SteamOS Now Available & Requirements

Now that the first Steam Machine prototypes have shipped out, Valve has released its Steam OS into the wild.

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You can download Steam OS here, and it’s advisable that you carefully read the Steam OS FAQbefore diving in.
SteamOS is a fork (derivative) of Debian GNU/Linux. The first version (SteamOS 1.0) is called ‘alchemist’ and it is based on the Debian ‘wheezy’ (stable 7.1) distribution.

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SteamOS is designed to run

Steam and Steam games. It also provides a desktop mode which can run regular Linux applications.  SteamOS currently provides a limited set of packages, but many Debian wheezy packages work fine on SteamOS, says Valve.
Steam OS can only run Linux games, so your Windows-only library is out. However, Valve is working on a system which will allow Windows games to be streamed from your Windows machine to the your Steam OS machine.

SteamOS Hardware Requirements:

• Intel or AMD 64-bit capable processor
• 4GB or more memory
• 500GB or larger disk
• NVIDIA graphics card (AMD and Intel graphics support coming soon)
• UEFI boot support
• USB port for installation

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