SteamOs – The new Linux based console by Valve

Some days ago Valve announced it’s new, and not so secret, project SteamOS :

“Thousands of games, millions of users. Everything you love about Steam.
Available soon as a free operating system designed for the TV and the living room.”

In short, soon there will be a new Linux distribution tailored to get the max from Steam and its games,

“SteamOS will be available soon as a free download for users and as a freely licensable operating system for manufacturers. Stay tuned in the coming days for more information”

about manufacturer Valve claims that it’s in contact with different hardware vendors to make “a variety of Steam gaming machines.” All will be running SteamOS and are expected to start hitting retail in 2014.



Valve also announced four new Steam features focused on the living room, available soon in both SteamOS and the Steam client.

In-home Streaming
You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have – then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV!

Music, TV, Movies
We’re working with many of the media services you know and love. Soon we will begin bringing them online, allowing you to access your favorite music and video with Steam and SteamOS.

Family Sharing
In the past, sharing Steam games with your family members was hard. Now you can share the games you love with the people you love. Family Sharing allows you to take turns playing one another’s games while earning your own Steam achievements and saving your individual game progress to the Steam cloud.

Family Options
The living-room is family territory. That’s great, but you don’t want to see your parents’ games in your library. Soon, families will have more control over what titles get seen by whom, and more features to allow everyone in the house to get the most out of their Steam libraries.

Steam Controller

Along with the operating system and the new hardware there will be also a new Controller, Valve wrote

“We knew how to build the user interface, we knew how to build a machine, and even an operating system. But that still left input — our biggest missing link. We realized early on that our goals required a new kind of input technology — one that could bridge the gap from the desk to the living room without compromises. So we spent a year experimenting with new approaches to input and we now believe we’ve arrived at something worth sharing and testing with you.”

The result it’s a controller that relies on two trackpads that allow for freer movement and haptic response, sixteen buttons on the controller include two that flank the inner sides of each track pad and two on the back of the peripheral. Finally, a touch screen similar to the one offered on the Ouya controller is in the center, enabling users to make certain multitouch actions within the game.

Conclusions

I’m optimist with this new announcement of Valve, it can help in bring more attention, users, cash and developer for the whole Linux market and so in the end be a good thing also for all the “standard” GNU/Linux distributions. And after all if it works fine why don’t use it with a TV instead of a classic console ?

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