Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Valve has released the first Beta version of SteamOS last week. Now, the Steam developers have also created the alchemist_beta repository, enabling all the SteamOS users to easily upgrade their system.
For now, SteamOS has only two repositories available, “alchimist” and “alchemist_beta”, the second being the one that gets all the latest fixes and improvements.
So, in order to make your SteamOS take its updates from the beta repo, install the alchemist_beta repository, with the following command:
$ sudo apt-get install steamos-beta-repo
For those who don’t know yet, Valve, now a member of The Linux Foundation, has initiated some ambitions projects: the SteamOS, a Linux operating system optimized for gaming, the Steam Machine, a gaming colsole that will run with SteamOS and the Steam Controller, a game controller specially designed for SteamOS and the Steam Machine. A demo video of the Steam Controller can be found here.
The first Beta version of SteamOS 1.0 is a customized Debian Wheezy system, running on Kernel 3.10.11, back-porting fresh Nvidia, Catalyst and Mesa binary drivers, uses SysVinit as the system’s default event manager, a personalized GNOME 3.4 as the default desktop environment for the Big Picture mode and Xcompmgr, a lightweight graphics compositor.