14 DAY TRIAL // After a lengthy wait Valve has finally rolled out both the SteamOS 1.0 operating system but also the first prototype Steam Machines and Controllers for the 300 beta testers that have been chosen from members of the community.
Valve has big plans for its Steam service and revealed earlier this year that it's going to debut an operating system based on Linux but also special custom PCs called Steam Machines, not to mention an innovative controller.
Now, the first 300 Steam Machines have been shipped to beta testers around the U.S., while the first build of the SteamOS 1.0 is available for download.
Bear in mind that, according to the official FAQ, the install process and the actual operating system are a bit tricky and not for inexperienced users.
Even so, if you want to install the new SteamOS, you can grab it from here and follow one of the two installation procedures below. Bear in mind that it won't work on computers with AMD or Intel graphics cards at least for now.
The easiest method is an image-based install using Clonezilla. You will need to create a SteamOS System Restore USB stick to perform this install. The image provided here requires at least a 1TB disk. - Format a 4GB or larger USB stick with the FAT32 filesystem. Use "SYSRESTORE" as the partition name - Unzip the contents of SYSRESTORE.zip to this USB stick to create the System Restore USB stick - Put the System Restore USB stick in your target machine. Boot your machine and tell the BIOS to boot off the stick. (usually something like F8, F11 or F12 will bring up the BIOS boot menu). - Make sure you select the UEFI entry, it may look something like "UEFI: Patriot Memory PMAP" - Select "Restore Entire Disk" from the GRUB menu. - System Restore will proceed automatically. When it is complete it will reboot into your freshly re-imaged SteamOS
The second method is based on the Debian Installer. It requires multiple configuration steps: - Unzip the SteamOSInstaller.zip file to a blank, FAT32-formatted USB stick. - Put the USB stick in your target machine. Boot your machine and tell the BIOS to boot off the stick. (usually something like F8, F11, or F12 will bring up the BIOS boot menu). - Make sure you select the UEFI entry, it may look something like "UEFI: Patriot Memory PMAP" - Pick "Automated Install" from the next menu. - The rest of the installation is unattended and will repartition the drive and install SteamOS. - After installation is complete, log onto the resulting system (using the Gnome session) with the predefined "steam" account. The password is "steam". Run steam, accept the EULA, and let it bootstrap. Logoff the steam account - Log on with the "desktop" account. The password is "desktop" - From a terminal window, run ~/post_logon.sh. This will prompt for a password - enter "desktop". This script will perform the post-install customizations, delete itself, then reboot into the recovery partition capture utility. - Confirm "y" to continue and the recovery partition will be created. When it is finished, reboot into your freshly installed SteamOS
Expect to see more versions of the SteamOS to appear in the following months.