Valve’s SteamOS Beta Available for Download

Valve, the company behind popular gaming platform "Steam", has released the first public beta version of its much awaited operating system "SteamOS" codename "alchemist".
"SteamOS" is a linux-based operating system which is based on Debian 7 (codename Debian Wheezy) code. SteamOS team has developed the OS by optimizing Debian 7 code for a better living room experience. As expected SteamOS comes bundled with Steam client program. SteamOS has been designed to run Steam and Steam games but you can also run your regular Linux applications by using its desktop mode. Almost all Debian packages will work fine in SteamOS.
SteamOS comes preinstalled with Gnome desktop environment and you can download and install any desired software similar to other Linux distributions. But first you'll need to enable desktop mode using Steam settings.
Currently Microsoft Windows games and software don't work in SteamOS but future builds of SteamOS will support streaming of games from Windows computers.
SteamOS Hardware Requirements:

• Processor: Intel or AMD 64-bit capable processor
• Memory: 4GB or more
• Hard Disk space: 500GB or more
• Video Card: NVIDIA graphics card (AMD and Intel graphics support coming soon)
• Additional: UEFI boot support and USB port for installation

Please keep in mind that SteamOS is a beta product and its development has not been finished yet. So you should only install it for testing purposes. Since its under testing, some hardware may not been supported yet.
You can install SteamOS in 2 ways:

• Default installation
• Custom installation

Default installation is recommended method by SteamOS team. It installs a pre-configured image of SteamOS. Custom installation method uses Debian installer to install the OS. This method allows you to customize SteamOS installation.
Interested people can download and test the OS using following links:

Download SteamOS Beta
Direct Download Links
SteamOS FAQ

In direct download links page, you'll see following 2 setup files: SteamOSInstaller.zip and SYSRESTORE.zip. "SteamOSInstaller.zip" file is used for custom installation and "SYSRESTORE.zip" file is used for default installation type.
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