I believe this work is a continuation of the work the asahi linux people did to get games working on M-series macs. It seems Alyssa Rosenzweig works at valve as a contractor. Super cool work. Some seriously talented folks.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/1493

This is fun, just found this issue from 2018 which was closed with this comment:

> Hello @setsunati, this is not a realistic objective for Proton. As @rkfg, mentions wine for ARM does not magically make x86 based games work on ARM cpus.

> Even if Steam were brought to ARM, and an x86 emulation layer was run underneath wine, the amount of games that could run fast and without hitting video driver quirks is small enough not to entertain this idea any time in the near future.

It's mentioned in this issue https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/8136 which was closed Oct 2024 with this comment by kisak-valve:

> Hello @Theleafir1, similar to #1493, this is not a realistic objective for Proton any time in the near future.

Valve deciding to support Arm-based gaming is HUGE news

Have to wonder if there is a world where Proton comes to macOS.

There was also a parallel effort to this end, targeting Android rather than plain Linux, resulting in an app called https://winlator.org/ — which also works quite well at this point. (See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP0yUqcyY18)

The headset isn't natively running games, right?

It looks good until I reached one bit:

> Passthrough - Monochrome passthrough via outward facing cameras

This is an outright bone-headed move that I can't believe Valve is making. Only having monochrome cameras means augmented reality is basically a non-starter.

AR has a lot of potential. I literally bought a Meta Quest 3 just for PianoVision [0] when I already had a Valve Index. I would love to see some sort of AR-based game you could play outdoors. But with only monochrome vision, that's gonna be awful.

[0] https://youtu.be/apwZTV-Rg0s

I recommend preparing a drink or two and loading up VRchat and joining one of the rave club groups. Check out the metaverse zuck wishes he ran.

My NVIDIA Shield is getting old and slow. I can see this as a good replacement, because it supports HDMI CEC, so you can control it with your remote control.

Install Plex, JellyFin, FreeTube et.al. to it and you have a nice open source TV box.

You also get 4k gaming from Steam, GOG, Epic etc. and you get emulators. I've been wanting to build a computer like this, but CEC is hard to find and the adapters that exist don't support full 4k resolution.

Maybe they've cracked the code with the dongle? Usually, you either have to invest both time and money into setting up the perfect streaming network, deal with annoying cables or resign yourself to inferior on-device game versions. The ergonomics matter more than you'd think.

But if it's a very easy plug-n-play type deal to run SteamVR games (and on Linux!), that's a huge ergonomic improvement. Don't have to think too much about whether everything is running correctly or what-have-you.

I lowkey hope it's good enough for coding. Really wanted to try out the xreal glasses, but multiple people said they aren't crisp enough for text.

I don't think there is foveated rendering. There is foveated encoding, when game streaming.

Looks like a very competent headset indeed though! Nice combo of fast streaming that can prioritize well with foveated encoding, and hopefully a pretty nice malleable capable standalone headset too.

Mainly check out the Valve-sponsored FEX project.

> arch doesn't officially support ARM

Doesn't really mean much to Valve as SteamOS vendor:

- linux kernel supports aarch64 just fine

- user space supports aarach64 just as fine

- Valve provides runtime for games (be it via proton or native linux), so providing aarch64 builds is up to them anyway

The main point of ArchLinuxARM is providing compatible binaries, which isn't something hard to do in-house.

Even if they are, Valve has a long track record of contributing back to open source projects.

Arch doesn't support ARM at all. Arm is somebody else hobby project.

one limitation for Bazzite for instance would be some titles that require anti-cheating won't work but just like OP, only use case I have for windows is gaming and running some banking app which won't work on non-Windows device

love to see more and more users realize they can game just fine on linux

Gaming on Linux is hit and miss, depending on the distro you use and your desktop environment. Some games should be launched with gamescope if you are using Gnome/GDM

To have HellDivers run in borderless window on Debian 14. It required me to manually compile gamescope (wasn't that difficult but Valve's instructions are out of date), and use the backports on Trixie to upgrade the kernel to 6.16, and update wireplumber and pipewire (sound was flakey on some games). Kernel 6.16 performs much better than 6.12 just generally.

