Anything stopping partitioning and dual booting on the Alpha?

SteamOS is not a good reason to start dual booting. Though am pretty sure you could prove Deus Maximus is very fortunate if he sees any increase in performance on his hardware with SteamOS. All benchmark results i have seen simply show windows is still the benchmark to beat on every title regardless of gpu. It is close with some games even comparable to windows but never better.

Left4Dead2 was one of the first games ported to linux when steam for linux client was announced/released. Valve showed how it is possible to get performance improvements when using opengl over directx however in real life and for most linux users this is simply not the case afaik.

Before dual booting with the alpha just make sure you have a complete backup and created bootable recovery/installation media for windows and any proprietary software which may be using other partitions.