Installing SteamOS on new Asus Chromebox

[RedBalloon]

The new Asus Chromebox is now available, which comes preloaded with ChromeOS:

http://www.sabrepc.com/asus-chromebox-m004u-chromebox-celeron-2955u-intel-hd4400-graphics-mini-pc.html

I'm tempted to pick one up for In-Home Streaming to my living room from my office PC. Any thoughts on whether or not it would be possible to install SteamOS over the existing ChromeOS environment?

[XÆЯO_Vince]

It only has a 16 GB SSD. SteamOS requires at least 40 GB to install and the recommended HDD size is 500GB and larger to actually hold games.

There are other net-top systems that would be a better choice for SteamOS.

[Grimallq]

Not really. You can fit SteamOS in under 16GB but it's gonna be very tight.

[RedBalloon]

Thanks for your replies. I plan on using this for streaming, so in theory I will only need enough hard drive space for the OS. Is the minimum size for the SteamOS installation 40GB, or is it possible to install with less space?

[Grimallq]

According to some older guides and my own tests the absolute safe minimum is at about 13GB without a recovery partition.

[RedBalloon]

Thanks very much. Sounds like it'll be cutting it close. I pre-ordered one of these boxes so I'll report back once I've had a chance to play around with it.

[blackout24]

Originally posted by Grimallq:

Not really. You can fit SteamOS in under 16GB but it's gonna be very tight.

You could also do just a minimal Linx installation and install the Steam client. It's the same thing as Steam OS. My Linux instal takes up 6 GB will all programs.

[RedBalloon]

After watching the Linux Action Show link you posted in the other thread (as well as one of their earlier videos on streaming Steam to a Linux machine) it looks like that might be the best approach. The main appeal of SteamOS to me is an always-on Big Picture mode living room system that I can plug my Xbox 360 controller into, but I suppose leaving Steam running in Big Picture mode on a box running Linux would accomplish the same end. As long as I can get to the developer mode BIOS on the Chromebox it sounds like this will work.

[blackout24]

Originally posted by RedBalloon:

After watching the Linux Action Show link you posted in the other thread (as well as one of their earlier videos on streaming Steam to a Linux machine) it looks like that might be the best approach. The main appeal of SteamOS to me is an always-on Big Picture mode living room system that I can plug my Xbox 360 controller into, but I suppose leaving Steam running in Big Picture mode on a box running Linux would accomplish the same end. As long as I can get to the developer mode BIOS on the Chromebox it sounds like this will work.

You can make every Linux distro start into Steam Big Picture Mode if you want.

[RedBalloon]

AnandTech posted a review of the Asus Chromebox today which confirms that it is possible to install Linux through the ChromeOS Developer Mode with this device:

http://anandtech.com/show/7850/asus-chromebox-review/2

"Just like mobile Chromebooks, ASUS’ Chromebox features a recovery mode button. Above the Kensington secure slot is a small button. Depress the recovery mode button while powering on the machine and you’ll be presented with the standard Chrome OS recovery screen. Hit CTRL + D at this screen and you’ll wipe the machine and restart with dev mode enabled...

With dev mode enabled, I had no issues installing Crouton. By default the machine won’t boot off of any external USB devices, however in dev mode you can run crossystem dev_boot_legacy=1 which should enable USB boot to things like Ubuntu. Just hit CTRL + L at the recovery mode screen after you’ve made the change.

The internal EFI doesn’t support booting to Windows, so anyone looking to turn this into a cheap Windows box is likely out of luck. The Windows lockout is likely Google’s doing as the company is specifically looking to replace low end Windows PCs."

[King Dude]

You can always store your games on an external HDD.

[Cosmo]

RedBalloon-- did you end up trying this? I'm very interested in the results, since would be interested in doing something similar. The ASUS Chromebox is definitely the cheapest option I've seen. Next might be the Intel NUC or building an itx system with the new AMD AM1 socket. I'm only interested in streaming though, so if you can pull it off with the Chromebox... that'd be great.

[RedBalloon]

Yes, and it works great. This was a cross-post but I go into more detail in this thread:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/0/540735426085473079/

[Cosmo]

Cool! Great to hear. I think I will do the same if I get into the In-Home Sharing Beta. A couple more questions, if you don't mind. Did you end up using SteamOS or the Steam application on Linux? Is the ChromeOS still there, to switch back and forth? Or not enough room? And lastly, did you need to add any storage space? I assume adding 2GB RAM would help, but was wondering if the storage is enough for SteamOS + ChromeOS, etc.

[RedBalloon]

I'm using the Steam client on Ubuntu 12.04. I haven't been able to boot from an alternate OS yet. Instead, I'm using Crouton, which piggybacks off ChromeOS and allows you to run Linux side-by-side with it. So ChromeOS is still there, and in fact is necessary for Linux to work under Crouton. The 16GB SSD provides enough space for this; however, I allocated an 8GB partition of the hard drive for Ubuntu which left ChromeOS with only 2-3 GB to spare. You can always plug in an external USB or SD card if you need more storage. I'm just streaming so I don't really need the space.

I can't answer your question regarding SteamOS in a dual-boot configuration with ChromeOS, because I don't know how much space SteamOS really needs. I was told above that this is around 12GB minimum, so you'll probably need to upgrade the SSD to a higher capacity if that's what you want to do. I'd recommend Ubuntu over SteamOS for now; I haven't heard that anyone has actually put SteamOS on one of these. I've been pasting the link for the article below everywhere because it has a step-by-step for installing Linux in a dual-boot configuration with ChromeOS (I'm planning to try it this weekend, but my initial attempts to install with Chrubuntu didn't go so well):

http://www.willispickering.com/content/upgrade-asus-chromebox-add-more-memory-and-ssd-and-ubuntu

[Cosmo]

Great! Thanks for the help, I appreciate it. There definitely aren't a lot of sources on this, you are on the cutting edge :)