A Look at the SteamOS Beta on a Custom PC

Valve’s much-anticipated Linux distribution, SteamOS, is here – at least in beta form. Despite it being early days, we couldn’t wait to see what the OS brings to the table (at this point), and what it’d be like installing it to a custom PC (hint: it’s hit-or-miss). One thing we know for sure: Linux’s gaming future is bright.

Valve impressed us back in September when it announced its own Linux distribution, and now, it impresses again: A mere two-and-a-half months after the announcement, a beta has become available.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the beta since its release late last week, so in this article, I’m going to talk about my experiences with it, give some tips, and then talk about what we should expect to see (and hope to see) in the future.

Given Valve’s undivided attention to Ubuntu Linux during the development of Steam for Linux, it seemed likely that it would become the base for SteamOS – but not so. Instead, Valve went with the base of Ubuntu and a billion other distros: Debian. Going the Debian route allows Valve to build a distro from the ground up and also deliver an underpinning that many Linux users are already familiar with.

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