SteamOS 3.8 is supported for *all* PCs with discrete AMD GPUs
(help.steampowered.com)
Steam HardwareFubarberry already posted a SteamDeckHQ article about this but I wanted to highlight the direct sources.
Per Valve in their Steam Machine FAQ:
If I don't get a Steam Machine right away, is there anything else I can do?
Thanks to the openness of the PC platform, there are lots of options for devices that will allow you to run games natively or streamed to your TV. There are many PC sites and communities out there that can help you with that. For our part, we are continuing to work toward enabling SteamOS to be used on more hardware than just ours. In fact, with the newly-released SteamOS 3.8, you can run the same code and operating system as Steam Machine on your own living-room PC using whatever PC parts you want: learn more here. Right now, only AMD GPUs are supported, but we're working on expanding support for the future.
Can't you just install Nvidia drivers since it's just Linux?
Wellll... yes, but actually maybe. Nvidia support on Linux is there, but it's essentially black box drivers and therefore hard to address issues around them when they arise, and they do. It's a lot more finicky.
Edit: Plus, Nvidia drops Linux support for older video cards that still work (like the 10 series), so the distros effectively need to drop support as well.
Common Nvidia L
*Ones that use the amdgpu kernel driver, youre not going to have fun using a non-Vulkan GPU to play Windows games via proton.
"Using whatever pc parts you want"
"As long as it's AMD"
kind of funny wording to use but also fuck you nvidia
I have been dealing with NVIDIA driver issues on my Linux PC because my 1080 was good enough to play my favorite games. A very sincere fuck you to NVIDIA.
"You can get it in any color you want, as long as it's black."
My thoughts exactly.
Where has the consensus landed on running this vs bazzite? I've got bazzite on my htpc and I quite like it, but I also like installing shiny new OS's
The single biggest advantage of Bazzite over SteamOS is that it has the option to install programs from the normal software repos. If something you need isn't available as a flatpak/appimage/etc, you can install it anyways to a package layer, and it will be available after a reboot. This is also really nice for programs that need better system integration, for example getting a flatpak password manager to integrate with a flatpak web browser often doesn't work.
Avoid layering. The best way to install packages via a package manager is through Distrobox. This has the advantages of not allowing down the update prices, being available immediately without a restart, and also with Distrobox you can use any distro + package manager you want. Layering means using dnf. With Distrobox you can use Ubuntu, Arch, whatever.
I mean Bazzite probably still has better hardware compatibility, as they've been doing it forever. Also look into 'ujust' commands because they're super underrated, along with crazy easy software installations with Homebrew and whole-system single-click upgrades (and even automatic background upgrades) with Topgrade.
There are plenty of reasons not to like it as well but this is not a review.
I went from bazzite to cachyos handheld recently and I feel like cachyos is just a much more polished experience.
CachyOS isn't immutable though, which comes with pros (it's easier to change major parts of the OS) and cons (such as it being easier to break the system).
I'm also torn. Currently running bazzite but I've got it set up the way I want it so I'm probably going to procrastinate on SteamOS for a bit.
SteamOS probably isn't going to have any advantages over Bazzite unless you find Bazzite to be too complex.
I'm also interested in people's thoughts on this. Also compared to nobara? I'm on nobara now, and I'm happy with it but unfortunately it was enough work messing with gamescope and hdr settings that I couldn't recommend it to the non-tech savvy yet
What issues did you encounter? i had problems when trying to use Flatpak for everything - Heroic didn't recognize Gamescope or Mangohud, even when installing the demanded versions. The moment i ditched the flatpaks and went for native packages everything started working without a hitch. The hard part was finding out that the issue was using flatpaks.
In steam some games ran really poorly and washed out because hdr wasn't working. After some googling I found out that I'd probably have to run a gamescope command in the game's launch options, and more googling and trial and error to get that working and hdr sorta dialed in. It's good now, I get great performance and the hdr looks okay to my eyes, but it certainly didn't go as smoothly as when I played the same games on my steamdeck and they "just worked". Granted, I had the lcd one without hdr
I’m going to try this out on an AsRock BC-250 this weekend!
Haven't installed official steamos yet, but bazzite runs great! With the 40cu unlock (well 38/40 for me), I get close to the performance of my giant 3700x/rtx 2080 combo. For AAA games, you might want to set the UMA to 6G rather than the 512Mr ecommended for general use. But maybe the official steam is handles the unified memory better. I've held myself back from buying more of them to leave them available to other folks short on $.
Hey can you share how you determined which/how many CUs to unlock? When I ran the health check script from the "40 CU unlock" repository it just gives me errors for missing files.
I used another script to just unlock them all and brief testing showed no obvious errors but I'd rather be thorough...
Ha! I almost bought more than one as well, but likewise decided to leave some for others (especially as they’re getting expensive).
I booted it for the first time last night to verify it worked. I will likely update the bios next and set the memory allocation to dynamic to see how SteamOS does with that.
FYI I don't think you need to flash the BIOS for dynamic memory anymore, someone has figured out how to do it from inside Linux.
I used the links in the "Not always required" section of this page:
https://elektricm.github.io/amd-bc250-docs/bios/flashing/
You’re a gem! Thanks for that!
You’d think the bride AMD paid would be enough to subsidize the memory prices… /S(nark victory)
I know the Nvidia driver gripes relate to real issues, but so far I’ve been okay with it on CachyOS. I’d even say it’s reassuring that team isn’t solely dedicated to the task of gaming; realistically there’s other stuff I’ll need to install on my PC, and general compatibility is appreciated.
I have an AMD cpu/gpu mini PC and I’ve been using SteamOS for over an year and it works really great.
I want to know if it will run my wifi\bluetooth card, though.
Is this immutable like it has been? I'm wondering if the BC250 tweaks need some work before they work properly if so.
