Valve: Introducing SteamOS "brewmaster"

Valve has announced the first preview release of its forthcoming SteamOS update. The new release is based on Debian 8.1 with long-term support kernel 3.18; there are downloadable builds linked to in the announcement for both UEFI and legacy BIOS systems. There appear to be few user-visible differences between the new release and the current SteamOS so far, though; the announcement notes: "Although there are a lot of changes under the covers, the overall functionality and experience of brewmaster is the same as alchemist."