It is finally out: the first version of the SteamOS released this weekend is available to the public. Being an operating system based on Debian Linux 7.1, the SteamOS is entirely free and can, among other things, run Steam games. It will also be the basis for Steam machines and consoles.
SteamOS Released, The Details
But ultimately, it will be a true multimedia center that Valve intends to develop with its OS: games, music, movies, series... The U.S. giant is currently in discussions to incorporate a variety of popular services to its system.
If you want to download the SteamOS and try it out (the file being a little smaller than 1 GB), the following minimum configuration will be required:
64-bit Intel or AMD Processor
4 GB of RAM
500 GB Hard Drive
NVIDIA Graphics Card (support for AMD and Intel cards coming soon)
It should be noted, that while it's really cool that Valve is making their own OS. It isn't meant to be a replacement for a desktop, and it is aimed for being a console replacement.
Eh, most of it's really easy to do. You can circumvent the EUFI boot requirement if you know what you're doing, and most people that are gamers are gonna have something similar anyhow. Hell, most of them have EUFI motherboards now.
I think Microsoft will be the most affected by this since Valve also intends to make their machine/OS a full multimedia platform. The least affected one will probably be Nintendo since they depend mostly on their own IPs, or gameplay elements that would be awkward on a Steam platform.
You should be able to install it on a Virtual Machine. I seen some posts about doing so on steam's subreddit about a week ago, but I'm not very interested in the OS until it comes out of the beta. As for how it'd run, I'd assume that it would run like any other VM.
The system requirements seem kind of high for Steam OS which is based on the Linux operating system since Linux OS like Lubuntu, Puppylinux, and Xubuntu can run pretty well on computers and laptops with 512MB or more RAM, 10GB and larger drives, and a older 1GHz and slower CPU and video card.
I think using a lightweight distro of Linux like Lubuntu or Xubuntu, and using the Linux Steam Client is a better alternative for people who just plan to play older games which can run on older computers.
I'm disappointed with the higher system requirements of Steam OS since Windows 8.1 can run on computers with a 1GHz single core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 20GB hard drive, and DirectX 9 videocard. Plus, Windows 8.1 does not need a UEFI motherboard, and can be installed with a Install disc instead of USB drive.
I think Microsoft would just publish games on Steam if there are a lot of Steam users like how Microsoft publish its software and Apps like Bing, MS Office, and Outlook to iOS, Mac OS X, Android, and other non-MS operating systems with a lot of users.
It maybe more difficult for Sony, and Nintendo to convert their games to work for Steam OS since Sony and Nintendo may not have as many workers as Microsoft which know how to publish games and software on different operating systems.
