There’s always a division between console gamers and PC gamers. But Valve is hoping to bridge some of the gap by bringing the gaming PC to the living room with its SteamOS. SteamOS is a Linux-based operating system designed for playing video games.

SteamOS computers, known as Steam Machines, are available in the market from different manufacturers like Alienware, Falcon Northwest and Origin PC, among many others. But you don’t need to break your bank to enjoy the SteamOS. You can check out the beta version of the OS right now for free and convert your PC into a Steam Machine.

System Requirement:

For installing SteamOS your system should have the following:

• A 64-bit Intel or AMD processor.
• NVidia, AMD or Intel graphics card. Valve recommends NVidia graphics card as they are optimized to work better with SteamOS. But the latest beta added support for both AMD and Intel graphics. Laptops having both discreet and integrated graphics are not supported.
• 500 GB Hard Disk
  
• 4 GB RAM
• Motherboard should have Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) boot support, which most modern (past three or four years) motherboards have.
• You will also need a flash drive with at least 4 GB of space for installing the SteamOS and an Internet connection.

Pre - Installation:

Before you begin keep in mind SteamOS is still in beta and parts of the operating system are not 100 percent functional. Please be aware that the operating system has some bugs that still must be worked out.

Also installing SteamOS will also erase your entire hard drive, so you should back up any important data to an external drive.

SteamOS is available in two versions:

1. Default: Fewer configurations required. Restores an image of SteamOS to your PC. Requires 1TB hard drive.
2. Custom: For smaller hard drives. Runs through a standard OS setup.

We’ll go through the custom setup.

Installation Process:

• Download the installer from Steam website.
• Extract the content to a USB stick. The USB should have at least 4 GB free space. Also the setup should be extracted in the USB root i.e. not inside any folder.
• Plug the USB into the PC and boot from the USB drive. This can be done by opening the boot selection screen by holding either the DEL, F8, F10, F11 or F12 keys as the computer is powering on (depending on your system). You should be presented with a list of boot options. Select UEFI entry for USB drive and SteamOS installer will boot-up.
  
• Select "Automated install".
• The installer will wipe the content of your hard drive, partition it install SteamOS. This process will take around 30 min. During installation you may run into issue with your display going to sleep and not waking up again if you are plugged in via HDMI. So if possible go in via DVI.
• If all goes well the system will reboot and you will be presented with a login screen. Make sure the system boots from the Hard Disk this time.
  
• If you are plugged in via HDMI you may encounter problem with screen resolution being incorrect upon boot. The solution (other than to plugin via DVI) is to click the icon in the top right of the screen and select the top option. This makes the text bigger allowing you to select the “Gnome session” from the login window.
  
• You can now login with username and password “steam”.
  
• You should now be able to see the Linux desktop. If your screen resolution is still incorrect you need to go into settings and configure your display.
  
• Next, you need to get the SteamOS installed.
• Open a terminal from applications window.
  
• Type in “steam” and press Enter.
• Once steam is installed close the open windows and logout of the system.
  
• Login to the “Gnome session” again. But this time use the username and password “desktop”.
  
• Open a terminal window and type:
  ~/post_logon.sh
• The terminal will prompt for password which is “desktop”.
• System will automatically reboot and create a recovery partition. Once that is done it will reboot again and you will be presented with the Steam login screen.

Again, if you are using HDMI you may encounter another issue of incorrect resolution in Steam’s Big Picture mode.

• To fix it, first, you need to enable access to the desktop.
  
• On the desktop, open another terminal window and type:
  sudo nano /user/bin/steamos-session
  
• This will open a text file, where you need to find the line that says preload.
  
• Before the preload line create a new line and enter:
  xrander –s 1920x1080
  (Replace the numbers with your screen resolution).
• Hit Ctrl+X on keyboard then Y to save the file.
• After you restart you should be presented with the correct resolution.

While that might seem like a lot of effort to go through in order to get things working, everything, except the screen resolution works straight away including audio and Ethernet port, things that usually require some configuration in most Linux.

Now you are ready to play some games. The Linux selection isn’t the biggest right now but there are quite a lot of Indie games as well as Valve tittles like Dota 2 and Left4Dead 2.

