SteamOS for the rest of us?
2025 is already shaping up to be an amazing year for gamers who prefer SteamOS over Windows on their mobile devices. In May, Lenovo will ship the Legion Go S Powered by Steam OS, and Valve has promised an installable beta of the Linux-powered OS for other handhelds before then. But with all this positive news comes pressing questions: What about people who want to install SteamOS on their desktops? What about systems with Intel and Nvidia components?
Right now, SteamOS runs like a champ on the Steam Deck, which features a semi-custom AMD processor. And in the near future it will run smoothly on another semi-custom AMD processor — the Ryzen Z2 Go — inside the Lenovo Legion Go S. But Valve’s messaging has been purposefully vague when discussing SteamOS expansion beyond those handhelds. powered by AMD.
Valve and Intel are teaming up for support
However, there is very promising news on the horizon. A recent interview between French outlet Frandroid and Valve designer Pierre-Loup Griffais – a key and vocal figure behind the development of SteamOS – reveals a lot about Valve’s plans and progress towards delivering SteamOS for the rest of us.
On the topic of Intel support, Griffais says “[…] on some platforms, support is still very basic. Intel is working a little better than before, but our driver teams and Intel are still working on it.”
So the first solution is that Valve and Intel are working together to address this, which is encouraging. With the powerful integrated graphics performance of Intel’s Lunar Lake, this paves the way for SteamOS support on MSI’s Claw 8 AI+ and future laptops that adopt Intel processors.
4 Valve engineers working on an open source Nvidia driver
But the big elephant in the room has always been Nvidia. Unlike Intel and AMD, Nvidia’s proprietary GeForce graphics driver is not built into the Linux kernel, although Nvidia is transition to it.
“With NVIDIA, the integration of open source drivers is still in its early stages,” says Griffais. “There is still a lot of work to be done on this side. So it’s a bit of a stretch to say we’re going to release this version when most people wouldn’t have a good experience.”
Griffais also revealed that Valve has four developers dedicated to working on Nvidia’s open source driver. “It’s just that there’s still a lot of work to be done,” says Griffais.
OK! So number 2 is that Valve is definitely committed to supporting SteamOS on Nvidia hardware — a project that will likely benefit the entire Linux gaming system and open source community.
Part of the reason Valve is taking over graphics driver development is so it can optimize games for SteamOS “without having to wait for a manufacturer to take care of it.”
We’ve seen this approach yield positive results on Steam Deck – and by extension on Linux – as far back as Elden Ring in 2022, when Valve issued a patch that resolved the game’s horrendous stuttering. In fact, at the time, it ran more smoothly on Linux than on Windows.
While there’s no roadmap or firm timeline (rarely for Valve), it’s refreshing to see confirmation that Valve is working hard to build SteamOS support for the wider PC gaming ecosystem.
I encourage you to read (and translate) the entire interview. It’s a fantastic and insightful discussion that also touches on Linux distributions like Bazzite and Nobara, Valve’s future hardware endeavors, and the very long way Valve has come to get to this point.
