Remix OS Beta – How to Install Directly

Remix OS Beta – How to Install Directly

We talked about Remix OS previously and the recent beta sees a number of improvements. One of the big change was the ability to dual boot it alongside a Windows installation.

Remix OS is a free, lightweight and portable operating system developed by Jide which offers Android 5.1 Lollipop to traditional computers. It comes with Start Menu, Taskbar and proper program windows with titlebar and caption buttons (minimize, maximize and close) and looks rather polished.

However, I wanted to install Remix OS directly to an old atom based netbook. I had format it and installed Ubuntu previously. I tried installing Remix directly via the USB boot but wasn’t successful. It had to do with creating the boot partition via GPT which didnt work so well.

So, I found a series of instructions that work so am just sharing it here.

  1. Create a separate boot usb Hiren Boot 15.2.
  2. It has a whole bunch of useful utilities. The one in particular is PartedMagic.
  3. Load up PartedMagic and create a new partition table. I chose to dedicate the entire hard drive as Ext4 for the RemixOS installation.
  4. Apply changes and now you can switch to the Remix OS boot device.
  5. At the boot menu, press the Tab key to modify boot parameters and add the following
INSTALL=1
  1. Press Enter to execute the boot command and now you’ll be able to select the partition created earlier in Step 3. DO NOT use the partition manager with Remix OS.
    Select_Hard_Disk_Partition_Install_Remix_OS
  2. At the next choice, select R/W mode for the System folder.
  3. Install GRUB.
  4. Skip the EFI GRUB 2 (it’s for the newer systems).

Well, Remix OS installed smoothly on the netbook, with all functions (WiFi, Bluetooth, Mouse, Keyboard) working. However, performance wise can see that it still chugged down my old netbook PC. I was able to install Microsoft Office (Android) to it, and all functions work. Apps did take a couple of seconds to load, which is slower than my phone. It does serve as a pretty decent secondary computer, and Remix OS is quite close to being a full OS replacement. Of course, that’s with Google Play Store (which comes installed on the Beta but disabled.

If you have an old computer around, and not sure what to do with it, Remix OS can give it a new a lease of life.