See Also

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Tell us in the comments what your preferred gaming platform is. Also are you excited to try the new SteamOS or are better off with Windows.

Wondering what Amazon's first upcoming smartphone looks like? The image above is the first to reveal the design of Amazon’s debut smartphone. Well, now, BGR has exclusively obtained a new image of Amazon’s smartphone that reveals the handset’s design for the first time ever. The picture as seen depicts a black device with glass front and back covers, and a matte edge which could be either plastic or metal.

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As rumored specs include a 4.7in screen with a 720p resolution, driven by a quad-core Snapdragon chip and 2GB of RAM, so while that resolution isn't exactly sterling for the display size, there should be no worries on the performance front.It's assumed that, there are no less than six camera sensors on board, which is all part of the motion control side of the handset.

The speculation points to some form of "Prime Data" package – in other words, free streaming of Amazon Prime media tied into a contract (reportedly with AT&T in the US).

Scant details and speculation have pointed towards a possible Amazon mobile offering including four front-facing cameras that track a user's gaze, enabling a glasses-free 3D experience. The 3D tech, which will in effect create images like a hologram.

 

According to BGR the phone will feature six separate camera modules, and a customizable version of Google’s Android operating system.It will rely on Amazon’s own mobile app store for third-party software distribution.



 The phone is amongst several others that the company is about to launch. It will hit the  markets sometime during the 3Q of this year.

Ever wondered, if just by wearing a helmet you can enter into a virtual reality which makes everything seem life like. In short, your fantasies become reality. You can run, fight do everything that a gamer ever imagines. Welcome Oculus Rift, the future of virtual gaming.

Designed For The Gamers, By The Gamers!!

A set of virtual reality goggles, it works with our computer or mobile device, that lets one to step inside your favourite game. Accompanied with an incredibly wide field of view, high resolution display, and ultra-low latency head tracking Rift doubles a gamer's experience.

Tech Specs....

The DK2 is based on the Crystal Cove Oculus Rift prototype. The Oculus Rift DK2(development kit2) features a 5-inch OLED display with a resolution of 960 x 1080 pixels per eye and a 100-degree field of view. The headset has a refresh rate of up to 75 Hz, and an internal-tracking update rate of 1000 Hz and a positional-tracking update rate of 60 Hz. The all-black DK2 has ports for HDMI and USB 2.0.

To strengthen it's ability to track head movements, it's shipped with a  position tracking camera. The latest developer version costs $350.

It could track head movement across six axes instead of three, operating with a lag time of only 30 milliseconds!!

 

Rift In Action....

Features like a set of goggles in which a computer screen replaces the glass. There are a set of lenses on each glass that focus and reshape the image for each eye side by side. Accompanied by embedded sensors it tracks user's head motions effectively. The latest version features an external position tracking system further enhancing this gaming experience.

DOOM 3 BFG Edition, the first Oculus-ready game, with every Rift dev kit.... 

Oculus VR  consumer version will have a higher-resolution screen - at least 1080p. Screen would be featuring a better pixel switching, reducing head-movement lag. It will also have a head-position sensor to track not just how the head tilts and twists, but how it moves up and down or side to side if you move your whole body. The overall latency — the lag between head movements and the screen reacting — will also be reduced, in order to give a more natural feel to the gamer.

  Oculus Joins Facebook!!

Oculus VR consumer version will be compatible with Android devices, though the company hasn't fixed a a date yet. So Android compatibility may not be available at launch, but through a software update later. Because the Oculus Rift is compatible with Linux, and Valve has been working with Oculus VR since the Rift was revealed.

 

The wait for Moto E is finally over, at-least for the eyes. The most anticipated Android smartphone by Motorola, the Moto E, which is the strongest contender for the title of  "Cheap and best" Android  smartphone till date in the market is finally available for the eyes to see.

What we have here is the image of Moto G (in black) alongwith "The" Moto E (in white). This image surfaced on Motorola Mexico's Facebook page and went viral, though the image was deleted soon after the leak and can not be found on the page now but of no use. 