All the Arkham games work perfectly. Doom Eternal has some weird latency in the mouse and aiming doesn't feel right.

I could never get my Xbox One bluetooth controller behaving with Linux. I ended buying a 8bitdo Xbox style controller which works perfectly. It is much better made than the Xbox controller and roughly the same price.

I have a bazzite box connected behind my TV. Even with a non optimal choice of graphic card (an old Nvidia) it works better than I was expecting.

Loved the concept, tried it out, didn't work, at least not for RDR2 which I was trying to play. But how would it work, there is Linux, Bazzite, then there is Steam, RDR2 needs the Rockstar launcher, it's such an intricate web of dependencies, I'm not surprised something isn't working.

Would be great of Valve to just drop a Steam Machine Max++ with an AMD Ryzen AI 395 and 128GB unified memory. I know this is not going to happen, but SteamOS should boot fine on that SoC, so you can DIY a Steam Machine that also runs LLMs (albeit a bit slow) :).

I do not believe that _you_ are trolling with this question, but answering this is just asking to be trolled.

That said. Fortnite. Yes, I still play it with friends and cannot play it on Mac or Linux. :(

I'm sure others have similar examples. Also there are just simple things like playing with friends and streaming on Discord. Anybody streaming from Windows always comes across smooth and HD to the other participants while anybody on Linux seems to consistently be received (I don't know where exactly in the chain the problem exists, so just "received", as it may not be a broadcasting or encoding problem, I'm not an expert in this) with a lot of artifacts and lower framerates.

Fortnite & Call of Duty

If I could travel back in time and prevent my kids and nephews from ever learning about Fortnite, I might do it. Instead I'm out here trying to keep from getting sniped by a Simpson character.

Fortunately, it seems like the rest of the family is getting tired of COD's ceaseless churn, and might be willing to pick up something else.

For me it's only games the specifically don't support Linux, which are mostly competitive multiplayer games with anti-cheat software. Apex Legends used to work great on Linux, but they removed support as an attempt to combat cheaters (there are still tons of cheaters).

In addition to what others have said, a group of friends still plays enough League of Legends that I don't both dual booting. Also if you play RuneScape (RS3, not OSRS) the best 3rd party add-on, Alt1 Toolkit, only works on Windows.

BF6 and any multiplayer EA games with anticheat

For me the thing that pushed me to reinstall windows after I got a cheap $10 copy was Kerbal Space Program. Though, in my specific case I strongly suspect it was older hardware & driver issues than anything else, since I've not had any major problems on steam deck.

I do have more random crashes on certain games even on steam deck, but not as bad as Kerbal Space Program on my old (12 yr) desktop.

Factorio seems to work better on Linux. Which is both good and bad (since it's so addictive).

Battlefield, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, PUBG, Rainbow 6 Siege, Fortnite

Basically all the games I play regularly with my friends.

Trying to get RDR2 to work on Linux, so far no luck.

Battlefield 6, GTA V online, Escape From Tarkov, likely GTA VI

Imagine not supporting the latest releases that all your friends are playing.

Microsoft Flight Simulator

It’s <= a Radeon 7600 GPU (28 CUs RDNA3 vs 32), so I’m not sure I’d have advertised it as a 4k60 machine. Then again I’m not a marketer so what do I know. 4k60 is a flexible target with FSR I suppose.

> This promises 4k 60fps gaming and Valve is good with hardware, so this is an immediate buy from me if it's under 1000€

Does it promise that? It seems like the hardware might do it, didn't see that anywhere

Pop_OS is pretty rough. Theyre running on a super outdated base while working on COSMIC

The 24.04 beta is really stable and the new cosmic DE is great! I've got it on my desktop and laptop, no problems.

