Valve confirms it’ll support the ROG Ally with its Steam Deck operating system

Way back, Valve had the intention of making gaming on Linux a reality by allowing anyone to make PCs running SteamOS, with the goal of making Steam less dependent on the whims of Windows. This effort failed and fizzled out, but the idea clearly never died inside Valve, because ten years later the Steam Deck would take the market by storm, spawning a whole slew of copycats running unoptimised, difficult to use Windows installations. There have been hints Valve was toying with the idea of releasing official SteamOS builds for devices other than the Steam Deck, and the company has not confirmed these rumours.

The company’s long said it plans to let other companies use SteamOS, too — and that means explicitly supporting the rival Asus ROG Ally gaming handheld, Valve designer Lawrence Yang now confirms to The Verge.

↫ Sean Hollister at The Verge

This is great news for the market, as some of these Steam Deck competitors are interesting from a specifications perspective – although pricing sure goes up with that – but running Windows on a small handheld gaming device is a chore, and relying on OEMs to make “gaming overlays” to make Windows at least somewhat usable is not exactly something you want to have to rely on. SteamOS is clearly lightyears ahead of Windows in this department, so having non-Steam Deck handheld gaming PCs officially supported by Valve is great news.

We’re still a long way off, though, says Valve, and the same applies to Valve’s plans to release a generic SteamOS build for any old random PC. That effort, too, is making steady progress, but isn’t anywhere near ready. Of course, there’s a variety of unofficial SteamOS variants available, so you’re not entirely out of luck right now. On top of that, there’s things like Bazzite, which offer a SteamOS-like experience, but using the Atomic variants of Fedora.