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13. Starting the Live System

The live system is a complete amadeOS that runs from the USB stick. It does not touch the disk of your computer, so you can try everything safely: the desktop, the applications, the network, the printer. When you switch the computer off, the live system forgets what you did and the computer starts as before.

Starting from the stick

  1. Switch the computer off and insert the stick.
  2. Switch it on and, at once, press the key for the boot menu several times. It is often F12, F11, F9, F8 or Esc, depending on the manufacturer; the first screen of the computer usually names it for a moment.
  3. In the boot menu, choose the USB stick. On UEFI computers it may appear twice, once with UEFI in front: choose that one.

If the computer starts its usual system instead, it did not see the stick in time. Try again and press the key earlier, or look in the firmware settings (often F2 or Del) for the boot order.

Secure Boot

Most computers sold with Windows have Secure Boot switched on: the firmware starts only boot loaders signed by Microsoft. The boot loader of the amadeOS live stick is not signed yet, so with Secure Boot on, the computer refuses the stick, often with a message such as Secure Boot violation or simply by starting Windows.

In that case, open the firmware settings (often F2, Del or F10 right after switching on), find Secure Boot (usually under Security or Boot), switch it off, save and restart. An installed amadeOS starts with Secure Boot on, so you can switch it back on after the installation.

BitLocker

If Windows on this computer uses BitLocker disk encryption, changing Secure Boot can make Windows ask for its 48-digit recovery key at the next start. Read the BitLocker section of chapter 15 before you change the setting.

Planned

A live stick that starts with Secure Boot on, through Debian's signed boot loader, is planned for the first release (milestone M12).

The boot menu of amadeOS

The stick shows its own menu for a few seconds:

Entry What it does
amadeOS Live (amd64) Starts the live system. This is the one you want; it starts by itself after a few seconds.
amadeOS Live (amd64 failsafe) Starts with careful settings for difficult hardware: try it if the normal entry ends with a black screen.

On UEFI computers the entries say amd64 UEFI. After the entry, Linux starts; after a short while the login screen appears.

Logging in to the live system

The live system has one user:

User name Password
amadeos amadeos

The login screen proposes the user already, so you type the password and press Enter. In the same screen you can choose your language, your keyboard and your time zone (chapter 20 explains them). The live system starts with a German keyboard; if yours is different, choose your layout under Keyboard, for example English (US) (us), before you type the password.

Your data

Nothing you do in the live system is kept: files, settings and WLAN passwords are gone when you switch off. Save anything you want to keep onto another USB stick, or install amadeOS (next chapter), which takes the WLAN connections of the live session along.

Trying amadeOS in a virtual machine

You can also start the image in a virtual machine, a computer simulated by a program, without a USB stick and without restarting. With QEMU on Linux, the amadeos repository has a ready script:

./run-qemu.sh                    # start the live system (2 GB of memory)
./run-qemu.sh --install-disk     # ... with an empty 20 GB virtual disk to install onto
./run-qemu.sh --boot-disk        # start the amadeOS installed on that disk

--uefi starts the machine with UEFI firmware instead of BIOS. VirtualBox and other virtual machines work too: create a 64-bit Linux machine with 2 GB of memory, choose the image as its optical disk and start it.