14 DAY TRIAL // Valve has recently announced that it's working on a new SteamOS based on the latest Debian 8 branch and the developers have just released a new major update for it. The new OS is still under development, it's not stable, but it's exciting already.
The current stable edition of SteamOS is using Debian 7.x, and Valve said that it had no plans of upgrading the system to the new Debian before the launch in November. Yet things seem to move very fast with the new SteamOS "brewmaster," much faster than we previously anticipated. There is a small chance that the switch will be made in time for the official launch, but it's difficult to say with any kind of certainty.
What we do know is that even if Valve is moving SteamOS from Debian 7.x to Debian 8.x, regular users won't be able to tell the difference. The two systems should be pretty much identical, on the surface. It's a different ball game when we're comparing the underpinnings of the OS, but that's beside the point.
What's new in SteamOS brewmaster update 2.25
"This update applies to brewmaster_beta as well and includes all the beta changes in 2.20, a fix for automounting USB storage devices, and a lot of additional packages added to the repository," reads the announcement.
The developers have explained that some missing packages have been added to the brewmaster repository, a typo in the configuration that caused automounting to fail has been fixed, missing packages for debootstrap have been added, a fix for setting the timezone has implemented, the AMD driver has been upgraded to version 15.5, Linux kernel has been upgraded to version 3.18.17, an HD mode selection step has been added when starting the Steam session, and many other small packages have been updated.
You can download the SteamOS distro from Softpedia, but please make sure that you have the right requirements according to the official FAQ.