Running the .iso file of BoneOS

The easiest way of running BoneOS on your computer is running a .iso file of BoneOS.

First, you need to download a .iso file of BoneOS (Nightly builds is the latest build of master):

Download the file. After you have downloaded the file, go to the directory (normally it is in ~/Downloads):

cd path/to/dir

(and replace the path with the actual path).

Now, copy the file to the home directory:

cp BoneOS.iso ~/

and switch to the home directory:

cd ~/

If you get an error above saying that the file does not exist, replace BoneOS with the name of the file you downloaded.

Now, you need to run this in a virtual machine. In this page, I am going to cover three virtual machines:

  • QEmu
  • Virtual Box
  • VM Ware

QEmu

I am assuming that you have QEmu installed. If not, run sudo apt-get install qemu if you are on a Ubuntu/Debian based distribution. Otherwise, just google it and find out how to install QEmu in your specific Linux distribution.

I am going to be showing running the OS using the command line. If you are on Windows, use the new "Windows Subsystem for Linux" tool. You can run it even without the terminal, but for this doc we need it. If you cannot use a terminal, go ahead and use VirtualBox or VMWare for now (NOTE: Installing Virtual Box and maybe even VM Ware is known to cause some problems on Linux distributions, so it is recommended that you do not install them on a Linux distribution).

When you install QEmu, and you want to use it through the command line, you use it with the command qemu-system-i386 or something like that. It varies from system to system, so just check the docs and use the command.

First, make an alias to qemu with the actual name (qemu-system-i386 or something like that) so that you don't have to type the long command everytime:

alias qemu='<insert the command name here>'

and put the actual command (might be qemu-system-i386) over there.

Now, we have the .iso file which we need to run through QEmu. To do that, do:

qemu BoneOS.iso

and then you should get a new window with the text "Gnu GRUB ...". Press "Enter" over there.

You should see BoneOS starting then.

Virtual Box

To run BoneOS in Virtual Box (not recommended for Linux Distributions, as it is known to cause problems), see the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBjlaEAzUZo

VM Ware

To run BoneOS in VM Ware (not recommended for Linux Distributions, as it is known to cause problems), see the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDiwl6AxNrc