SteamOS BETA available.
SteamOS GNU/Linux 1.0 "Alchemist" was released.
From the release announcement:
"We've been hard at work to deliver on our promise of a new kind of living room entertainment environment - one that is accessible, powerful and open.
In making the SteamOS Beta available to you, we're excited to take the next major step towards that goal. But before you dive in, please take a few minutes to understand what SteamOS Beta is and what it is not (yet)."
SteamOS is designed primarily for playing video games. Users will be able to stream games from their Windows or Mac computers to one running SteamOS, and it will incorporate the same family sharing and restrictions as Steam on the desktop. Valve claims that it has "achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing" through SteamOS. The operating system will be open source allowing anyone to build on or adapt the source code, which will run on Steam Machines.
Since SteamOS is designed for playing games it will not have many built-in functions beyond web browsing and playing games; for example there is no file manager or image viewer. Though the OS does not, in its current form, support streaming services, Valve is in talks with streaming companies to bring the feature to SteamOS.
