v1.6 Big Waterfall · release library

Download

Five files, one release — now with real AHCI/SATA disk support, so a real machine has a much better chance of actually seeing its own disk. For a virtual machine take the ISO — it is the format CopperOS is developed and tested against. For a real machine take the USB image, which is the only file here that UEFI firmware can find.

Download the ISO · 17.5 MB USB image · 17.4 MB Checksums

Read this first

What changed in 1.6 Big Waterfall

Bug fixes and improvements for your computer: a real AHCI/SATA disk driver (so Setup and Disk Manager see disks on the real hardware legacy IDE alone couldn't reach), a Disk Manager that no longer hides your disks behind a scanning animation that never finished, corrected image rendering in Internet Explorer and Image Previewer, and a new default wallpaper. Full details on the home page.

Read this too

ISO for virtual machines. USB image for real hardware.

This is the one thing in the release that is easy to get backwards. copperos.iso boots well in QEMU and in VirtualBox's optical drive, but writing it straight onto a USB stick does not produce a disk that modern firmware will offer — you will only ever see the BIOS path, if anything at all.

copperos-usb.img carries a real second partition, an EFI System Partition, which UEFI firmware can actually find. It boots either way on physical hardware. Flash it in raw or DD mode — Rufus, balenaEtcher, or the flash_usb.sh script inside the source archive. The default "partition" mode in some flashers rewrites the partition table and undoes exactly the thing that makes this file work.

Release files

Pick the one that matches how you are going to run it.

ISO image copperos.iso · 17.5 MB

A bootable CD image. The right choice for QEMU and for VirtualBox's optical drive. Start here unless you are putting Waterfall on a physical machine.

Download ISO

USB image copperos-usb.img · 17.4 MB

For a physical USB drive, BIOS or UEFI. Contains an EFI System Partition, so firmware that has dropped legacy boot can still start it.

Download USB image

VirtualBox VDI copperos.vdi · 16 MB

Attach as a hard disk rather than a CD. Useful if you want the machine to boot from disk the way an installed system would.

Download VDI

Raw disk image copperos.img · 16 MB

A plain sector-for-sector image. For QEMU's -drive format=raw, or for poking at the boot sector with a hex editor. Not the file for a USB stick.

Download IMG

Full source archive CopperOS.tar.gz · 5.6 MB

The entire source tree, Makefile included. Extract it and run make run to build the kernel yourself and launch it in QEMU. Everything in this release comes out of make usb-image, make iso and make vbox in this tree — nothing here was assembled by hand.

Download tar.gz

SHA-256 checksums SHA256SUMS · 402 bytes

Generated from the five files above. Worth thirty seconds before you boot something.

Download checksums

Getting an HTML file instead of the image you asked for? That was a real bug on this site and it is fixed — the whole story is on the Why? page, including how to tell whether your copy is the good one.

Verify

Check what you got.

Run this in the folder you downloaded into, with SHA256SUMS beside the images. A truncated download is the usual reason a machine refuses to boot, and this catches it in one line.

sha256
# Linux
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS

# macOS
shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS

# Windows PowerShell — compare against the list by eye
Get-FileHash copperos.iso -Algorithm SHA256

A FAILED line means the file is not what we published. What to do about that.

Boot it

Run CopperOS.

Waterfall's ISO and raw image are 32-bit BIOS-booting, so leave EFI switched off for those two — that single setting accounts for most reports of a virtual machine that will not start. The USB image is the one that boots both ways.

qemu
# From the ISO — the tested path
qemu-system-x86_64 -cdrom copperos.iso -m 256M -boot d

# From the raw image instead
qemu-system-x86_64 -drive format=raw,file=copperos.img -m 256M

# From the USB image, as a USB disk
qemu-system-x86_64 -drive format=raw,file=copperos-usb.img -m 256M

# Nothing on screen? Watch the serial console
qemu-system-x86_64 -cdrom copperos.iso -m 256M -boot d -nographic

VirtualBox, setting by setting

  • Type Other, version Other/Unknown (32-bit)
  • Base memory 256 MB
  • System → Motherboard → Enable EFI: unchecked
  • Boot order: Optical first
  • Attach copperos.iso to the optical drive, or copperos.vdi as the hard disk

Write the USB image

Raw mode only. Check the device name twice — this overwrites the whole disk.

sudo dd if=copperos-usb.img \
  of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress
sync
Controls

Once it's up.

There is no mouse driver, so the pointer is driven from the keyboard. It takes about ten seconds to get used to.

I J K L

Move the pointer. Hold for continuous movement.

Space

Open AppPad, the application launcher. 1–9 launches, Enter confirms, space closes it again.

Tab / Esc

Cycle through desktop icons, or close the application in front.

First boot runs setup: a username, a four-digit passcode, install or try mode, a theme, and a network choice. The passcode you pick there is what the login screen wants afterwards — there is no recovery for it, so pick something you will remember or be willing to reinstall over.

Older release

Looking for Copperhead?

CopperOS v1.0 Copperhead and its four original downloads are archived at copperos.org/copperhead, at their original addresses and with their original checksums.