So SteamOS is out, what an interesting start to the revolution.
There were ups, there were downs, I laughed, I cried, I hurled.
Downloaded both options, the SYSRESTORE and the Installer. Formatted up a disk (in OSX), unzipped and copied the files across as the instructions said to do. Booted the PC up in UEFI, nothing. Missing Operating System, or a million phrases to that effect.
Finally (after Martini1981's advice) cotttoned on that the secure boot stuff in the BIOS was inhibiting the boot process, however that wasn't before I syslinux'd my installer and let it destroy my Windows installation. As previously posted, word to the wise: When you syslinux the installer it will just automatically presume it's in auto mode and blow away your first disk. Hey ho.
Anyway, finally managed to get the OS installed (reformatted drive in W7 VM, and copied files across in that environment removing OSX!) and it's joined the others to make the machine triple boot:
Xubuntu
Windows 7
SteamOS
First impressions of SteamOS:
Too much of a faff in it's current form. Even if you manage to get the installer built right first time (and I'd imagine a lot of people did) once you login you're presented with 4 possible desktops and no immediately apparent login details. Once you login with steam/steam, you're given a desktop with a Steam icon. Oh so I install that do I? Course I do, because if I had used the Steam desktop option it would have just hung forcing me to do a CTRL+ALT+F2. OK, no worries I'll just sudo reboot and try again or something to that effect. Wait, I'm not in sudoers... and so on. Yes it's beta I know, but a lot of people will be sitting at blank screen for some time.
That said, once you've worked out that you need to install Steam then login as the desktop user, reset your password and then you can have root access you've got a workable OS.
So I switched user to the Steam account and was presented with a big picture version of Steam. Now we are getting somewhere, this is what Valve were on about. The one thing that has struck me is that even on a slow 5400RPM 2.5" disk, this is one slick and fast experience. Transitions are quick, and loading is quick, and general desktop use is very nice indeed. 10 points to Valve.
I'm not 100% convinced if Gnome was the best choice, but I prefer it to KDE however it's nothing like xfce for usability and dare I say it Unity is probably a nice interface than Gnome. Alas it is what it is, and it doesn't really pinch on the overall experience that much (if at all) in my humble one.
Delving a bit deeper, I was pleasantly surprised to see the NVidia drivers were installed and built correctly and run brilliantly out of the box. Another 10 points. Few little quirks, system information and Steam's own diag info shows my 670 as an unknown card and I couldn't see the NVidia settings panel anywhere.
Noticed the only repos in apt are Valve's, meaning all those have to be added manually if you want any third party software. Firefox for example isn't included in the build, (IceWeasel seems to do a valiant job though) so that's a manual add if you want your browser of choice.
All in all, I think it's a pretty good start however it doesn't feel like anything more than a Wheezy distro with a Steam client on it at the moment. That is to say it doesn't feel like a ground up purpose built OS. I'm sure in time it will become that, but it's got a way to go.
Final point is the selection of games, which at this point is fairly thin on the ground in the AAA section. It struck me when I cycled through the store and my library, and really made me think "well this is no different to my Xubuntu installation of Steam really. Where's the incentive?"
So I'll check in on it from time to time, but for now it's back in the oven because it's not cooked yet, the guests haven't arrived anyway.
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Non-SteamOS related update wise, I'm shifting from 2 x 670 GTXs in SLI to 2X 7970s in the week. So I'll have another set of benchies to throw up once I've completed the necessary tweaks.
