Not the stable release. This build is for people who want to try Steel OS in a virtual machine or on a spare PC and tell us what breaks. The stable release comes when the guided installer, the Steel Apps screen and the core features are finished.
DownloadThe preview download will appear here once the first ISO has been tested.
What is in the preview
Built on Bazzite. Fedora Atomic underneath: the whole system is one image, updates apply as a whole, and the previous version is always in the boot menu.
KDE Plasma desktop with windows that cascade instead of covering each other.
Konsole as the terminal: Super+Enter or Alt+Enter opens it, Alt+C copies, Alt+V pastes.
Firefox as the browser: Super+Shift+Enter opens it; links open in it. Chrome is a one-click install.
Default apps install themselves a few minutes after the first boot, Firefox first: LibreOffice, OBS Studio, Kdenlive, Obsidian, Moonlight, Zed.
Steel OS Portal opens at first login and stays on the taskbar: a welcome, one-click Steel Apps by category (Slack, Zoom, Discord, Chrome, GIMP, VS Code, Antigravity, Twitch and more), Update now, and system tools.
Virtual machines work out of the box: install Virtual Machine Manager from the Portal and start one.
Keyboard shortcuts: Super+1 to 4 switch desktops, Super+Space searches, Print takes a screenshot. The full list is in the repo's docs.
Updates every Tuesday at 4 am, or at the next start if the machine was off.
Steel OS look: wallpaper, login screen, boot logo, About screen.
Gaming: Steam and Proton installed; Xbox and PlayStation controllers and clones, flight sticks (Thrustmaster, X52, X56, VKB, Virpil), racing wheels and gaming keypads work when plugged in; macros for any keyboard, mouse or keypad. Lutris (EA app, Battle.net), Heroic (Epic, GOG) and the Star Citizen launcher are one click away in the Portal's Gaming tab.
Printers and network: HP, Canon, Brother and Epson print and scan with no driver download; USB printers set themselves up; Windows PCs and shared folders appear in the file manager; right-click a folder to share it.
Steel Shield virus protection: downloads scanned by themselves, USB drives checked when you say so, a weekly scan, and anything found moved to a quarantine you can restore from.
The right graphics driver: AMD, Intel and NVIDIA. An NVIDIA PC switches to its NVIDIA edition after install and asks for one restart.
Forgot your password? on the login screen, if you set security questions in Steel OS Setup.
Help in the start menu, offline, and at steel-os.org/help.
Known issues
The installer erases the whole disk by default. To keep Windows alongside, pick a different option on the disk screen. Back up first either way.
Secure Boot: with Secure Boot on, a blue screen may ask once to enrol a key after the first restart. The password is universalblue.
VirtualBox: use a new VM with an empty disk, turn on EFI, give it 8 GB of memory and 64 GB of disk, and use the VMSVGA graphics controller with 3D acceleration off (with it on, Steel OS can sit on a black screen for minutes). Use letters and numbers only in your password, since VirtualBox can drop the Shift key.
How to install the preview
Download the ISO above and check its SHA-256 against the checksum shown. On Windows: certutil -hashfile followed by the downloaded file name and SHA256.
Write it to a USB stick of 16 GB or more (the file is about 8.5 GB) with Fedora Media Writer, Rufus or balenaEtcher, or attach it to a virtual machine.
Boot from it, pick Install, answer the installer's questions, restart when it finishes and remove the stick.
Log in. Wait a few minutes with the network connected for the default apps to appear.
How to report a problem
Tell us what you did, what you expected, and what happened, with a screenshot if you can. Report it as an issue on GitHub, or contact us through Blackbox Entertainment. Useful details: your graphics card, whether it is a VM or real hardware, and the output of cat /etc/os-release and sudo bootc status from Konsole.
Source code and credits
Steel OS is built on Bazzite by Universal Blue and on Fedora, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by either. It contains free and open-source software under its own licences, including the GNU GPL. Source: Steel OS, Bazzite, Fedora packages. Proprietary apps such as Obsidian are not on the ISO; they are downloaded from Flathub after installation under their own licences.