14 DAY TRIAL // The Beta version of SteamOS, a Debian-based distribution developed by Valve to be used in its hybrid PC / console, has been updated yet again and a number of packages have been added and upgraded.
Valve has two builds for SteamOS. One is a stable version (sort of) and the other one is a Beta (Alchemist). It's been a while since the last Stable update, but it looks like the Valve devs still have some changes and improvements to make.
According to the developers, “SteamOS is a fork (derivative) of Debian GNU/Linux. The first version (SteamOS 1.0) is called ‘alchemist’ and it is based on the Debian ‘wheezy’ (stable 7.1) distribution,” reads the official FAQ for the distribution.
The latest version of Steam OS uses eglibc 2.17 from Debian testing (backported), a number of third-party drivers and updated graphics stack (mesa 10.0.0.1), the Linux kernel is tracking the 3.10 longterm branch (currently 3.10.11), and the graphics compositor is built by Valve.
“We just released a SteamOS beta repository update. This release fixes the problem where updates required multiple reboots. Updating to this release may still require multiple reboots, but subsequent releases should not,” also note the developers in a forum post.
This latest update for SteamOS doesn't bring anything spectacular and it's mostly about updated packages. For example, apache2 has been updated, /etc/debian_version has been upgraded to version 7.6 for the Debian 7.6 point release, and the cups, libjpeg8, libopenobex, libxml2, openssh, dbus, e2fsprogs, elfutils, and gnupg have received various upstream fixes.
Also, the SteamOS custom-built compositor has been upgraded as well to fix an occasional flash of corruption and to remove a minimal-steps flag.
This is just the Beta version of SteamOS and not all of the packages included are stable. It will take a while until all these changes are added to the Stable branch.
The system requirements for Steam OS haven't changed and have been pretty much the same since the beginning: an Intel or AMD 64-bit capable processor, 4GB or more memory, a 250GB or larger disk, NVIDIA, Intel, or AMD graphics card, and a USB port or DVD drive for installation.
Check the official announcement for more details about this release. You can download SteamOS 128 Beta right now from Softpedia and take it for a spin.
SteamOS is not a regular Linux distribution and it's still far off from a day-to-day operating system. There are still a lot of things missing from it, and for now it's only usable as a gaming platform. It's possible that this will change in the future, but it will take a while.