Installing

General Install Instructions

There are two methods for installing GalliumOS:

1. From an ISO image on a USB drive or SD card
   This method enables you to entirely replace ChromeOS on your Chromebook's internal storage (SSD, eMMC, or NVMe).
   It also allows the possibility of more complex configurations such as dual-booting alongside Windows or other Linux distributions (these are outside of the scope of these instructions however).
2. From the ChromeOS command-line using chrx
   This method will configure your device to dual-boot GalliumOS alongside ChromeOS. chrx can install GalliumOS to your Chromebook's internal storage, as well as to external USB/SD devices.

See Hardware Compatibility to verify the requirements, limitations, and installation options available for your ChromeOS device model.

Traditional ISO Install

The traditional ISO install method allows you to use your entire SSD or HDD for GalliumOS. You will need to use a USB flash drive or SD card, and your Chromebook will need to support either Legacy Boot Mode or have UEFI firmware available. You can even boot the GalliumOS Live image to try out the features of GalliumOS before you decide to install!

1. Go to Installing/Preparing and get your Chromebook ready to run GalliumOS
2. Download the appropriate GalliumOS ISO for your device
3. Write (or "burn") the ISO to a USB flash drive or an SD card
   • Detailed instructions at Installing/Creating Bootable USB
4. Plug your USB flash drive or SD card into your Chromebook
5. Reboot your Chromebook and boot from the USB flash drive or SD card
   • If you have the white "OS verification is OFF" screen, press Ctrl+L
   • If you have installed custom firmware, press Esc at the BIOS screen and select the USB device
6. Wait for GalliumOS to boot up. Once in the live environment you can play around with GalliumOS, or you can install it using the Install GalliumOS icon on the desktop
7. After reboot, press Ctrl+L to access GalliumOS (this requirement can be bypassed for single-boot on most models, see Firmware)

Important: If you choose an ISO install of GalliumOS (thus removing ChromeOS), and choose to use the Legacy Boot Mode of the stock firmware (ie, with the stock or updated RW_LEGACY firmware), and you allow your battery to drain completely, you might have a problem booting GalliumOS. This is due to the Developer Mode boot flag enabling Legacy Boot mode being reset when power is lost - see crossystem flags.

This is easily fixable, but it's preferable to avoid the issue entirely by either setting the corresponding firmware boot flag (which is not reset when power is lost), or by flashing custom Full ROM firmware - see Firmware

chrx Installation

Installing GalliumOS via chrx allows you to dual-boot GalliumOS alongside ChromeOS. Check the chrx hardware compatibility list to see if your device supports chrx, and whether any preparation steps are required.

See chrx installation instructions for full details, but here's a quick overview:

1. Prepare your ChromeOS device: see Installing/Preparing
2. Boot device into ChromeOS and configure networking; you do not need to log in
3. Switch to a virtual terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F2(top row right arrow), then log in as user chronos with no password
4. Run chrx: cd ; curl -O https://chrx.org/go && sh go (see chrx docs for additional options)
5. Follow on-screen prompts to repartition your SSD and install GalliumOS. If this is the first time running chrx on this ChromeOS machine, chrx will reboot after the partitioning step and you will need to continue the installation by running chrx again with the same command line.
6. After reboot, at the white "OS verification is OFF" screen, press Ctrl+L for GalliumOS, or Ctrl+D for ChromeOS

Additional Software

Additional Software for GalliumOS

Developer Installation

You can install GalliumOS as a virtual machine in order to do user-space software development and testing. Obviously hardware-specific issues will not be debuggable in these environments.

• VirtualBox
• VMWare (Fusion)