14 DAY TRIAL // A new Steam for Linux Beta client consisting of two different updates has been released by Valve, bringing a host of new features and some fixes.
The company is making great progress with the Steam client, along with the SteamOS Linux distribution. Sometimes, features from one version are implemented into the other, but this is not the case with the present update.
The developers have recently implemented two major new features, both of them still in the Beta stages, namely In-Home Streaming and Steam Music. This means that you will have to get into the Beta program in order to get these particular features.
The problem is that, when you get new functionalities for an application, they will most likely cause a large number of bugs to appear and they need to be fixed. Between stable builds, the developers release various Beta versions, and the current release falls right into that category.
One of the problems fixed by the new update is about the sub-folders that were not being deleted after an update. Some developers chose to modify the structure of the folder and the files with the update, and the old folders that were no longer necessary were left behind.
The In-Home Streaming Beta feature also got a lot of attention from the Valve developers. Fast window capture has been added for 2D games and launchers, fast desktop capture on Windows 8 has been implemented, the automatic settings are no longer getting stuck after a slow network period, and the FPS display is now showing properly (the accuracy has been improved).
Also, the latency display has been improved and now reflects correctly the streaming latency, the client latency has been reduced when games are running close to refresh rate, and the bandwidth estimate has been improved, measure that directly translates into better picture quality for some networks.
The In-Home Streaming Beta also finally received hardware accelerated decoding on Windows 8 systems (some older systems like Windows 7 might also get it), and a regression that was preventing streaming to Mac OS X and SteamOS systems has been corrected.
More details about this latest release can be found in the official announcement, which comes in two parts. Download the Steam for Linux installer from Softpedia.
Keep in mind that this is a Beta version and you might experience some problems with it. In order to get it, you have to enroll in the Beta program, from Preferences.