The Steam Link is a counterpoint to the Steam Machines that were announced previously. Unlike a Steam Machine, HTPC running Steam, or a PC running SteamOS, Steam Link will not run any games. Instead, it leverages your existing desktop through Steam In-Home Streaming. This allows the Steam Link to be small, low power, and low cost.
Now that I have Windows 8 installed on my desktop, I will be installing encrypted Arch Linux and dual booting between the two. I have added more memory to the machine and am reusing the SSD from my original encrypted install. Because I am dual booting and this machine supports UEFI I am electing to reinstall from scratch. The new specs are as follows.
Much of the install will be similar. I will clarify the differences as they come up. The first step in the process is to securely wipe the drive. My preferred tool for this is Darik’s Boot And Nuke. While DBAN does not guarantee SSD data removal, it does implement the US DoD 5220.22-M standard. According to this paper that results in less than a 4.1% chance of recovering any data. But in this case I am using dm-crypt to erase the drive by creating an encrypted container and filling it. This provides the benefit of obscuring the upcoming usage patterns of the drive. Either option is a lengthy process and best run overnight.
When we last left our Arch Linux install we had a lovely command prompt.
This is fine for a server, but as this is a desktop, it would be nice to have a GUI. We will be installing Xfce. I started using Xfce when looking for a lighter weight GUI than KDE or Gnome. Openbox and Fluxbox are certainly lighter but require more configuration and setup than I prefer. Xfce was a nice compromise. Light enough for my needs while still remaining a full desktop environment.
This article will document the decisions and process of my building an Arch Linux desktop. Arch Linux is a rolling release distro. There are no specific releases as there are with Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. Due to this I will not be posting a step by step procedure. That is covered very thoroughly in the Beginners’ guide located on the Arch wiki. I will be discussing the choices that I make and why I make them.
I am re-purposing some hardware that I had laying around for this build.
Last week Firefox began blocking the Flash plugin due to a vulnerability. Upon visiting YouTube I was greeted with the following error.
At this point I decided to try out the HTML5 version of YouTube. I had looked into it when it first debuted but ultimately decided to stick with the Flash version.