Valve today (12 November 2025) announced their new Steam Machine (x86 CPU, 6x more powerful than Steam Deck) and Steam Frame (self-contained and PCVR streaming VR headset with ARM CPU & “FEX” translation of x86 to ARM) to be released in early 2026. No prices yet.
I’m trying to speculate what effects this will have on the wider Linux ecosystem. Both devices will be running Steam OS and be open so you can run any OS.
First, I’ve read many people state that the Steam Deck considerably increased the number of devices running Linux, so it seems to me that these two new devices will accelerate that trend.
Second, it seems to me that the Steam Frame will significantly increase VR use and development for Linux.
Third, I wonder what the implications of Frame’s x86 to arm translation layer (based on FEX, an open source project that I only learned about today) as well as Android compatibility (they state it can sideload Android APKs) will be. Could this somehow help either Linux on Apple silicon or Linux phone efforts? I’m very unfamiliar with what’s going on with either of these efforts, so I may be way out on a limb here.
What do you think about all this?
Edit: this article may prompt some additional thoughts with its discussion of the openness of the Frame - https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-steam-frame-catalog-whole-compatible/
I’m a bit surprised that Quallcom doesn’t have a custom XR3 chip yet and Valve used the Snapgdragon8 Gen3
Yeah, like you said, significant development of VR on Linux. But that also depends on the price tag.
VR on Linux is functional, at can work. But it requires a bunch of set up and can also just break down very easily too. VR on Linux is almost like what gaming on Linux was before Proton. If Valve can do to VR what they did with Proton then I’m sure I can convince a whole bunch of people to switch to Linux.
Good to hear, thanks for your first-hand impression of the current state of VR on Linux!
The frames might be the first VR I buy.
Depending on price, likewise.
Same here!
Steam Machine
If the Steam Machine really takes off, I see way more people moving to Linux on their main rigs and laptops, and in turn making companies stop ignoring it, if it becomes a massive success I imagine:
- Mainstream games like FIFA supporting Linux
- Apps like Affinity Studio being distributed through Steam officially supported via Proton.
- Epic games will be the last company to keep ignoring Linux.
- Valve adopting Waydroid for SteamOS (for Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, etc)
- NVIDIA will redouble their Linux efforts.
- Greatest than ever VR support in Linux
Steam Frame
- Lots of Linux apps will work on Android desktop mode, like LibreOffice, Inkscape, etc.
- Linux phones will receive a lot more maintainers and funding.
Steam Deck
- Android apps on the Deck via Valve’s Waydroid
- Steam Deck 2 on ARM
Other
- New use cases for ARM will motivate RISCV to speed up it’s growth.
- KDE & Arch will receive more funding from Valve
- More contributions to the Kernel
- More Linux developers
- Increased security for Linux
- Flathub will grow
You know, in the trailer they did say "we’re not talking about that yet" when referring to the Steam Deck.
So there’s probably a Steam Deck 2 in the works, and if it runs on ARM the battery life would be amazing. Though… I wonder if that matters when it still needs to process x86 instructions.
Very cool, thanks for your comprehensive predictions of effects of these new devices! I hope that a lot of that will come true.
I hope a lot of those things will come true, but the one I am hoping will happen sooner than later is for apps like Affinity (and Vegas editor!) to improve/fix their support via WINE or Proton. Regarding Affinity specifically, I understand that they have made the entire suite free to use now, which I’m afraid may indicate that canva will slow down or stop its development.
Steam frame could be big for vr on linux. Before steam deck came out I dualbooted windows for gaming because gaming didn’t work well on linux. Nowadays its great. Steam vr is super buggy on linux right now and doesn’t even have feature parity with steam vr on windows. Hopefully steam vr becomes good on linux because I would imagine the steam frame needs it to be good
This is what I’m hoping for too. Thanks for providing your perspective from first-hand experience because I wasn’t sure about any of this VR on Linux stuff.
I thought it was obvious, 2026 is going to be the year of the Linux desktop.
year of the linux goggle headwear apparatus
are there any linux WMs that provide a good desktop experience with VR headsets yet? I’d love to get a niri like scrolling experience with goggles - although it would make meetings weird.
As someone who previously owned a GameCube and a G4 Cube, I’m definitely getting the Steam
CubeMachine.People have already started calling the Steam Machine the “GabeCube” around the internet. :)
I’ll drop what I said about this in another thread:
I think you probably need to understand the underpinnings of what Valve accomplished over the past few years to understand why the Frame is useful.
Essentially, it’s a Deck strapped to your face. Same OS, same everything, just different hardware platform.
Valve spent the time to revamp SteamOS in order to make it more portable to various devices, which are now launching. Couple that with their efforts on Proton, and you have an entire ecosystem with very little in the way of preventing people from adopting these devices with their ease of use.
Steam Deck was just sort of the appetizer and test launch to gauge interest and build a fully functional hardware development and support vertical in the company, and it was wildly successful. I guarantee (if they can get the price right) that the Frame will sell WAY more units than the awful Vision Pro. I honestly think people might adopt this over buying another version of the Deck if it’s comfortable.
Some things I expect to happen with the Frame launch:
- A more expanded integration of Desktop features. If Valve doesn’t do it, the community will.
- Virtual screen management
- Theater mode for viewing media
- Virtualized VR input (like steam-input but VR)
- Pairing capabilities for multiplayer
- Half-Life 3 release (not joking)
Interesting comments, thanks!
I fully agree that this will sell way more than Vision Pro. I think this is pretty much guaranteed. The highest price I’ve seen estimated for the Frame is $1200, so it will much cheaper and much more versatile.
I also think that Theater mode for media is pretty much a guarantee at release, given that they’ve already demoed playing regular non-VR games in Theater mode.
