News Valve releases SteamOS Brewmaster preview build

Installing onto my old S754 Athlon64,

Very slow to install, even though I'm going from a USB stick (although I am on a SATA1 HDD).


Does this count as a steam box? It's on a box.



Nope, won't work, looks like the 8400GS isn't supported by the drivers steamOS uses.

 

Looks like it's powered by steam too, is the coal bucket out of shot?

 

After a bit of tweaking, managed to get SteamOS (Brewmaster) working in a VMware Fusion VM on my Hackintosh. I couldn't get previous versions of SteamOS to work in a VM, so it's a step forward in this regard. As far as changes go, I can't see many new cosmetic changes, but it's still early days as far as this build goes. Although, as the article says, there might be a lot of under-the-hood changes.

I expect those on Windows could get it working in a VMware Workstation VM. I used a Debian 7 x64 template, installed the VMware tools, and deleted some runtime libraries, to get it working in a VM.

 

I had a spare 120GB SSD and installed the previous version of SteamOS. Was really happy with it. Although when I tried to run GeekBench it hung, and I had to hold down my machines power button and reboot.

Will install the latest build asap.

 

You could probably make that work with some fluting about installing nvidia drivers manually

 

hi

can someone let me know what the benefits are of installing steam OS now or in the optimistic future is?

is it more secure than windows? more stable? etc... im a non techy that just know how to probably fix my own pc from time to time.

 

In all honesty there are no real benefits over Windows. Steam OS enables you to create a console with a PC, but you'll lose all you games that are Windows only. I see it more as an OS that is pushing Linux game development.

 

You won't lose anything if you are able to stream the games from your main Win machine to the SteamOS box.

I have my fingers crossed that Valve lock-down their OS to the point that no services are running except Steam and the games. That way I can happily fast boot into SteamOS in any room and not be concerned about what MS have left unprotected.

Although I have now ordered 2 Steam Links and 2 controllers, so not sure how it will all come together after October. Having SteamOS streaming to a Steam Link 'should' be better than streaming from a bloatd Win install.

Time will tell.

 

It's essentially steam ported to and running on top of, a version of linux. There are no real tangible benefits at the moment. SteamOS has a subset of games from the steam library available to it. Windows on the other hand can play all of the games. You could have your own steam machine using Windows as much as you could using SteamOS.

In the optomistic future it may take the place of windows for PC gaming, but right now that seems very unlikely. One of the main benefits of SteamOS is actually for Valve rather than customers. Using SteamOS Valve can control the environment much better than they can with Windows. SteamOS tries to remove the dependency of Valve on Microsoft. Thus protecting Valve from any changes Microsoft may decide to implement which may be unfavorable for Valve. Since Microsoft own XBox they are competitors to a certain degree.

To sum it up, SteamOS is a business risk mitigation strategy for valve. Thats about it.

 

Correction. I think you only summed up a bunch of news items related to how MS looked to be screwing Valve and other download clients, by creating a wall for Steam in Win8.

You seem to have not summed up the majority of the benefits.

Correction: future benefits.

Currently, installing SteamOS is only useful for inquisitive people with a spare drive or machine, who might want to see what Valve are doing.

Ultimately the SteamOS will be on more dedicated hardware created by a load of manufacturers and Valve. Look at the tabs in Steam that are arranged like this:

Featured Items, Games, Software, Hardware, Demos, News

Now put your cursor over Hardware and there is a load of info abou what is coming. It is more comparable to competition for the console market than a "business risk mitigation strategy". I would bet Valve are being slightly more adventurous than what theshadow2001 would have you believe.

 

I don't have Gaben's phone number unfortunately so my information does indeed come from the news.

You've started your list of corrections by saying its just a curiosity at the moment. That hardly disagree with what I have said. That's also where you seem to have ended your corrections as well. The current generation steam machines are off the shelf PC hardware. I doubt they will stray from this. If they did they would essentially be creating their own dedicated console, thus isolating their current customers or creating more work for developers or both.

Basically all of the hardware items already exist, small form factor PCs, VR, Controllers and game streaming. None of these are benefits of steam OS and are available else where.

You are on cloud cuckoo if you think any decision valve makes is not for the good of the business. Romanticizing corporations as you have done with valve, is generally not a good idea. It removes the ability to look at them critically. SteamOS exists to ensure the continuation of Valves business.

This is basically what happened when Newell saw Windows 8

 

Hehe. Okey dokey.

 

Probably, but I can't be bothered, I very much doubt it'll play much of anything anyway even if I did get it working,