14 DAY TRIAL // SteamOS, a Debian-based distribution developed by Valve to be used in its hybrid PC / console, has just received an update for the stable branch, which brings some important updates and fixes.
Valve has two builds for SteamOS. One is a stable version (sort of) and the other one is a Beta. As you might expect, the developers implement big changes into the development branch first, and later into the stable one. From time to time, they take the improvements from the Beta version and make them available in the Stable one.
As it stands right now, the two versions are practically identical, but that won't last too long. Soon, Valve will publish another update for SteamOS alchemist (Beta) and the releases will be different again.
"We have just updated the released alchemist repository. This is the same content that was pushed to alchemist_beta last Monday. An updated installer ISO and ZIPs are also included. Major changes here include fully unattended installation (no more mucking around with Steam/desktop logins and manually running scripts), multiple language support and pre-installing all the firmware packages," reads the official announcement.
From the changelog we can easily deduce that most of the changes are in place for the upcoming SteamMachines consoles that have been announced from various developers.
For example, a number of performance and stability issues with the wireless function on the Gigabyte Brix systems have been fixed, Bluetooth driver sValveupport for the Gigabyte Brix box has been added, tzdata has received a number of upstream updates, and dynamic passthrough mode support has been added in PulseAudio, which means that users can now change in and out of passthrough mode using tools like XBMC.
Also, a critical APT bug resulting in packages sometimes being erroneously erased during updates has been fixed, "Metro: Last Light" is now working on Intel graphics, the AMD graphics driver has been updated to version 14.1 Beta 1.3-1 from the Debian Jessie branch, LightDM has been fixed, and the gnutls26, file, xserver-xorg-video-intel packages, udisks, python2.7, and Iceweasel packages have been updated so they include all the latest upstream Debian fixes.
Very soon, SteamOS will be ready for daily use, making it easier to install new packages that are not originally part of the original OS. That day is not yet here, but it's a lot closer than you might think.
Check the official announcement for more details about this release. You can download SteamOS right now from Softpedia.