I’ve also seen some mentions of Linux desktop on it, but haven’t seen any concrete details about it.
Desktop is a built-in feature of SteamOS. They’d have to actually work to remove that by default. No reason for it not to be there.
Yeah, I can understand that. I had heard that Steam Deck had a desktop feature built-in. Some of the videos and articles about the Machine have shown and mentioned desktop apps and KDE, but not regarding the Frame, so I wasn’t sure, especially considering that Frame will be using a different hardware architecture.
To be fair, I think they’re slightly different markets.
The AVP is a “Productivity” device and seems more focused on “Mixed Reality” use with it’s super high quality passthrough and what not, vs the Frame which is more focused on gaming, has black and white passthrough and (I’m assuming) no Real World mapping so you can’t have floating windows that stay where you put them in your physical space for example.That being said I think more sales than the AVP is a guarantee, on the price alone.
If anything, the real question is if that “VR Productivity” market that Apple is targeting really exists. (didn’t the HoloLens fail?)That’s true about them being different markets and also the comparison to HoloLens!
Where have you heard that Frame won’t have Real World mapping?
That was just an assumption, I should probably make that clearer on my comment.
Got it, thanks for the clarification. I would be surprised if any VR headset with inside-out tracking wouldn’t have real world mapping today, but we’ll see!
I agree that the opportunity for Frame is to be “big screen” portable gaming.
Desktop stuff will just come along for the ride.
And yes, the ecosystem is in place. Steam is already the de facto distribution channel for games, proton makes most of them work great on Linux, and FEX should make most of those work on Frame.
I am not sure how well FEX works today but it is obviously going to get a lot more love. And the CPU is not the bottleneck for games anyway as the GPU is doing all the heavy lifting.
They also have been tapping Code weavers or just serendipity but there is a lot of movement on the open source x86 to arm translation space too. Which for games on VR headsets is a big deal. https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/mjohnson/2025/11/6/twist-our-arm64-heres-the-latest-crossover-preview
They’ve already said they’ll be using FEX: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/vr-hardware/steamos-launching-for-arm-fex-translation-layer/
Half-Life 3 release (not joking)
Sadly not, at least not VR first, cf https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-isnt-currently-working-on-a-new-vr-game/
like steam-input but VR
That’s already a thing, I saw a video of someone streaming a VR game to a Quest 3 via Steam Link and using it to map hand gestures to regular VR controller actions, allowing him to play games with no hand tracking support controller-free
That’s slightly different. That is mapping controllers to already existing inputs for a game, which steam-input already does.
Mapping all the sensors of a VR headset for motion and tracking is an entirely different thing, though kinda similar in some sense.
Having a Linux machine, with decent hardware as a common target for developers will have huge implications for gaming in Linux. The SteamDeck has already inspired more devs to make native Linux versions of their games, rather than relying on Proton. This should expand the appeal for devs even more so
Interesting points, thanks!
Yes but …
- no hand tracking
- no color passthrough
- no hardware upgrade
- no WebXR
- no new VR proper content
Still, it’s good obviously, not having to rely on BigTech. This was also possible before though as I pointed out in https://lemmy.ml/post/38899489/22202786 with e.g. Lynx XR1, as a rooted Android standalone HMD with no account required.
Anyway IMHO the big questions for VR on Linux more broadly is what changes upstream on KDE in terms of immersive UX? Is KDE Plasma becoming a VR graphical shell? Does it have 3D widgets? Does it impact freedesktop in any way?
Edit : I have a SteamDeck since its out, Lynx XR1, etc so I absolutely want Linux VR and FLOSS XR to succeed. In fact I even gave a talk at FOSSXR years ago about that, fact did it twice. Still it doesn’t mean I can’t be disappointed by those points. I like Valve, I want to give them money, that doesn’t mean I can’t be objective. You might have different requirements, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t compare to alternatives which have existed for years.
I think your list is a bit too negative. Here are my comments:
- No hand tracking - hand tracking was added to the original Oculus Quest with a software update, at first as an experimental feature. They have continued to improve it over time. I don’t see why Valve won’t be able to do the same (other than probably having a much smaller team than Meta)
- No color passthrough - I was disappointed by this too. The color passthrough has led to some really interesting games on Quest, like for example, being able to fight characters superimposed over your own real environment, which to me is an amazing development. However, the Frame does have an interface that will allow for color cameras, so there is some small hope for that. Also, perhaps having monochrome passthrough wouldn’t actually impede those same games from working on Frame in the first place. Still, out of your entire list, this is the one that I agree is a serious shortcoming.
- No hardware upgrade - what do you mean by this?
- No WebXR - Where have you heard that? I haven’t seen any mention of this, but obviously there are endless sources of information about this thing. Even if so, would it be impossible to add later with a software update?
- No new VR proper content - What do you mean by this?
I know what you asked about is the Machine and Frame, but I’m super excited about the controller. I love my old steam controller I got on fire sale, but its an extremely flawed device. If they can polish that to the standard of the Deck, I’m so in, especially since you know it’ll work well on Linux with no firmware BS.
Yes, I’m definitely interested in the controller too! I only mentioned Machine and Frame because I figured those might both have an impact on Linux, but I didn’t even think about how the Steam controller may become a nice standard controller for Linux.
It will help with linux on macs for the few (including me) blokes running it
Wasn’t the issue there that there are no drivers for the specific Apple silicon hardware, so someone needs to invent them? Because we’ve had raspberry pi for ages. Software for ARM is a solved problem AFAIK.
Hmmm, good points that I hadn’t thought about or just wasn’t aware, thanks!
Good to know, thanks!
Awesome!