Valve have released SteamOS 3.7.0 Preview, which they noted has the beginnings of support for non-Steam Deck handhelds! So we're closing in on the previously announced Beta for more handhelds. Although this release is still just for Steam Deck.
Honest question: what’s stopping you currently? For me, I kept Windows around purely for playing certain VR games that didn’t run well on Linux.
The last Windows update fucked up my video config, so I reluctantly decided to try SteamVR on Linux again.
I’ll admit my hopes weren’t particular high given me last shot at it but holy shit pretty much every VR game I tried worked as well as they had in Windows (Angry Birds develop a weird controller jitter after about 30 minutes but I’ve had that in Windows too).
The only extra steps I had to do to get stuff working was install “SteamVR experimental” and one of the Linux utilities to set my GPU to always run in performance mode when gaming (not necessary for everything but jealous with some).
For non-VR, most AAA titles also work great. The main issue I’ve seen is certain DRM for non-Steam multiplayer games can be a bit finicky, but that’s getting better too and it’s been awhile since I’ve run afoul of those.
I think that if you’re looking for a Linux distribution that is as polished as the Steam Deck, then SteamOS on desktop might not be the right play. SteamOS will probably (rightfully) be developed solely for handheld, low-power devices, and won’t work unless you’re using the specific APUs that they’ll include drivers for.
If that sort of streamlined experience interests you, Bazzite has very similar goals to SteamOS (good OOTB gaming experience, safe updates etc.), except that they also target wide hardware compatibility. Other gaming distros exist, but I’m probably just not aware of them.
Bazzite works wonderfully even for non techy types. On mobile at least, NV drivers are working well but there is a performance penalty. Surprisingly, when the windows drivers are CPU limited, the linux one is actually performs better but, generally, there is a performance penalty on linux. AMD GPUs have parity except for Raytracing, at least from what I’ve seen, RADV performs below the proprietary driver on Windows.
The types of games I tend to play, I don’t think a slight performance hit will really matter. Definitely going to have a look into Bazzite this weekend ;)
I’m not personally running Bazzite, but before I switched to an AMD card, Nvidia worked just fine for me. Bazzite being more streamlined and gaming-specific, I can only imagine it would do perfectly well running Nvidia.
Apparently SteamOS doesn’t have plans for large scale desktop support. I’ve been using cachyos for the last 4 months while playing games on my NTFS Windows steam libraries and it has been fine. On Nvidia even.
Check out sunshine/moonlight. It takes some tinkering but it runs better than remote play and can be configured to auto change your resolution on connect and disconnect. There’s also a plug-in for decky as well.
Out of interest (I asked someone else the same question) how is the support for Nvidia drivers? Other than my handhelds all my systems are team green and it’s what has always deterred me from switching to Linux on them as from what I gather support is flaky on most distros.
It’s been rock solid for me, Bazite comes with Nvidia drivers (it has different images for old and new cards), so no fiddling with installing drivers in top of the system (like e. g. in Kinoite) that break during major version updates (e. g. Fedora 40 t0 40). I think I’ve installed it in four different systems (all Nvidia GPUs and either Intel or Amd CPUs) and it worked flawlessly every time.
I genuinely can’t wait for the day I can finally drop Windows altogether and boot directly in to steam os on my gaming pc’s / laptops and handhelds.
Windows becomes more of a bloated mess every update. Literally the only thing I use it for these days is launch games.
Bring it on Steam !
Honest question: what’s stopping you currently? For me, I kept Windows around purely for playing certain VR games that didn’t run well on Linux. The last Windows update fucked up my video config, so I reluctantly decided to try SteamVR on Linux again.
I’ll admit my hopes weren’t particular high given me last shot at it but holy shit pretty much every VR game I tried worked as well as they had in Windows (Angry Birds develop a weird controller jitter after about 30 minutes but I’ve had that in Windows too).
The only extra steps I had to do to get stuff working was install “SteamVR experimental” and one of the Linux utilities to set my GPU to always run in performance mode when gaming (not necessary for everything but jealous with some).
For non-VR, most AAA titles also work great. The main issue I’ve seen is certain DRM for non-Steam multiplayer games can be a bit finicky, but that’s getting better too and it’s been awhile since I’ve run afoul of those.
I think that if you’re looking for a Linux distribution that is as polished as the Steam Deck, then SteamOS on desktop might not be the right play. SteamOS will probably (rightfully) be developed solely for handheld, low-power devices, and won’t work unless you’re using the specific APUs that they’ll include drivers for.
If that sort of streamlined experience interests you, Bazzite has very similar goals to SteamOS (good OOTB gaming experience, safe updates etc.), except that they also target wide hardware compatibility. Other gaming distros exist, but I’m probably just not aware of them.
Thanks for this!
Out of interest, how is the driver support for Nvidia cards? This is the thing that has always put me off bailing on Windows for games.
Bazzite works wonderfully even for non techy types. On mobile at least, NV drivers are working well but there is a performance penalty. Surprisingly, when the windows drivers are CPU limited, the linux one is actually performs better but, generally, there is a performance penalty on linux. AMD GPUs have parity except for Raytracing, at least from what I’ve seen, RADV performs below the proprietary driver on Windows.
Thanks for the reply and good to know !
The types of games I tend to play, I don’t think a slight performance hit will really matter. Definitely going to have a look into Bazzite this weekend ;)
Bazzite comes with Nvidia support out of the box.
Awesome, thanks for this…. Will 100% look into it this weekend ;)
I’m not personally running Bazzite, but before I switched to an AMD card, Nvidia worked just fine for me. Bazzite being more streamlined and gaming-specific, I can only imagine it would do perfectly well running Nvidia.
Apparently SteamOS doesn’t have plans for large scale desktop support. I’ve been using cachyos for the last 4 months while playing games on my NTFS Windows steam libraries and it has been fine. On Nvidia even.
You can… currently.
I’m running bazzite on both my handheld and my PC…
Other than a mild annoyance at having to manually changing the resolution on my PC to get remote play to work properly, it’s been great.
Check out sunshine/moonlight. It takes some tinkering but it runs better than remote play and can be configured to auto change your resolution on connect and disconnect. There’s also a plug-in for decky as well.
Out of interest (I asked someone else the same question) how is the support for Nvidia drivers? Other than my handhelds all my systems are team green and it’s what has always deterred me from switching to Linux on them as from what I gather support is flaky on most distros.
It’s been rock solid for me, Bazite comes with Nvidia drivers (it has different images for old and new cards), so no fiddling with installing drivers in top of the system (like e. g. in Kinoite) that break during major version updates (e. g. Fedora 40 t0 40). I think I’ve installed it in four different systems (all Nvidia GPUs and either Intel or Amd CPUs) and it worked flawlessly every time.
Sorry, can’t say. I’m all AMD.
You can still drop windows and boot to KDE (the desktop is based on it for the steam deck) :)