Valve says Nvidia GeForce support for SteamOS is progressing, but could take years

[Daniel Sims]

Why it matters: More and more users prefer gaming on Linux distros such as SteamOS and Bazzite over Windows, but Linux still lacks up-to-date support for Nvidia graphics chips. Although Valve hasn't resolved the issue for SteamOS yet, the company claims it is making steady progress.

A Valve spokesperson recently told IGN that the company is working hard to make Nvidia graphics drivers viable on SteamOS, the Linux distro powering the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. Introducing Nvidia hardware support would dramatically expand the appeal of Valve's OS and other Linux distros for third-party hardware manufacturers and custom builders, potentially making them much more viable rivals to Windows.

Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais said supporting Nvidia drivers is at the top of Valve's list, but could still take years. Internal tests have enabled drivers in SteamOS's main tree and displayed graphics using certain generations of Nvidia GPUs, but gaming performance still lags behind AMD. Griffais claimed Valve is seeing daily improvements.

SteamOS's controller-friendly interface is one of the biggest advantages of the Steam Deck and Steam Machine compared to conventional gaming PCs. While Valve's distro now supports third-party devices, the company currently only recommends installing it on PCs with AMD graphics chips. Since Nvidia GPUs power roughly 73% of systems that responded to the most recent Steam Hardware Survey, SteamOS needs Nvidia driver support to become viable for most of Valve's users.

The company also aims to bring Steam to Arm devices, starting with the recently released Steam Frame VR headset. Griffais likened Valve's work on its FEX compatibility layer to the slow grind of getting Nvidia drivers working on Linux.

Just as the Steam Deck and Steam Machine use Proton to run Windows software on Linux, the Steam Frame uses FEX to run x86 software on its Arm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC and Lepton to run Android apps on an Arm version of SteamOS. Expanding Steam and SteamOS to Arm processors could make PC gaming viable on tablets, smartphones, the growing market for Arm laptops, and Qualcomm-based gaming devices from manufacturers such as Ayn. Meanwhile, Microsoft aims to promote an Arm version of Windows for laptops and mini PCs, powered by Snapdragon chips and Nvidia's upcoming RTX Spark SoC, using a separate translation layer.

Aside from Nvidia drivers and Arm support, anti-cheat remains SteamOS's biggest obstacle. While anti-cheat providers have recently thrown their support behind Arm Windows and RTX Spark, SteamOS still struggles with popular online games such as Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty.

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Valve says Nvidia GeForce support for SteamOS is progressing, but could take years

 

[Eldrach]

I cheer them on - we need a fully fledged alternative to Windows, not there yet..But some day!

 

[Gezzer]

Nvidia needs to help with this and since they seem to have walked away from gaming...

 

[CrisisDog]

I’m still using the proprietary Nvidia drivers, but with Proton GE, I’ve even got PhysX running. What is the holdup?

 

[romatthe]

To be clear, there are Linux Nvidia drivers that work... fine. But they're proprietary and are annoying to deal with. They live entirely out of tree, are not part of Mesa, need to be installed by the user seperately, break fairly often during kernel release cycles, and we are entirely at the mercy of Nvidia. If they lose interest tomorrow, it's over.

There is an existing open source implementation for *older* Nvidia GPUs (nouveau), but while it works, it doesn't work well with the modern cards with GSP firmware. Modern cards reclock aggressively, and nouveau is not able to deal with this.

There is also an effort to implement a modern Vulkan driver within Mesa (NVK). However, NVK still needs more work. But more importantly, it needs a rock-solid modern device driver to work well. There has been very little time and money to sponsor work on a new device driver it seems, and I haven't heard a lot of news from that front.