Build your own Steam machine

by Tom McNamara May 9, 2014

Theres no need to wait for companies to start selling pre-built Steam Machines
when you can put SteamOS on your PC today!
The mission If youre a PC gamer, you probably noticed that Valve Software and
Microsoft arent BFFs these days. Valve uses its own Steam software client to deliver
thousands of games to PC gamers around the world, and it is probably concerned
that at some point Microsoft is going to want a piece of the action, just like how
Apple takes a percentage for each sale via iTunes. Valve is apparently so
concerned with the direction it thinks Microsoft is headed that its gone to the
trouble of building an entirely new operating system just for its Steam client, and
dubbed it SteamOS.
Its a free Linux distribution, and its designed to run on pre-built Steam Machines,
which are console-size and due this year. However, it will run on any current PC, so
we figured wed take it for a spin this month to see how it feels. We did it because,
aside from the joy of tinkering, SteamOS runs a surprisingly large number of games,
and one day it will be able to stream games to your TV from a computer. To satisfy
our curiosity, we decided to install the SteamOS on a DIY machine we had in the
Lab.
We were not among the 300 lucky SOBs who scored a Steam Machine direct from
Valve for beta testing, so we installed SteamOS on a machine we created
previously. SteamOS only runs on Nvidia video cards at press time, though, so we
swapped the systems AMD Radeon R9 290X for a GeForce GTX 780.
Since this PC Builder article is focused on software rather than hardware, well skip
the usual components chart and just give you a quick rundown right here. Our box
has an Intel Core-i7-4770K, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, a gold-rated 550W Seasonic power
supply with modular cables, and a 256GB SSD and 1TB WD Black hard drive.
SteamOS requires a motherboard that uses UEFI and a 64-bit CPU. Valve
recommends at least 4GB of RAM and 500GB of storage space. Some familiarity
with Linux is also helpful, but its not required.
To install SteamOS, well also need a 4GB USB flash drive. And this is very important:
Just like with Windows, whatever drive you install SteamOS to will be formatted
during the install, so if you are looking to dual-boot you will want to keep that OS
on a different partition or drive altogether. In fact, we recommend disconnecting
the device with Windows on it while installing SteamOS, just to be safe.
Also, the build of SteamOS that we used does not have a complete audio
package. The only way to get sound is over an HDMI cable, either to a receiver or
a flat-panel display with integrated speakers.
Heres a step-by-step guide to building your very own Steam machine:

We show you how its done.
Step 1: Downloading the package

Download the 950MB installer package from Valves servers at
repo.steampowered.com/download. There are torrents floating around, but none
are officially approved. The SteamOS installer download is a ZIP file instead of the
ISO that youd usually use to install an operating system. You can create an ISO
from this package and burn it to disc, but a lot of people (including ourselves)
experience difficulty doing this, so we instead extracted the files to a USB key. Be
sure to back up any important data on your flash drive, because youll need to
format it as FAT32 for the installation (most USB keys default to this file type during
formatting). Just open Windows Explorer, right-click your flash drives icon, select
Format, make sure the file system is set to FAT32, and click the button labeled Start.
When the installer is done downloading, extract it to the USB stick.
Step 2: Extraction begins

Windows has built-in ZIP file extraction these days, so you can just double-click on
the freshly downloaded file to view its contents, hit Ctrl-A to select everything, Ctrl-
C to copy it all, then double-click your flash drive in Windows Explorer, and press
Ctrl-V to begin the transfer. Its a large file, so that could take 15 minutes to half an
hour, depending on the speed of your CPU and whether youre using USB 3.0 or
2.0. While the files are being extracted and copied over, we recommend digging
up your motherboard manual or looking online to find out which button to press on
boot to access a Boot Selection menu so that you can boot from the USB key. Its
usually F12, but varies by mobo. Also, we recommend installing Steam to a
mechanical hard drive as SSD optimization in Linux can get complicated if youre
not familiar with the OS. If you want to take a stab at it though, heres the official
guide: https://wiki.debian.org/SSDOptimization.
Step 3: Begin the install

The actual installation of SteamOS is pretty easy, since its almost entirely
automated. Just shut down your system, detach your Windows drive, plug in the
USB key with SteamOS on it, start your PC again, and press your motherboards
preferred key for accessing the boot menu. This should list your flash drive with a
UEFI tag at the front. Choose that, select Automated Install from the next menu,
and go grab a bite to eat because it will take about 30 minutes to install on a
mechanical hard drive.
Step 4: Get to know Linux

