The new version has been dubbed Brewmaster

Jun 26, 2015 00:01 GMT  ·  By

On June 25, Valve was more than happy to announce the immediate availability for download and testing of the first preview release of the next major version of its SteamOS Linux distribution, dubbed Brewmaster.

Based on the recently released Debian GNU/Linux 8.1 (Jessie) operating system, the first snapshot of the upcoming SteamOS 2.0 operating system is powered by Linux kernel 3.18 LTS, which has been injected with some extra SteamOS patches. However, the Alchemist branch of SteamOS is still supported with security updates, but it will be replaced by Brewmaster in the near future.

"Valve is pleased to announce the preview of the next SteamOS release, codenamed 'brewmaster' and based on the latest Debian 8.1 stable release," says Valve. "Although there are a lot of changes under the covers, the overall functionality and experience of brewmaster is the same as alchemist and most of the SteamOS FAQ applies to both releases."

SteamOS does not yet support upgrades

Users who want to give SteamOS 2.0 a try need to be aware of the fact that the distribution does not yet support upgrades, which means that you will need to do a fresh install if you want to deploy the Preview version of SteamOS "Brewmaster" on your personal computer.

Additionally, you should be aware of a few known issues when testing SteamOS 2.0 Preview, such as the fact that the initial boot splash screen is black for users who have both Intel and Nvidia graphics cards (hybrid graphics), a warning for AMD systems that appears during the installation process, on the second boot, which must be ignored.

Last but not least, there's another issue for AMD systems, as the desktop mode is not usable at the moment, and you will see an "Oh No! Something has gone wrong" screen instead. You can download SteamOS 2.0 Preview "Brewmaster" right now from Softpedia, but please try to keep in mind that it's a pre-release version, and it is not suitable for production systems.