True to its word, Valve has released a beta version of SteamOS, the Linux-based operating system that it will use to power its living room Steam Machine consoles. The release coincides with a lucky group of 300 public beta testers who were selected to actually receive Steam Machines to test on—the rest of us can still use the OS, but we'll have to bring our own hardware.

Valve had previously recommended that users who aren't "intrepid Linux hackers" should wait a few more months before trying out SteamOS, but that's not going to stop Ars from barreling head first into the midst of things! We downloaded the OS as quickly as we could after it went live and spent some time getting it whipped into shape on fresh hardware. Contrary to Valve's warning, the install wasn't complex or scary at all—though if you've never installed Linux before, it might take you a bit out of your comfort zone.

The hardware

Specs at a glance: The Ars Technica Steam Machine CPU Intel Pentium G3220 (Haswell), dual-core, 3.0GHz GPU Zotac Geforce GTX660 (2GB) RAM 8GB DDR3-1600 Motherboard MSI H81I (mini-ITX) Storage Western Digital WD Blue 7200 rpm 500GB HD Sound Onboard Network Onboard (wired gigabit Ethernet) PSU Antec VP-450, 450W Case BitFenix Prodigy, arctic white

Since we didn't receive a Steam Machine to test, we set out to build our own. Our goals were to stick to SteamOS hardware known to be good and to keep the price between $5-600. Andrew Cunningham, Kyle Orland, and I all stuck our heads together and came up with the configuration at right. All items were purchased from NewEgg, and the total prior to shipping was $562.93.

We certainly could have gone much higher if we'd been willing to spend real gaming PC money. However, to keep the price at least marginally competitive with next-gen console offerings, we backed several of the components down. We chose a dual-core Haswell Pentium instead of a more feature-loaded i5, 8GB of RAM instead of 16GB, and a spinny disk over an SSD. Fortunately, all of these components can be upgraded at any point—this is, after all, a PC.

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

On the other side of the fence, if $600-ish is too high, you could skim some cost off by going with previous-generation or lower-end components at the expense of future expandability. The place with the most "give" is the video card. We stuck with the GTX660 because it's specifically called out in Valve's previously released Steam Machine specs (although we went with the 2GB model instead of 3GB). The types of games that we'll eventually be playing on this thing are, at least for now, well-known titles that have previously been out on other operating systems, so it's easy to target your video card to the type of gaming experience you want to have.

When we were planning the build, we had very little info on exactly what video drivers would be bundled with the SteamOS beta, so sticking with an Nvidia GPU that Valve itself was going to use in real Steam Machines was the safe option. Now that the operating system is out, here are Valve's official hardware requirements, from the SteamOS FAQ:

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

A brief word on the choice of controller

The other big part of the Steam Machine experience that we didn't have access to was the touchpad-equipped Steam Machine Controller. We'll be doing an extensive hands-on with a variety of games once they're available for normal non-Valve, non-beta testers to use, but for now we have to make do with traditional input methods.

For the Ars Steam Machine, we're going with a combination of a USB mouse and keyboard and a wired Xbox 360 controller. The keyboard is necessary to get the operating system installed, though SteamOS is designed to be driven by a gamepad after the install is complete. In my heart, though, I'm a PC gamer—I can't actually play PC games with a controller. Some folks can make that jump, but I've been doing it with a mouse and keyboard for too long to change. So, mouse and keyboard it is.

SteamOS

The SteamOS installer showed up on Valve's servers (ZIP) at about 17:20 CST on December 13, and downloading was a madhouse of slow speeds and rampant disconnects. Fortunately, Bittorrent came to the rescue, and after a while we were able to grab what we needed.

SteamOS is a customized Linux distro based not on Ubuntu, as was reported prior to its release, but rather on Debian Wheezy. Valve is maintaining its own SteamOS package repository (and is using these pre-installed packages). For now, the SteamOS beta is using version 3.10.11 of the Linux kernel. Other SteamOS customizations off of Debian include a heavily patched graphics compositor to link together SteamOS, Steam games, and the Steam in-game overlay. The operating system has been configured to pull its updates directly from Valve's repository. It also has a standard Gnome desktop environment hiding out beneath the Steam-y bits, which we'll get to.

If you're one of the 300 actual Steam Machine beta testers, you can report bugs and issues directly to Valve (and, if you're one of the 300 actual Steam Machine beta testers, you already know this). For the rest of us, Valve is hosting a community issue tracker on Github, where users can post issues. Unfortunately, the tracker's README file contains the following dispiriting information about how much of a response those postings will receive:

This issue tracker is meant for community support and requests for improvements; it will not be closely monitored by Valve while the Hardware Beta Test is running.

The installation

There are two different ways to get SteamOS installed on your system, which Valve has helpfully outlined on the "build your own Steam Machine" page. The first is a fully automated method that restores the contents of a 2.7GB disk image onto your computer's hard disk drive. This method is simpler, but requires a much larger download; we skipped it in favor of the alternative.

That alternative, which Valve calls a "custom installation," involves using a UEFI-booting 960MB Debian-based installer to kick off a multi-step script-based process. It requires a bit more work, but it's not terribly daunting. After installing all of the SteamOS packages, this method relies on the user to boot into the OS and trigger scripts to create a restore partition of the completed install; in fact, the 2.7GB fully automated install is so much larger because it already contains the restore partition.

It's worth noting that both methods require you to have a computer that can boot via UEFI. The basis for the requirement isn't exactly clear yet, and at least one enterprising redditor has figured out how to hack around it and make an installer that works with a standard BIOS—though the consequences of actually following those instructions are unknown.

One very important caveat: Both of the official install methods will erase your hard drive. At least for now, there is no way to dual-boot SteamOS or install it on a second hard drive. The installer is a Debian custom unattended install, which includes automatic partitioning of the computer's primary disk and then an automated OS install onto the new partitions. The larger, image-based method partitions the disk and then installs pre-created disk images onto those partitions. At least for now, the only way to get SteamOS onto a computer is to sacrifice that computer to Valve.

The custom install

We decided to try the smaller custom installer first, simply because it was faster to download. Unzipping the custom installer's zip file reveals the Debian installer files. We copied the whole mess onto a fresh FAT32-formatted USB stick and then booted up our test system.

The boot manager presented us with a few options. The instructions recommended picking the "Automated Install" option and so, because this was our first time and we wanted to try to do it right before we started screwing with it, we followed the instructions. We also went back in later and ran through "Expert install" mode; unfortunately, although they give you some more flexibility in what packages are installed, they don't allow you to customize the partition layout (which is what everyone seems to want).

After picking "Automated Install," the installer ran on its merry way and did a bunch of Debian-like things, partitioning our disk and installing its packages without any input from us. Total time for this first portion of the install was just over 19 minutes.

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

On reboot, we were presented with a Debian logon window. The installer creates a pair of users, one privileged and one unprivileged. The instructions at this point said that we needed to log on with the privileged user and start the Steam application for the first time to let it "bootstrap"—that is, let it download and stage the Steam client files needed by SteamOS.