Hello Linux Geeksters. A while ago, Valve has announced the first 12 partners that have created or intend to create Steam Machines, gaming consoles running on SteamOS, which will be presented at the Computer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The list looks like this: Alienware, Falcon Northwest, iBuyPower, CyberPowerPC, Origin PC, Gigabyte, Materiel.net, Webhallen, Alternate, Next, Zotac, and Scan Computers.
iBuyPower is on the list of 12, but there are other manufacturers like Piixl or Digital Storm that announced Steam Machines and are not on the list, meaning that they did not partner up with Valve, but there isn’t any problem in using the SteamOS, since it is open-source.
The story so far:
As you may know, 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 (which has been released in November, 2013) 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.
Until now, Valve did not release any Steam Machine yet, but they had sent 300 units to some lucky testers, in order to receive feedback.