The first of Valve’s three teased announcements has been revealed; SteamOS, a Linux-based operating system for home-entertainment PC’s.

Earlier today, Valve revealed the first of the three announcements from the “Steam Universe” teaser page on Steam: The page is “/livingroom“, which addresses Valve’s ongoing plan to take PC-gaming into the living room alongside consoles; “Big Picture” launched last year as an alternate user-interface for desktop/laptop/home entertainment computers, a coherent interface for televisions and large displays, and was designed for use with controllers and gamepads- Valve’s new SteamOS is the next chapter of their “living room saga”.

SteamOS is designed for PC gaming on home entertainment and media center PC’s, and will use the Linux architecture. Aside from the performance being catered to gamers, SteamOS will also feature several streaming services: support for existing media services (i.e. Hulu, Netflix, Pandora) is being looked into by Valve for those who wish to use their PC as an alternative option to TV; the previously announced Family Sharing option will be available, giving other in-home users complete access to a shared Steam-library; Family Options will also be added, as a content-filter for users of various ages. SteamOS will also introduce streaming between devices; a PC running SteamOS can stream any content from the libraries of other computers within the house, so long as they are all actively running Steam.

All of the above features will be coming to the native Steam client.

SteamOS will be a free download for consumers, and a free-license OS for manufacturers. On the previously-mentioned “Living Room” site, the SteamOS teaser icon was a circle; the next announcement teaser icon is a circle within brackets, which may loosely suggest the rumored “Steam Box”.

Source: Valve
Image courtesy of Valve