Digital distribution platform Steam will be kicking off its Steam Machine hardware beta test tomorrow, on Friday the 13th of December, the date that they will be shipping the hardware prototypes to the 300 early participants. While it will be an especially lucky day for the 300, every other gamer on the planet won’t be going home empty-handed. Sort of.
The machines being sent out will ship with Valve’s SteamOS operating system installed, which means that it’s basically ready for action. ‘Basically’ being the operative word. Valve will be releasing SteamOS into the wild when the hardware ships tomorrow but it’s not going to be as user-friendly as you’d like it to be.
Valve said “SteamOS will be made available when the prototype hardware ships. It will be downloadable by individual users and commercial OEMs. (But unless you’re an intrepid Linux hacker already, we’re going to recommend that you wait until later in 2014 to try it out.)”
So Steam’s gaming version of Linux is on the way but only the really hardcore will be able to use it effectively, by the look of things. Still, it’s a start and we can finally get a look at what SteamOS has to offer.