14 DAY TRIAL // Valve is getting really close to the November 10 launch of the Steam Machines, and it's polishing the SteamOS distro. Only small fixes are landing, but they are important ones.
SteamOS 2.0 is the operating system that will power the Steam Machines, Valve's new PC / console hybrid for the living room. It's based on Debian 8 "Jessie," and it's using the Big Picture Mode in Steam as the main desktop environment. A GNOME 3 desktop is hidden underneath, but it's not really designed to provide a day-to-day use. It's primarily a gaming machine, and developers are not interested in something else.
Valve switched to SteamOS 2.0 a short while back, and it looks like it's getting ready for prime time. For that, it needs to be as good as possible, but we still have to remember that it's a relatively new OS. It's not going to be great right from the start, even if Valve has been testing it for almost two years. Proof of that is the fact that the developers are still adding pretty important stuff, like better auto-repair functions.
What's new in SteamOS 2.0
A new update has been pushed to the Beta branch of the operating system, and it will soon land in the stable one as well. It comes with a few fixes for various vulnerabilities, but also with improvements to the auto-repair function.
"Fixed auto-repair cases where an update could be interrupted during package configuration or DKMS driver building and result in the system not rebooting. Don't apply updates on shutdown until the user has requested it."
These two lines in the changelog are pretty important, considering that users really need to have this function working. Auto-repair will be pretty much the only tool at the user's disposable, especially for the new ones, who don't know how to fix a Linux system.
You can download the latest built of SteamOS 2.0 from Softpedia and give it a go. It's not a Live CD, and you will need to install it.