Valve’s operating system for the Living Room is live
Have you been holding out on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in lieu of building your very own PC answer to the home console, the Steam Machine? Well wait no further, as the Steam OS Beta is now freely available for human consumption.
The Linux-based operating system, based from Debian 7 and dubbed ‘alchemist’ in its current 1.0 state, comes with quite a few caveats for the time being. For starters, be prepared to have either a fresh hard drive or be willing to sacrifice data from one — as the current installation methods will erase all content on the desired computer. Additionally, only NVIDIA graphics cards are supported, but Valve is working on adding AMD and Intel support in the near future. For a full list of minimum requirements see below.
Processor: Intel or AMD 64-bit capable processor
Memory: 4GB or more RAM
Hard Drive: 500GB or larger disk
Video Card: NVIDIA graphics card (AMD and Intel graphics support coming soon!)
Additional: UEFI boot support USB port for installation
I have to say I’m pretty intrigued with Valve’s take on the home console. SteamOS sounds pretty cool, but as someone who owns an AMD video card, it’s not going to be a cheap investment, at the moment, to build my own Steam Machine based off those minimum requirements.
For those willing to jump in though, full installation methods of the SteamOS can be found here.
SteamOS Beta is here [Steam]
