Steam OS: Valve announces its own Linux distro

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As if the good relations between Linux and Steam were not enough, now Valve announces your own Linux distro:

SteamOS combines the robust architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen.
It will be available soon as a standalone operating system and free of charge for living room machines.

Sounds very promising, and what will development be like?

Steam is not a broadcast channel in one sense, it is an entertainment platform where many collaborate, where each participant is part of the gear that makes the good experience work for everyone else. On SteamOS, "open-mindedness" means that the hardware industry can interact in the living room much faster than they have ever been capable of before. Content creators will be able to connect directly with their customers. Users will be able to modify or replace any part of the software or hardware at will. Players will be able to participate in developing the games they love. SteamOS will continue to evolve but will always maintain an environment designed to foster this type of innovation.

Too promising …… And what will it bring us among other things?

Home broadcast
You can also play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine. Simply turn on your computer and run Steam as you are used to doing - then your SteamOS machine can stream those games from your home network directly to your TV!

Music, TV, Movies
We are working with many of the media services that you already know and love. Soon, we'll start integrating them online, allowing you to access your favorite music and videos with Steam and SteamOS.

Share with family
In the past, sharing games with your family members was difficult. Now you can share the games you love with the people you love. Family Sharing lets you take turns playing other people's games while earning your own achievements and saving your progress to the Steam Cloud.

Family Options
The living room is family territory. That's great, but you don't want to see your parents' games in your library. Soon, families will be able to have more control over which titles can be viewed and by whom, as well as more features to allow anyone in the house to get the most out of their Steam libraries.

All the games you love
Hundreds of great games are already running natively on SteamOS. Stay tuned for announcements in the coming weeks about AAA titles coming natively to Steam in 2014. Access Steam's full catalog of nearly 3000 games and desktop software via home streaming.

More than 50 million friends
Steam users are the ones who make playing on Steam fun. Meet new people, join game groups, form clans, chat in games and immerse yourself in game hotspots, the hub of all your favorite games.

Workshop
The creative power of Steam users comes to life in the Workshop - your best bet for the best add-ons available. Here you can create, discover and download an almost endless supply of high-quality user-created content.

A multiplatform cloud
Seamless content delivery, storage you don't have to worry about, and automatic updates on everything. Change from machine to machine and don't worry about where you left your game or saving your preferences. Everything is on the Steam Cloud.

In constant evolution
Steam has been an ever-evolving service since its debut in 2003. SteamOS will continue to not only bring users valuable game updates directly from content creators, but also new features on a regular basis to the Operating System itself.

All over the world
Steam is present in 185 countries and has been translated into 25 languages. As a totally global platform, Steam, and now its SteamOS, offers entertainment to the public without knowing borders.

In summary. That is going to be the operating system that the SteamBox will use. But this part intrigues me:

Downloadable soon. Free forever!
SteamOS will be available soon as a free download for users and as a free licensed operating system for manufacturers. Stay tuned in the next few days for more information.

What do you think? When Intel says that this is going to be the year of LinuxIs it for something that has nothing to do with Google? This seems to say yes.


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  1.   Leon Ponce said

    Among the small drawbacks is that it is an OS designed to be used "with the TV and in the living room", that is, designed to be used with a remote control and that it will be very uncomfortable to use on a computer. Anyone who has tried Big Picture will know. Among the great ones, this OS seems to be focused on the most likely SteamBox, so it will not only have very high requirements, but it will also need specific hardware conditions to go well.
    Among the huge ones, it is not called GlaDOS.

    1.    eliotime3000 said

      Tried the Big Picture and it is awkward to navigate. It makes me feel like Gordon Freeman.

  2.   HQ said

    Ray! It was not impossible ... Better Drivers !!!

    1.    majority said

      I agree with you, comrade.

    2.    badani said

      Better drivers and I would be happy that I can finally use the HDMI port (video and audio) without having to put a lot of hand.

  3.   Ivan said

    At the very least it will awaken the curiosity of the general public about Linux, at the most ... it will dethrone win2 on the gaming platform (one can dream hahaha).

    1.    pandev92 said

      It is more of a rival to the xbox and the play, than to windows.

      1.    Alejandro Franco said

        XBOX is from Microsoft and its OS is Windows even the XBOX ONE has Windows 8 as OS ...

  4.   brutosaurus said

    I wonder how they will be able to port all the games that only work on windows to use them from SteamOs… and if they can… how will they work?

    1.    drkpkg said

      Everything boils down to OpenGL, if the graphics engine is ported to Linux with OpenGL the games will work, and from there it is only to modify and optimize some things.

    2.    Persian said

      They have an API that makes the transition between DirectX and OpenGL easy, so they are porting the games to OpenGL

      1.    Brutosaurus said

        Thanks for the clarification to both !! Even so, it is very hard work with the extensive catalog they have ...

  5.   thorzan said

    Hahahaha What will say now those who said that Steam for Linux was intended only for Ubuntu?

    1.    eliotime3000 said

      They will already be slaughtered with the Gauss cannon.

  6.   eliotime3000 said

    This already means one thing: Goodbye, Windows.

  7.   Nader said

    Goodbye Windows, nothing, Streaming games (Which in itself I wonder how they are going to do it) with your partition with Windows on and Steam on.

