14 DAY TRIAL // Valve has just released a new update for the Beta branch of Steam, but this time it's a little bit smaller, which means that it might be getting closer to another stable version.
Between stable builds, the developers launch a large number of Beta versions that integrate a lot of new features. In the case of the current update that was just made available, the developers didn't make a lot of changes and the modifications are not all that important.
Usually, the most patched and upgraded Steam client feature is the Big Picture mode. It seems that not many fixes needed to be implemented, because only one change has been made. If the player is not on the Windows platform, the default all games filter is now set to "On Platform" rather than "All Games." This should help non-Windows gamers find their titles a little easier.
The other aspect of the Steam client that sees many fixes, in almost all the patches from Valve, is the In-Home Streaming. This has been taken out of Beta recently and it should help users from other platforms, like Linux for example, to stream games from a Windows machine.
This technology is still in its infancy and there is a host of problems to be fixed. When it is more mature, In-Home Streaming should nullify any advantage that Windows holds over the other platforms in terms of gaming.
According to the changelog, a timeout streaming problem that occurred for a game that was running before Steam started has been fixed, the overlay navigation is now working just fine with a remote Steam Controller, the mouse motion is now working properly when streaming Delver, and some frame jitter in full screen games that are running on systems with AMD video cards has been corrected.
More details about this latest build and the bugs that have been fixed can be found in the official announcement. You can 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, and you will need to restart the application.
If you are already in the Beta program, you won't have to do anything special. After you start the application, you will be prompted to update it.