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The agony and ecstasy of SteamOS: WHERE ARE MY GAMES?

And yes it does need a fat HDD (or SSD, it's cool with either)

All steamed up

Being forced to put some extra hours into Half Life 2, Rust and Don’t Starve wasn’t too painful, although I did miss being able to play my new RPG game of choice: Divinity Original Sin. Buying games is just as easy once I’m logged in but the Steam store seems to take an age to load, as did the web browser. That said, I have to admit SteamOS seemed impressively stable while playing the games I had access to.

Not all titles are cross platform for SteamOS

Not all titles are cross platform for SteamOS

Valve has a round-the-houses (literally) solution to my wish to access my non-Linux games, in the form of streaming. If Windows and SteamOS computers are connected to the same network, I can stream games, but since I have to be connected to a Windows PC it kinda defeats the purpose of SteamOS in the first place.

At its heart, SteamOS relies on a Linux installation to run the same Steam client I use on my Windows PC, although the somewhat sexy Big Picture mode is designed for a TV screen instead of a computer monitor. The New Age ambient percussive music could be a Grimes track, while the wallpaper is a stack of games hovering in mid-air navigated by controller or keyboard and mouse. I found it more attractive, although perhaps not as easy and intuitive to navigate as other consoles' interfaces.

Navigation

Navigation

There’s a conventional desktop mode which uses GNOME, but don’t expect any add-ons as default for word processing or image manipulation. I can add them as SteamOS is based on Debian – so any Linux programs added with package manager will work in Steam.

Watch out, Spotify! Valve has just launched the open beta of Steam Music, a nifty service that pulls tracks from my local music library and displays the album artwork.

Although Valve seems quite clear that SteamOS is fundamentally a gaming platform, I can envision a Netflix button being added some time soon. This is a shame as it will destroy what is, at the moment, a very elegant interface.

Click on Interface to enable access to the Linux Desktop

Click on Interface to enable access to the Debian Linux Desktop

SteamOS is the first glimpse of the future of gaming. Why does SteamOS matter? Because it’s open source, free and negates the idea of platform. Should you download SteamOS? Maybe... After the stress of getting it installed, I really enjoyed having a sneaky peek, but for the sake of convenience I’m still booting Steam on my existing Windows desktop.

Beta by nature

Still, now that I have it installed I do boot into it every so often to install updates and look for any new features. I think this is the best way to approach SteamOS, even though there are machines being released with it already installed – such as the Zotac ZBOX Steam Machine.

SteamOS is an innovative and astonishing idea, even though it's still in its infancy and is unlikely to be ready until 2015. Even so, my heart jumps for joy at a possible challenger to the PlayStation/Xbox reign of purse-raiding horror. Well done, Valve. Dr Gordon Freeman must be proud. ®

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