System76.com/pop/pop-beta

It's because the two-thumbstick, 8 face buttons, 2 shoulder and 2 trigger form factor covers so many games there's not been a real reason for super wacky controllers. They kind of hit it out of the park on the 360 design and the only real sticking point left is the exact ergonomics which mostly fall into the PS thumbstick position (both lower) vs XBox position (left high and right low).

USB HID actually works pretty much how you describe, for instance a Physical Descriptor can contain metadata about which body part a button/control is supposed to be used with.

It's extremely complicated however (like many things USB), which is probably why everything just emulates an XBox 360 controller like you said.

I own a steam controller and have been using it for multiple years. It's actually really comfortable with the way it sits in my hand. Far more comfortable than whatever sony had going on with the PS4 dualsense stuff

You do not need big hands to use a classic steam controller, you just need to shift your grip. It's actually hard to use a steam controller with big hands. With long thumbs, the proper grip doesn't land your thumbs in the middle of the track pads.

Failing to better communicate the proper grip for the steam controller was a real fuck up on valve's part though. They should have tried to communicate it through design, making it harder to hold wrong.

I am kind of concerned about the size of the new controller, but valve seems to have decided there's no place in the market for a controller without sticks.

Maybe in size, but at least by weight, it's not bad at all.

Steam Controller weight: 292g.

Nintendo Switch 2 controller: 235g.

Sony Playstation 5 DualSense controller: 280g. DualSense Edge: 322g.

Xbox Wireless controller: 280g. Wireless Elite series 2: 345g.

My kids have been using the steam deck since they were 3 years old. Granted, their hands were a bit too small but the Deck is way more manageable than it appears.

First thing I checked for! I feel like it's such a niche feature but also distinctive. It's actually a "necessity" for a proper Gamecube emulation experience, which has the two stage shoulder buttons.

Like you, I also used this for boost on Rocket League and it was surprisingly intuitive. You can map it to the triggers lowest threshold to emulate it but without the tactile bump to rest against it just won't work.

According to digital foundry it does have dual stage triggers

Wow lol. I just posted the exact same comment, there are dozens of us! I literally cannot play rocket league without the steam controller for this reason.

Also set rotate left and right to the grip triggers (roll in aviation terms I guess).

You can set a dual-stage trigger in Steam Input binding with any controller its trigger range, its not something unique to the Steam Controller.

Steamdeck has the dual stage triggers right? (Though maybe just in software?) I'd be shocked if the new controller is less capable than that.

Hoping it's there just not mentioned.

i love it... I have a whole set of fujitsu/eneloop NiMH batteries

> They should have put them just above the joysticks, like the PS5 controller

I don't understand how that would be in any way ergonomic. The new Steam Controller's layout has a proven track record with the Steam Deck, which is essentially identical. It allows you to play KB&M games like Alpha Centauri on the Steam Deck without any external peripherals. It would be utterly unplayable if the trackpads were in the same place as the PS5's pad, which is basically just used to open a menu or map or for gimmicky in-game gestures.

I found the original Steam Controller's trackpad placement to be just about perfect.

Steam input controller says nothing about the interface being used (USB A vs USB C). A single USB C (with DP support, I hope) port in 2026 sounds like a bad design.

For controllers you can use any cable you want. The Xbox controller will charge just fine on a C-C cable. I don't think they should have gone all in on USB-C like laptops have, but there should have been more than one USB-C and one should have been on the front. Pretty much the only thing you need USB-A for these days is mice/keyboard with non removable cables. Which are becoming increasingly rare.

I agree that gigabit Ethernet is adequate for the type of product this is. But I do find it funny that the Wifi chip on this is very likely capable of 2Gbit. We somehow entered a world where WiFi is typically faster than Ethernet.

I feel like part of the problem with going beyond gigabit Ethernet is that copper beyond 1 gigabit is expensive with limited adoption. SFP+ fiber is superior and not even expensive any more, but there's no consumer adoption.

mmm ...let's agree to disagree

I wired my whole place with 10Gb - couldn't do it in the wall (as in, hidden) so I have flat cables around the door frame and wall corners. I was willing to accept the cables, just to get 10Gb.

