Installing MeeGo on your Netbook Linux and Mac Instruction [MeeGo Guide]

Linux developers Follow the steps on this page for downloads and installing MeeGo on your Netbook and you'll be ready to go mobile!
Windows Instructions Use a Windows app to install the MeeGo OS on your currently Windows OS computer.

Overview

Steps for loading the MeeGo live image on your netbook, nettop, or PC:

1. Download the latest live image.
2. Byte-copy the image to a USB drive.
3. Boot the image on your netbook, nettop, or PC.

System Requirements

• CPU: Intel Atom or Intel Core 2 CPU (support for SSSE3)
  Note: MeeGo will not work on non-SSSE3 CPUs
• Platforms with the GMA-500, Nvidia, or ATI graphics chipsets are not supported
• A tested netbook or nettop platform

About Live Images

The MeeGo live image is designed to be used with a USB drive. A netbook or PC can be booted from the USB drive without modifying its hard drive or configuration. This lets you test drive an image before installing it. When you are done, just remove the USB drive and reboot. If you like what you see, you can then install MeeGo from the same live image.

1 Download the Live Image

The live image is available from the netbook downloads page. Save the image to a known location, so you can access it in step 2.

2 Byte-copy the image to a USB drive

You will need a USB drive with at least the capacity of the downloaded image. Note: A byte-exact copy of the image must be placed on the USB drive. It is not sufficient to simply copy the image file to the drive. Be aware that the contents of the USB drive will be completely erased.

Linux Instructions

Be sure the USB drive is unmounted before proceeding. Some Linux distributions auto mount the USB drive when it is inserted, which can cause corruption when writing.

# umount <usb-drive>

Use either of these two methods:

• Image Writer (recommended, requires Python >=2.4)
  Image Writer is a small python executable script that detects your USB drive and writes the image to it. The advantage of using image writer is that it will not inadvertently overwrite your system hard drive. Download Image Writer
  # cd <directory with downloaded image-writer file>
# chmod a+x ./image-writer
# ./image-writer <image file>

• Use 'dd' from the command-line
  Caution: 'dd' will overwrite any destination including your system hard disk. Make sure you know the correct value of <usb drive> before proceeding.
  # dd bs=4096 if=<image file> of=<usb drive>


Proceed to Step 3: Boot the image

Windows Instructions

There is a simple way to put the MeeGo image on a USB drive.

1. Download the Win32DiskImager.exe program:
   https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/+download (zip file)
2. Unzip the file and extract the contents to a known directory
3. Run W32DiskImager.exe
4. Select the MeeGo image file (.img)
5. Select the drive letter which corresponds to the USB key
6. Click the "Write" button to byte-copy the image to the USB drive.

Proceed to Step 3: Boot the image

Mac OS X Instructions

Be sure the USB drive is unmounted before proceeding. OS X auto mounts the USB drive when it is inserted, which can cause corruption when writing. You can press the eject icon in Finder or drag the USB icon to the trash. Use this method (thanks to Many Ayromlou for the instructions):

1. Open a Terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal)
2. Run
   diskutil list
   to get the current list of devices
3. Insert your flash media
4. Run
   diskutil list

   again and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (for example /dev/disk2)
5. Run
   diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN
   (replace N with the disk number from the last command; in the previous example, N would be 2)
6. Run
   sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/diskN bs=1m
   (replace /path/to/downloaded.img with the place you downloaded the image. You'll need your password for this.
7. Run
   
   diskutil eject /dev/diskN
   (where N is the number we found above) and remove your flash media when the command completes
8. You're done! Proceed to Step 3: Boot the image

3 Boot the image on your netbook, nettop, or PC

Insert the USB drive into your netbook, nettop, or PC and reboot. Make sure that the boot order tries the USB drive first.