While the OS is installing wed recommend taking some time to check out some
basic Linux commands and concepts, if youre not already familiar with them.
SteamOS is a variant of Debian (version 7, code-name Wheezy), so Googling the
latter will give you info on the former. SteamOS also uses the Gnome Shell for its
desktop environment, and that comes with a set of keyboard shortcuts that are
handy to have at your fingertips. The makers of Gnome keep a Gnome Shell cheat
sheet here. Most of them will be familiar to Windows veterans.
Step 5: You have arrived

Once SteamOS has installed, it will prompt you to reboot your PC. At the login
screen, the user name is steam, and the password is steam. You can change this
later. Note the drop-down menu right below the password field. Selecting
SteamOS will launch you directly into Steams Big Picture mode, which uses an
interface designed for living room TVs set about 10 feet away from the user.
Default Xsession will give you the Gnome Shell desktop instead. Were not sure if
this menu will even be accessible once SteamOS is out of its beta phase, but you
should take a look at Gnome, now that its actually on your computer. The first
order of business is to finish the install, via the command-line terminal. Select
Activities in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, choose Applications, and
click Terminal. Type su desktop, use desktop as your password, type
./post_logon.sh, and hit the Y key to confirm a series of automated steps. You can
also open the terminal by pressing Alt-F2, typing gnome-terminal and hitting Enter.
Alt-F2 is basically like Windowss Run dialog.
Step 6: Opening the valve

Once the post-install script has completed, reboot the system, and you will be
launched directly into Steams Big Picture mode. To get back to the desktop, click
the Exit button and select Return to Desktop. The screen will go dark for a few
seconds, and youll be back in the Gnome Shell. There will be an icon on the
desktop that you can click to return to Big Picture mode. At this stage, you may
need to re-create your account password to correctly establish admin privileges.
In a terminal window, type passwd desktop, and type in whatever new password
you desire. That will allow you to use sudo commands, which temporarily give you
administrator privileges for things like installing software or accessing system-wide
settings.
Step 7: Hissing noises

You may have issues getting audio to work. At press time, there was a bug that
muted several outputs, and the built-in audio panel did not display those outputs.
As a work-around, we had to manually install a third-party panel that shows
everything. ALSA Mixer is one such program, but we want the one specifically built
for Debian. To get that, go to desktop mode, open the Applications menu, select
Iceweasel, and go to: packages.debian.org/wheezy/alsa-utils. Scroll down to the
bottom, click AMD64, and choose your download location. Once thats finished,
open the terminal and type cd Downloads. Then type sudo dpkg -i alsa-
utils_1.0.25-4_amd64.deb. Now type alsamixer in the terminal to bring up the new
audio panel. Use the F6 key to cycle through your available audio outputs. Arrow
keys cycle through each audio channel, and M toggles the mute. If that doesnt
work, you should be able to get audio over HDMI, either through TV speakers or a
home theater receiver.
Know your way around SteamOS


Getting on the steam train
Once we had SteamOS up and running, the first order of business was seeing what
applications were available in the package and from the repositories, or repos.
Unfortunately, its pretty bare-bones. Theres no word processor, image editor,
email client, or media player, for example.
With Debian, this is usually not a big deal, since it has literally thousands of
packages in its repos that are just a few clicks away from installation. But SteamOS
doesnt point to Debians servers, and theres no way to force it to. And theyre
two different distributions anyway, so you could get hit with incompatibilities and
errors even if you could. Therefore, SteamOS, or at least this version of it, does not
look like its meant to replace Windows. Its a stripped-down gaming platform. You
can always install packages on your own, or build from source, but thats not
nearly as much fun.

Metro: Last Light is just one of the many titles already on SteamOS.
With nearly 100 of our 289 Steam games compatible with Linux, however, including
nearly all of Valves titles (though Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a prominent
exception), its a pretty good gaming platform. Metro: Last Light is also getting
bundled with retail Steam Machines, and a quick scan of our personal library also
included popular titles like Starbound, Bastion, Mark of the Ninja, Fez, Football
Manager 2014, and Monaco. DOTA 2, one of the most popular games in the
world, will also be available on SteamOS. Unfortunately for AMD users, SteamOS
uses Nvidias proprietary drivers, so you cant run an AMD GPU at this time.
We also dual-booted with Windows, which was simple since our test bench had
Windows installed on the SSD and SteamOS on the hard drive. We just selected our
boot device during startup and were back in Windows-ville. You can also go into
the boards BIOS and tell it to boot to a specific drive every time, instead of
manually selecting from the boot menu. Its not as clean as getting the Linux boot
loader to just see Windows and add it to its own boot menu, but its close enough
for our needs.
Overall, were not sure at this time if running SteamOS is worth the effort, since you
can get Steam for Ubuntu and other Linux distros, where youll get access to repos
and the ability to dual-boot. Its fun to play with though, so if you have a spare
drive and some time you should check it out. If youre on Windows though, dont
worry youre not missing anything yet.