And, IMHO, it's worth it.

The steam controller also revealed has a USB-C, as does Hori's official steam controller.

However, you can charge it from things that aren't USB ports. Charging bricks are cheap and most people have one for their phone now, except some unfortunate old iPhone users

I can download at approximately 2.5 Gbps from Steam on my PC.

I think not having a 2.5 gigabit port at least is a poor choice.

How are downloads bottlenecked by drives? A normal nvme drive does >20 gbit.

Games are super large nowadays. IIRC Steam uses P2P for the update downloads, so you should be able to saturate whatever link you have, and the SSD should be substantially faster than 1Gbps. So anyone that has a > 1Gbps internet connection should benefit from something higher than Gigabit.

> And even 4k streaming is under 100Mbit normally

Are you talking "4k streaming" as the current streaming providers do it, with trash bitrate, or "4k streaming" as you would do it if you had ripped your own blu-ray disks and you want to stream it from a NAS somewhere else in your house to your living room?

It would be a case if it had I/O like Mac mini. Like if it had TB3/TB4/USB4 somewhere, it doesn't.

> bluetooth headset dongles

I imagine this has decent Bluetooth support out of the box even if not mentioned? Its hard to find a WiFi chipset these days that doesn't have some kind of Bluetooth support.

Maybe proprietary headset dongles, but if its just bluetooth its probably not needed.

Having a single big fan cool a massive heatsink (that is hopefully very quiet) can legitimately a good reason to get this over building a typical SFF PC, which often runs hot and loud. It sorta reminds me of the trashcan Mac Pro. I myself have a sandwich style case with an RTX 5070 in it which is quite loud under load.

What is the controversy?

According to [1], the RAM and SSD are upgradable.

* 16GB DDR5 SODIMM (upgradeable)

* M.2 2230/2280 NVMe SSDs

[1] https://www.eurogamer.net/steam-machine-everything-we-know-a...

7900XTX not 9700XTX which didn’t exist.

9070XT is RDNA4 not RDNA3 and steam machine has 28CU’s on RDNA3 which is same as RX7400 the bottom of the range RDNA3.

The 7900XTX has 84 and 24GB of VRAM.

This is a strictly entry level last gen GPU, don’t expect miracles.

The hardware is not good unless the price is very cheap.

As for the 7900XTX been enthusiast only in the sense it it was the top of the line from AMD it’s about 4080 in some areas and loses badly in others (ray tracing), price wise it wasn’t far of the 9070XT price wise at launch.

I have a 7900XTX I like it a great deal but the 4090/5080 and 5090 crush it and the 90’s are enthusiast both on price and perf.

I ended up with a 7900XTX because nvidia pissed me off on Linux one time too many otherwise I’d have gotten the 4090 but between kernel installs causing pain (nothing insurmountable) and them straight breaking power management for nearly a year on mature hardware, nah, AMD deserved the sale, they really do support Linux better.

The Steam Deck AMD chip is rumored to be a design for the Magic Leap 2, not for Valve.

They said it's semi-custom discrete not a custom SoC. So basically it's a Ryzen 7400 + Radeon 7400.

Would this be capable of utilizing the ray/path tracing many games have now?

> In Cyberpunk 2077, running at 4K, it’s a surprisingly stable 60fps, albeit with the caveat of that using FSR 3 upscaling on Performance mode with Medium quality settings

So it's not running at 4K nor 60fps. I wish people would stop calling 1080p upscale through some dogshit filter as "4K"...

> and I don't really want to build a $1000 minimum computer with crazy LEDs that takes up a ton of space with a monitor at this point in my life.

The beauty of a PC is you can build whatever you want. It doesn't need to be large, and doesn't need to have LEDs. There are plenty of small form factor cases on the market with the same footprint as this one.

I would reach out to those friend for freebie parts.

They said they route vram/rams though the io die in the gamer nexus's video. Wondering if that means GPU will also have direct access to ram. So it will not actually be a very big problem? Probably slower, but not terribly swapping like those 8gb gpu.