What we observer from the image is that the Moto E (model no. XT1022) has a screen which is smaller than the Moto G but has almost the same display quality. Moto E sports a pair of chrome grills which could be front facing speakers or just simple mic and speaker, this remains to be known. We can't see a secondary camera in the image, though there is a possibility of it being hidden under the black long patch(which usually holds sensors) right next to the upper chrome grill.

The Moto E in the image is actually a prototype which can confirmed because of the special marking on top right corner of the device which is give to the devices when it is on testing. 

The exclusive rights for selling the Moto E in India is again given to Flipkart following the trend of Moto G and Moto X. The e-commerce giant in India confirmed this on their website.

The Specs include a 4.3-inch display, 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon CPU, 4GB onboard storage, 1GB of RAM, a 5MP rear camera, 1980mAh battery and Android 4.4 KitKat. Camera flash is missing in the device but that is acceptable as Motorola is trying to cut down the cost of the device so as to make it affordable to all.

The big launch is set for May 13th at London and New Delhi. Let's see what price tag does the Moto E wear.

We have all tried at some point to keep track of things that we do or things that need to be done. From to-do lists and calendars to various web and mobile apps. But come on, we all also know that they are boring.

HabitRPG takes a different take on managing your tasks and habits. It turns your habits into a Role-Playing Game (RPG). You can earn experience points (XP), gain levels and stay alive by getting things done. And I can tell you that this gamification of my life has helped me a lot.

Earn experience points (XP), gain levels and stay alive by getting things done.

Core Mechanics

You can create various types of tasks. There are four types of lists:

Habits

In this you can add habits that you want to maintain or get rid of. Positive habits give you experience and negative habits cost you health points (HP).

Dailies

Dailies are tasks that you want to do daily. If you don’t complete a daily it costs you HP. You can also select to do tasks only certain days in a week.

To-Dos

To-Dos are tasks that you need to complete just ones. They cost you anything for not completing them.

Rewards

You can spend the gold you earn on rewards. You can create your own custom rewards. In game rewards are unlocked once you reach level 2. You can buy equipment for your avatar with different attributes like more XP gained or less HP lost.

Reward yourself when you get things done. You deserve it.

You gain XP, gold, silver and drops for completing you tasks and doing good habits. You lose HP if you don’t complete your dailies or for doing bad habits. One thing worth mentioning here is that it’s important to be sincere. The game will benefit you only if you are honest to yourself and the game.

The game will benefit you only if you are honest to yourself and the game.

See Also

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If you lose your entire HP you die. If you die you lose one level, all your gold and silver and one item of your armor and respawn. If you gain enough experience you get to the next level and your HP is restored.

The less you fail at a task, the more HP it will cost you on failing. You can also add advance options to tasks like difficulty, tags, description and checklist.

Character Customization

Different skin color, clothing, hairstyle weapons, pets and mounts are available. Some are free and some are unlocked by a small donation or contributing in several aspects. Character classes are unlocked once you reach level 10.

Character classes are unlocked once you reach level 10.

Social Aspects

The Tavern

It serves two purposes. Firstly, it works like an open forum/chat to ask questions and meet other users/players. Also, it lets you rest at the inn so that dailies don’t hurt you.

Party System

You can form a party with your friends or other users.You can normaly find a party or people looking to join one here. Every party gets a chat in which you can chat with party members.

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Quests/Bosses

Once you are in a party you can do quests. If you want to play on your own you can also create an empty party. The best thing about quests is that they give you exclusive loot. You can start a quest by using a quest scroll, which costs gems, but developers are kind enough to give you scrolls at least once.

Guilds

Guilds are places for people with common interests to hangout at. HabitRPG has large, active and friendly community. You can find guilds for designers, developers, runners, you name it.

Challenges

Challenges are tasks created by a community for a guild or tavern which users can subscribe to and complete for given amount of gems. Challenges on guilds use guild gems to give out as prize. Once you subscribe to a challenge it adds habits, to-dos or dailies (depending on what the challenge was for) to your account. After a given time the challenge creator decides the winner.