    I have many doubts about how this is going to work, but being Valve, I give them a huge vote of confidence (Bad will not come out at all)

  8.   clow_eriol said

    What a news !!
    I'm jumping for joy !! : _D GRANDE valVE

  9.   James said

    A distro with DRM?
    No thanks.

  10.   game said

    And can I play GTA, Assasins creed, call of duty black ops 2, battlefield, and all those popular games?

    1.    pandev92 said

      Not all of them, little by little I guess they will come out.

      1.    eliotime3000 said

        If you download the firmware of the PS3 and put a drive that reads and writes Blu-Ray discs, then that would be great.

  11.   cyber kitty said

    I need to try it !! I hope it solves many problems that gamers face when using Linux….

  12.   Wisp said

    Now all Linux gamers will want to build their "PCstation 5" with Steam OS instead of being Windows-powered.

    1.    Leon Ponce said

      They will still need Windows, because most of the Steam games are only for Windows, so to be able to enjoy them they will have to pull Winbugs.

      1.    eliotime3000 said

        Or buy a PS3 and the matter is solved.

  13.   anonymous said

    That good!!! It will be based on Ubuntu 12.04, good news.

    http://steamdb.info/blog/25/

    1.    eliotime3000 said

      Confirmed: Precise Pangolin will be the SteamOS chassis.

  14.   Outdated said

    http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/

    PS: Mir or Wayland? Valve's decision will be very important for one of those two to take the drivers from the manufacturers.

    1.    eliotime3000 said

      Wayland, so as not to have to harass them with the dependencies of Cannonical (enough to depend on Jockey).

  15.   Joaquin said

    I don't know about Steam, but I do know some Valve games and they seem good to me (Half Life and Portal). I know it is great news for many to have such famous games on GNU / Linux because that will help to improve hardware support.

    My opinion about it:
    The good thing is to have an exclusive distro that will work without problems (or should), because it comes from them.

    But I am somewhat skeptical where it says "Users will be able to modify or replace any part of the software or hardware as they please." We will have to see later under what license they do it, because it would not be good for many happy fans to collaborate on the system and then they obtain improvements without much effort.

    It is good that they finally look at GNU / Linux, especially because of the driver problems that exist. But don't forget about the GNU goal of freedom. Do not be tempted and lose that freedom.

    We'll see what happens.

  16.   msx said

    Will it be the famous «Piston»?
    If so, I have no doubt that it is a matter of time before it dominates the console market or at least enters the podium.

    1.    eliotime3000 said

      Well, SteamOS would further position the PC as a physical platform for video games, thus highlighting its versatility.

      If the SteamBox were to become a reality, it is very likely that it could acquire certain characteristics than the PC and have few limits in terms of video game development compared to Sony Computer Entertainment, Nintendo and / or Microsoft.

  17.   Seba said

    The year of Linux? Every day this question makes more sense.

  18.   ldd said

    I'm glad to see news like this.

  19.   neomyth said

    I finally see the day I can play continent of ninth on Linux.

  20.   adeplus said

    I am more interested in the impact it will have on hardware manufacturers: they must offer compatible products and, either they update their drivers like crazy, or they release the drivers leaving them in the hands of the community.

    The same goes and they end up freeing themselves from the Redmond monopoly.

    1.    vicky said

      Well, I think there is already repercussion. Nvidia developers offered help to Nouveau for the first time in history

  21.   dbertua said

    What is not known is whether it will be based on a Distribution, or they will make an OWN Distribution, which would seem to me the most successful.

    I don't think they make a Distribution based on Ubuntu, although in one of those if to begin with, or maybe in Debian Testing.

    It would be interesting if it was also a "Rolling Release".

    Anyway, until it is, everything is hypothesis and theories, but they are great for the Linux World, especially for "gamers", because now Linux will be a platform more than valid or at least as valid as others, at least for Steam games.

    What I liked the most is how well Steam used Windows, it used it to position itself, to standardize itself and now a little kiss on the forehead and something else 😉
    «He who kills iron, dies iron» ...
    "Done the law done the snare"
    they said there.

    Let's not get confused either, it is possible that it will become a kind of Adroid, which although it has some Linux, is not just Linux.

    I don't think it's bad, whoever wants SteamOS, to use it, and whoever doesn't want to continue with Windows, Linux or whatever.

    In my house the most excited about this is my son, he is looking forward to SteamOS, because currently I don't know how to install anything other than LINUX 😉

    1.    edo said

      Very possibly it is based on ubuntu 12.04, as this is the official one for steam in linux, also, relying on a rolling release would be the worst mistake they could make, with each update of the xorg players will be unable to use the distro, and to solve it go to console and see how it is solved.
      The best thing is to take something stable, Debian has stable but very old software, so Ubuntu 12.04 is the most logical option, it has 5-year support that not even Debian offers.

      1.    eliotime3000 said

        Or better yet, Debian Wheezy. Lately the Ubuntu 12.04 updates have gone from Guatemala to Guatemala.

        In the worst case, they would go for Slackware 14 because of how well stabilized it is.

  22.   Dekomu said

    I already want to try it * or *
    the new features look very interesting