Valve made a surprise decision last November to stop manufacturing its Steam Link device. However, the company did not want to leave those users who were interested in using a device like this soulless, and has made public the procedure by which a user who owns a Raspberry Pi 3 can make this mini computer , can perform the same functions of the Steam Link.
Nobody can doubt that the arrival of the Steam Link to the market was something revolutionary for the company and for the users. This small device allows a user who has Steam installed on his computer to play on his television screen, but without having his computer physically connected to it. Because the great advantage that Steam Link brought to the table was the possibility of being able to connect to your computer from a network cable, or wirelessly.
However, the fact that Valve has decided to stop manufacturing the device does not mean that it has abandoned all users who were interested in the technology and the possibilities that Steam Link provided. So, in a rather unusual move, the company has communicated how a Raspberry Pi 3 can be made to perform the same functions that the original Steam device boasts.
With just a few lines of code we can turn the Raspberry Pi 3 into a Steam Link
To install the app, the user must have Raspbian Stretch as the operating system version of the Raspberry Pi 3, which is the latest version of the operating system published by the Raspberry Foundation. This version was published in the middle of last year 2017. Then, the next thing the user must do is type the following lines of code:
curl -#Of http://media.steampowered.com/steamlink/rpi/steamlink_1.0.2_armhf.deb
sudo dpkg -i steamlink_1.0.2_armhf.deb
When executed, the code will cause the Steam Link application to be automatically installed on the mini computer the first time it is run on it. From that moment, the application will be fully functional for users, who will be able to have all the functionality that the original Steam Link gave them. At the moment, users who have been able to try Valve’s new solution are quite satisfied with the final result of it.
However, we cannot help noticing that this solution is still in a BETA phase of development, so it is very possible that it is not 100% as polished as it could be, especially in terms of performance. Still, Valve ensures that the app will stay up to date.
