GloamOS Logo GloamOS

User's Guide

How to get GloamOS running, what to expect, and how to interact with the system.

Getting Started

Follow these steps to boot GloamOS on real hardware or in a virtual machine.

1
Download the ISO

Grab the latest build from the Download page. Use the ISO for real hardware/emulators/simulators/whatever you have there

2
Flash to USB (real hardware)

Use dd on Linux or Rufus on Windows to write the ISO to a USB drive. Ventoy also works.

# Linux — replace /dev/sdX with your USB drive
sudo dd if=GloamOS-1-intel64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress
sync
⚠ Warning: Double-check /dev/sdX — writing to the wrong drive will erase it.
3
Run in virtual machines

To test GloamOS when you don't have the right spare machines, you can use VMs.

For instance, in Virtualbox, take the .iso, and use it in the set up process. Make sure you pressed the EFI checklist

4
Boot from UEFI

On real hardware, enter your UEFI boot menu (At Lenovo IdeaPad series it is FN+F12, on other platforms, it is usually F2, F12, or DEL at power-on) and select the USB drive as the boot device. Make sure Secure Boot is disabled and UEFI mode is enabled — Legacy/CSM will not work (YET).

5
Boot sequence

GloamOS will initialize the framebuffer, parse the memory map, load the kernel. then, the UI will appear with all that stuff other OSes have too, like passwords, users and other stuff

What to Expect

GloamOS is alpha software. Here's what currently works and what doesn't.

✅

What works

UEFI boot, framebuffer display, memory management, AHCI SATA, FAT32 filesystem, cooperative scheduler, basic serial output.

🔧

Work in progress

Graphics subsystem, network stack, Memory-Management, extended hardware support, exFAT.

🗓️

Not yet available

Userspace shell, package manager, user applications, audio, networking.

Note: GloamOS currently boots to a kernel environment with no interactive shell. Output is displayed on the framebuffer and optionally over serial. This will change in future releases.

Building from Source

If you want to compile GloamOS yourself from the GitHub repository. Firstly make sure you do everything in WSL/Linux, and then:

1
Install dependencies
sudo apt install sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y \ build-essential gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64 binutils nasm python3 \ xorriso syslinux-common isolinux dosfstools mtools exfatprogs \ qemu-system-x86 ovmf libguestfs-tools expect util-linux
2
Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Entropy-ddddev/GloamOS
cd GloamOS
3
Build and run
# Build the ISO
make

# Launch in QEMU
make run

# Clean build artifacts
make clean