Yeah non-upgradable 8GB VRAM would make it a no-go for all but the most casual gamers. But then the casual gamers would rather buy a PS5 for the same price, so let's see where this one fits in.

The performance has little to do with the amount of VRAM. The VRAM is just a cap on texture resolution.

We do have an indication. The RAM and SSD are both upgradable. The RAM is SODIMM, and storage is NVME

Using the deck prices seems like a good place to start unless they're using the opportunity to change strategy. It's an updated SoC, but minus a screen, battery, separate dock, built-in controller, and less pressure to pack it in a handheld chassis. They mention a built in wireless adapter for the controller, so I assume there will be bundles with and without a controller.

> In fact, I can't think of a single thing a console can do that a PC can't

Play current Nintendo game cards (and run the eShop etc.) without headaches or workarounds of dubious legality?

Run your whole PSN library reliably, without headaches or workarounds?

Full game system (with decent 4K in the case of PS5) for the price of a GPU?

Work out of the box without messing with it?

> - most modern consoles are, less-legally, emulatable

wheres the PS4 or like, any xbox emulator?

It's just Nintendo that has modern, usable emulators for most of the games you'd want to play. xbox never got lucky for basically any of their consoles and Sony never got anything usable after PS3.

> almost every classic console is easy to emulate

Yes, but unless you have a library from back in the day classic console games are hard to find and/or expensive. Try finding a copy of Biker Mice From Mars, for example.

Consoles are just loss leaders for software now. Hot take: this is true of the Steam Deck and Machine as well. Yes you can play games from other vendors, but PC gamers are very loyal to Steam and many will never bother. I imagine at least half of steam deck users just use it like a console, not like a PC.

Apple giving you more than consoles do is damning with faint praise, the Mac bootloader is technically open but without any public hardware documentation it's borderline impossible to do anything useful with that. Asahi have done incredible work but even they are still catching up with the M3, nevermind the current M5.

Apple can revoke it at any time. If a future update disabled or changed iBoot, there is no guarantee Linux would ever run again (unlike UEFI Macs).

Valve is not like Apple, they treat UEFI as a default.

It's always been public:

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/65B4-2AA3-5F37-42...

https://gitlab.com/evlaV/holo-PKGBUILD

The installer is here: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/65B4-2AA3-5F37-42...

The sources of the packages are here: https://steamdeck-packages.steamos.cloud/archlinux-mirror/so...

And for the record most packages come directly from Arch Linux, unmodified.

I have a SFF pc with an AMD GPU and AMD CPU both with better specs that the new Steam Machine just waiting for them to release a standalone installer for SteamOS :(

Half-Life 3 confirmed

they probably will handle it like with the Steam Deck

- no loss

- but small profit margin anyway, to max reduce the price, to max increase adoption/reach

for Valve people using Steam on non Windows platforms is more important then making a big buck from Steam Machines (because this makes them less dependent on Windows, MS has tried(and failed) to move into the direction of killing 3rd party app stores before, and Windows has gotten ... crappy/bloated/ad-infested which is in the end a existential risk for Valve because if everyone moves away from PC gaming they will lose out hugely)

Switch was always sold for more than component and manufacturing cost. PS4 crossed the threshold quickly (per Sony iirc?)

However, that ignores R&D costs which presumably have to be amortized, largely through game sales and platform fees. The same is true for other platforms like iOS.

Is Apple selling their hardware at a loss?

Retroarch is already on Steam as well as other emulators.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1118310/RetroArch/

Even if you didn't want to use the Steam versions. Steam OS is essentially a customised Arch Linux and you can install stuff as you would on other Linux distros e.g. via packages and flathub. Basically it is a regular computer underneath. That is why I am very excited about this Steam box.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/guides/view/how-to-install-ext...

I sure have installed a bunch of emulators on my Deck. It’s not too hard to get individual games to show up in the main Steam menu, iirc. Haven’t really fiddled with them since initial setup though.