Wednesday, January 8th 2025
SteamOS expands beyond Steam Deck
With Lenovo's announcement at CES 2025 of the Lenovo Legion Go S, we are pleased to share that their "Powered by SteamOS" model is the first handheld officially licensed to ship with Valve's SteamOS. We built this operating system to provide a seamless user experience optimized for gaming, while retaining access to the power and flexibility of a PC. SteamOS is the same operating system we run on Steam Deck, and the team is making updates to ensure it fully supports the Lenovo Legion Go S and provides the same seamless experience customers expect.
In addition, the same work that we are doing to support the Lenovo Legion Go S will improve compatibility with other handhelds. Ahead of Legion Go S shipping, we will be shipping a beta of SteamOS which should improve the experience on other handhelds, and users can download and test this themselves. And of course we'll continue adding support and improving the experience with future releases.
Frequently-asked questions:
What is SteamOS?
SteamOS is an operating system built by Valve. It features a seamless user experience optimized for gaming, while retaining access to the power and flexibility of a PC, and plays tens of thousands of games on Steam. SteamOS currently officially ships on Steam Deck and will soon ship with certain Legion Go S models. Valve is working on SteamOS support for more devices in the future.
What are the key benefits of SteamOS?
SteamOS is optimized for gaming and provides a console-like experience that's meant to be used with a controller. It offers features like quick suspend / resume to get you quickly in and out of games, and offers seamless system and game updates.
What is the user experience of SteamOS?
SteamOS puts the player directly into Steam, with access to the full Steam ecosystem - your Steam Library, Steam Cloud, Steam Chat, Steam Game Recording, and more. The user interface is optimized for controller use and it's easy to install and play Steam games. Best of all, users don't have to worry about driver updates and hardware tweaks - all of this is handled seamlessly through built in system updates.
Can this run every game on Steam?
SteamOS is Linux based, and the vast majority of the Steam library runs on SteamOS, thanks to the Proton compatibility layer Valve ships. This allows developers to ship games for Windows without worrying about porting to Linux, and games will seamlessly work on SteamOS. When a game doesn't run well on SteamOS, we call it out with our Verified program so customers know what will and won't work well.
Is this the same operating system that is on Steam Deck?
Yes, it's the same operating system that Steam Deck runs.
Is a user locked into playing only Steam games?
No, if players wish to they can go to desktop mode and install other game launchers and software if they wish.
Source:
Steam
In addition, the same work that we are doing to support the Lenovo Legion Go S will improve compatibility with other handhelds. Ahead of Legion Go S shipping, we will be shipping a beta of SteamOS which should improve the experience on other handhelds, and users can download and test this themselves. And of course we'll continue adding support and improving the experience with future releases.
What is SteamOS?
SteamOS is an operating system built by Valve. It features a seamless user experience optimized for gaming, while retaining access to the power and flexibility of a PC, and plays tens of thousands of games on Steam. SteamOS currently officially ships on Steam Deck and will soon ship with certain Legion Go S models. Valve is working on SteamOS support for more devices in the future.
What are the key benefits of SteamOS?
SteamOS is optimized for gaming and provides a console-like experience that's meant to be used with a controller. It offers features like quick suspend / resume to get you quickly in and out of games, and offers seamless system and game updates.
What is the user experience of SteamOS?
SteamOS puts the player directly into Steam, with access to the full Steam ecosystem - your Steam Library, Steam Cloud, Steam Chat, Steam Game Recording, and more. The user interface is optimized for controller use and it's easy to install and play Steam games. Best of all, users don't have to worry about driver updates and hardware tweaks - all of this is handled seamlessly through built in system updates.
Can this run every game on Steam?
SteamOS is Linux based, and the vast majority of the Steam library runs on SteamOS, thanks to the Proton compatibility layer Valve ships. This allows developers to ship games for Windows without worrying about porting to Linux, and games will seamlessly work on SteamOS. When a game doesn't run well on SteamOS, we call it out with our Verified program so customers know what will and won't work well.
Is this the same operating system that is on Steam Deck?
Yes, it's the same operating system that Steam Deck runs.
Is a user locked into playing only Steam games?
No, if players wish to they can go to desktop mode and install other game launchers and software if they wish.
24 Comments on SteamOS expands beyond Steam Deck
I do hope that additional market adoption at least forces developers to reconsider the kernel anti-cheat part, all other things I'm willing to put some effort in to get working...
Also currently I have the pre-shader issue that takes for-ever to load. Other than that it works flawlessly, even updating doesn't wreck it.
What I do play online (Space Marine 2), I managed to get working with a command line in Steam that forces the game to detect your PC as a Steam Deck.Then I'm not too far off. :)
I'm on Bazzite with the same KDE Plasma. I actually didn't know that the Deck was running KDE Plasma, too, until I got one and switched on desktop mode for the first time. It was a pleasant surprise. :D
In case someone doesn't know, Bazzite is a version of Fedora that's made specifically for gaming.
You are actively punished by Microsoft for daring to try and run stuff locally on the hardware you own, apparently. And if the only thing we need Microsoft for is running in a browser, why should we put up with the many, many, intrusive annoyances of Windows 11?
Installing and setting it up in a desktop Linux distro is even easier.
A nice thing with Heroic is it shows the ProtonDB status (and has a link for the ProtonDB discussion page) for the games on your library. If a title requires tinkering to run, that's the one-stop shop.
I just had to resort to it yesterday to set up GOG's The Witcher Enhanced Edition on my Garuda install.
Windows 10 will be the new XP, running hundreds of millions of installs all over the world after official support ends because people refuse to lose control and agency of their own computers to get Windows 11.
Yes, I know you can manually neuter Windows 11 with PowerShell scripts, manually turning off all the suggestions and advertising, and all kinds of other registry tweaks to stop it from being an intrusive, invasive violation of your privacy. You have to do that for Windows 10 to a lesser extent, but for Windows 11 your changes get aggressively rolled back during normal Windows updates, so your average Joe is just getting blasted by Microsoft advertising from all angles. Few people are willing to re-run scripts and registry changes every update, as well as invest in the time to research and undo new intrusions that Microsoft are constantly introducing.
IMO a lot of Windows users are going to go to Apple in 2026 once Windows 10 support officially ends. I don't know anyone who likes Microsoft any more, and most people barely tolerate Microsoft at best with a larger demographic who are actively pissed off with Microsoft.
You can play GOG through the Heroic Launcher.
I don't expect them to do any real research, just be irritated enough by Microsoft to want to try out the alternatives and decide for themselves.
I look forward to getting SteamOS as dual boot along with Mint on my PC, so I can finally dump that P'o'S Windows so called OS.
I wouldn't care even if SteamOS would be paid in some way, I would gladly support them given the one time payment is at reasonable price.
Edit: The above is for Bazzite. Your mileage may vary with different distros.
Seriously, I can't stream Jackbox games to my friends under Linux because Discord crashes with no (official) workaround available. And that's preposterous.
These edge cases keep me from fully commiting to Linux for gaming, but most of the time my rig isn't running Windows anymore.
And don't worry about being Linux-rusty. When I switched in November, I hadn't used Linux for 10 years. And even then, I used Ubuntu and Mint, and I'm on Bazzite (Fedora spinoff) now. Thanks to the KDE Plasma desktop, Steam, Proton and Wine (and the excellent AMD support), I haven't touched the terminal once.