More than two years after Valve released the Steam Deck and helped popularize a new subgenre of PC gaming, the company has confirmed that it will allow competing laptops like the Asus ROG Ally to run SteamOS.
Talk to The EdgeValve designer Lawrence Yang has confirmed that the company intends to allow gaming laptops to run the Linux-based operating system. The news comes just days after a new patch was released for SteamOS. open The update “adds support for additional ROG Ally switches.”
“The note about ROG Ally’s keys is about external hardware support for SteamOS. The team is continuing to work on adding support for additional mobile devices to SteamOS,” Yang told The Verge. However, don’t expect SteamOS to run on a device like the ROG Ally or Lenovo Legion Go anytime soon, as Yang explained that the team is “making steady progress,” but the OS is “not ready for use yet.”
Once Valve has a final version of SteamOS running on non-Steam Deck laptops, it will mark the first time the OS will be available as an option for gaming laptops. Earlier this year, Ayaneo claimed its Next Lite laptop would come with SteamOS preinstalled in a press release before later changing it to reveal that the OS is actually a clone of SteamOS.
What about dual boot support for SteamOS and Windows?
Yang also gave The Verge a small update on the SteamOS and Windows dual-boot option. Yang explained that the team is “preparing to make the remaining Windows drivers available for the Steam Deck OLED,” but while there is no estimated date for when dual-boot support will arrive on Steam Decks, he insisted that the feature is “still a priority” and that the team “hasn’t been able to get there yet.”
Steam Deck has introduced support for Microsoft’s Windows operating system. While the experience is slowly improving, it’s still not the ideal way to fully experience Steam Deck, as SteamOS features like system-wide gyroscope control and the option to suspend games when running Windows are removed.
However, once the Steam Deck is able to run both operating systems instead of just one or the other, it will allow device owners to switch between the two operating systems on the go, making it easier to access games in digital libraries like the Epic Games Store or the PC Game Pass library.
Taylor is a reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
