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.
For me yes. Many of my friends like to play Valorant which is probably the only game keeping me on Windows at the moment. I’d love the day when Anticheat is widely supported on Linux (won’t happen because of privacy and sorts) so I guess I’ll wait for when Valorant dies out lol
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.
Practically speaking, we are at a turning point regarding Nvidia on Linux. Things were bad before but they have improved significantly. Newer drivers from Nvidia are partially open-source and they seem good so far.
As long as your GPU isn’t too old, it should be fine. Bur you should verify before commiting.
Thanks ! Had a check (I have a 4070ti desktop card and 3070ti mobile card) looks like I’m good and all supported. Going to finally make the switch tomorrow, wish me luck :)
I’ve had some issues with NV cards, but those were prior to the newer open-source driver architecture which should be available for Turing cards and beyond:
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.
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 yes, I should have mentioned the distro+hardware on this system is Mint with an AMD CPU and 6900XT GPU. AMD drivers are pretty well supported in Linux. I also run some Debian systems which do well, though I’ve not tried VR on them
There can be some issues with Nvidia cards due to proprietary drivers but I’ve heard they’re now supporting a FOSS driver in newer cards so as long as you’ve got one of those you should be good.
Awesome thank you… Did a little digging and I think I’m good. I have a 4070ti desktop card and 3070ti mobile both seem to be solid.
I have actually used mint previously. I use Linux a lot but not as an os per se. I’m a developer for a living and the bulk of disks I spin up are Linux based. Different use case but hopefully some of that knowledge will transfer :)
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.
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.
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 !
thats what i do already. what is missing for you on linux still? is it anticheat?
For me yes. Many of my friends like to play Valorant which is probably the only game keeping me on Windows at the moment. I’d love the day when Anticheat is widely supported on Linux (won’t happen because of privacy and sorts) so I guess I’ll wait for when Valorant dies out lol
Most anticheats work fine on linux… its the kernel level ones that never work. And frankly you shouldnt want to run it on windows either…
How’s the cheater situation in CS2?
i’m sorry for your loss. our hope is devices like the steam deck taking off even more and forcing their hand, the op article is a step forward.
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.
Practically speaking, we are at a turning point regarding Nvidia on Linux. Things were bad before but they have improved significantly. Newer drivers from Nvidia are partially open-source and they seem good so far.
As long as your GPU isn’t too old, it should be fine. Bur you should verify before commiting.
Thanks ! Had a check (I have a 4070ti desktop card and 3070ti mobile card) looks like I’m good and all supported. Going to finally make the switch tomorrow, wish me luck :)
I’ve had some issues with NV cards, but those were prior to the newer open-source driver architecture which should be available for Turing cards and beyond:
https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-transitions-fully-towards-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/
I’ve actually got a laptop with a 2070 so I’ll try that out myself and see if it resolves some of the issues I know I had with the proprietary drivers
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.
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.
Looks like nothing at all…. I know when I looked back a year or so ago people deterred me due to Nvidia drivers not being well supported.
Had a read up on Bazzite last night and it looks just the ticket ! :)
Thanks for the reply (and thanks to everyone that responded). Going to install on my desktop, laptop and handhelds as of tomorrow :)
I yes, I should have mentioned the distro+hardware on this system is Mint with an AMD CPU and 6900XT GPU. AMD drivers are pretty well supported in Linux. I also run some Debian systems which do well, though I’ve not tried VR on them
There can be some issues with Nvidia cards due to proprietary drivers but I’ve heard they’re now supporting a FOSS driver in newer cards so as long as you’ve got one of those you should be good.
https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-transitions-fully-towards-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/
Awesome thank you… Did a little digging and I think I’m good. I have a 4070ti desktop card and 3070ti mobile both seem to be solid.
I have actually used mint previously. I use Linux a lot but not as an os per se. I’m a developer for a living and the bulk of disks I spin up are Linux based. Different use case but hopefully some of that knowledge will transfer :)
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.
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 still drop windows and boot to KDE (the desktop is based on it for the steam deck) :)