How To Install Steam OS Beta on your computer

I will teach you how to install Steam OS into your motherboard that does not have UEFI bios. The default Steam OS installation requires UEFI bios or it will not work. I did some Googling and found a way to bypass that and everything works perfectly afterwards. It is just slightly more difficult but do not worry. For those who do not know what steam OS is, it is an operating system created by Valve. It is a Linux with Debian Weezy on top and can run Linux programs if you want to.

You can buy a steam box that has Steam OS pre-installed or you can install on your existing computer. Right now, only computers with NVidia GPUs will run Steam OS but an update will come soon that would let all GPUs to run steam OS. Steam OS can offer a couch experience for PC game with Valve’s new controller specifically optimized for steam OS.

It is less blown than windows and smaller than some Linux distro but it could run all Steam games. Now let us get started with the installation.

This is how to install steam into your computer without UEFI bios motherboard. To do this, you go to Steam OS to download the installer. Once you get that, go to frosty cool slug and just follow the instructions to set up your USB Drive.

Download syslinux and extract bios/win32 and bios/mbr into the syslinux folder of your usb stick https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/syslinux-6.02.zip

Now go get the two grub packages provided to us by FrostyCoolSlug from reddit.

http://www.l4d3.org/grub-pc_1.99-27+deb7u1+steamos3+bsos1_amd64.deb

http://www.l4d3.org/grub-pc-bin_1.99-27+deb7u1+steamos3+bsos1_amd64.deb

So first thing you do is to go where you installed the steam OS. You extract it somewhere and highlight everything, go to steam OS. Do not forget to format your USB to Fat32 before this and just paste everything from the steam OS file folder. You need to go to the Reddit thread and get

SysLinux from there and download two packages.

Extract SysLinux and go to the bios, select win32, hold down Control and select MDR. Copy them. Create a SysLinux folder inside the steam OS of your USB flash drive and paste those two. Go back and copy two grubs. Go back to the USB folder. Create a grub folder and paste those. Once you do that open command prompt. Our Steam OS USB flash is in E drive.

Type e:\syslinux\win32\syslinux.exe --install --mbr --active e:

and press enter.

If you have different letter for your USB drive, just replace E.

Once you do that, you go back to your steam OS. You need to copy certain text from Reddit to a notepad. Save notepad as all files and call it syslinux.ch on your USB steam OS folder.

What we did is try to modify the installer so that we could boot it without UEFI bios.

Restart your computer. Unfortunately, installing Steam OS does not let you choose which hard drive or partition you can install the OS. This means we have to unplug all the hard drives that we are not going to use for the installation.

Turn on your computer. The bios screen pops up then press F11 or the F12 button. Most Asus works after using F8. That will bring to the selection devices and just choose your flash drive.

Now the installation is complete it says grub installation failed so now we follow the Reddit thread and retake in four lines plus another line in the comment section.

You can press control+alt+F2 and hit enter. Now we can start typing everything. After each line, you hit counter. Let us get them attempting the first line of code and then hit enter. Take the second line right after that and press enter. It will ask if you want to continue, type Y for yes and press enter, and then I continue typing other lines of code.

it on the last screen, just hit enter and enter again, and then press control+alt+F5 to another shell and click on continue, continue again, and is now installing grub installer. Feel free to get your flash drive after you hit continue.

Now you are ready to login. Read this post on how to proceed from here:

How To Install Steam OS Beta on your computer