The Hall

The hall features contributors and backers to HabitRPG.You can also become one by contributing to the code on GitHub or backing it on Kickstarter.

You can enjoy HabitRPG on the web, Android or iOS. You can also find lots of extensions and third party apps for it.

See Also

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HabitRPG is a fun and fresh way to manage your habits and tasks. Try it and tell us in the comment about your experience and how do you like the concept of gamification. Also tell us any other method or app that you like or use to manage your tasks.

Tab handling in Google Chrome is quite bad. Have too many tabs open and you'll never be able to know which tab is which.
...And that's why we set too review All the tab manager extensions we could find to help us management our browsing mayhem. We tried to everything we could find to finally make this single page review for all your tab management needs.

Keepin' Tabs (Tab Manager) ★☆☆☆

✔ Vertically Show all tabs.
✔ Reload all tab button.
✔ Close, pin, new tab button.
☹ Group Tabs button; was not what I expected to be. It just rearranged tab location according to the URL, so same website tabs are arranged in sequence.
✖ No Searching tabs.
Get it here

Tabman Tabs Manager ★★★☆

✔ Vertically show all tabs.
✔ Ability to quickly search tabs.
✔ Can have the tab view in a new window.
✔ Shortcut to open closed the docked window.
Get it here

Tab Manager ★★☆☆

✔ views
+ Favicon only, horizontally arranged
+ Favicon only, arranged in blocks
+ List view
✔ Filter option to highlight tabs.
✔ Pin or close multiple tabs with filter.
✖ No Search only Filter.
☹ Favicon view seems use less.
Get it here

Tab Outliner ★★★★

✔ Nested Tree like tabbed view.
✔ Docked window.
✔ Can add text too.
✔ Offload tabs, while still keeping it in tree.
✔ Proper sub-tree window count.
✔ Can save all tabs and exit.
✖ No Search.
Get it here

Fruumo Tab Manager ★★★☆

✔ Vertical tab view.
✔ Quick search bar.
✔ Search History with ':'.
✔ Search bookmarks with ','.
✔ Command to Close duplicate tabs.
Get it here

Project Tab Manager ★★☆☆

Manage tabs as projects
Project Tab Manager is a Chrome Extension that lets you store tab sets per project, considering windows as projects. Storing projects as bookmarks on Chrome, you can use them even on Chrome for Android or Chrome for iOS which don't support extensions.
✔ See Time spent on each project.
✔ Search tabs.
Get it here

Tab Manager (by shimomire)★★☆☆

✔ Shows Vertical tabs with thumbnails and 3 more views.
✔ Search tabs.
✔ View closed tabs.
☹ Tab view on a new tab.
Get it here

Too Tabs Manager ★☆☆☆

✔ Table view of tabs.
✔ Unload tab (Shelve) with folder organisation.
✖ No Search.
☹ 1 sec loading every time to open it.
Get it here

TooManyTabs for Chrome ★★★★

✔ Show grid view with thumbnails with horizontal scrolling.
✔ Search tabs.
✔ Sort tabs, title, time or domain.
✔ Suspend tabs.
✔ Save tabs to drive.
Get it here

Sidewise ★★★☆

✔ Tree View.
✔ Docked window which tries to stick to the left of chrome.
✔ Search from url by typing sw [tab]
✔ Suspend tabs.
✔ Add a note.
☹ Only a single note is possible.
☹ Side Sticking window does not seem smooth.
Get it here

TabJump - Intelligent Tab Navigator ★★★☆

✔ Access Recently used tabs.
✔ Shows Related tabs.
✔ Lets undo closed tabs.
✖ No searching.
Get it here

Awesome Window & Tab Manager ★★☆☆

✔ Organises tabs into closable windows.
✔ Sort by title or URL.
✔ Quick search bar.
✔ Group tabs by domain, category, window.
☹ 1 sec Loading every time you open it.
Get it here

Our Pick

In no specific order:

• Too many tabs for Chrome: It works without any hassle, quick switching between tabs and ability for memory management. 
• Tab Outliner: Because tree organisation is best for handling multiple tab, it has all the right tools to handle tabs and memory consumption.