How to Install the SteamOS Beta on Your Computer

SteamOS has finally dropped in all its beta glory. If you were one of the lucky 300 people who got some hardware to play with, you're all set. The rest of us, however, have to install it on our own machines. Here's how to do that. Before we begin, there are some very important caveats: This will wipe your machine. Due to the way Valve has distributed this image, you cannot partition a hard drive or dual boot it with your existing set up. This is a recovery image and your partition table will be wiped clean if you attempt to install it on the same hard drive. If you want to play around with it in a non-destructive manner, you can try it in a virtual machine. Once you've got SteamOS installed, you can create a new Windows partition, but this will wipe your existing setup. This may wipe your secondary hard drives, too. The basic method is not optimized for installing on systems with multiple drives. Depending on how your boot tables are set up, you might inadvertently lose data on your other drives as well. Be safe and remove all hard drives except the one you want to install SteamOS on. You'll need an NVIDIA graphics card. Sorry AMD users. Support is reportedly coming in the future, but for now if you don't have an NVIDIA graphics card, you'll have to sit this one out. -What You'll Need -Method #1: The Easy Way -Method #2: The Advanced, Flexible Way -Method #2.5: A Note on Virtualization