Out of the box, the Steam Deck comes with SteamOS 3 Linux and overall apart from early quirks and bugs it does work very well but they're now providing Windows drivers — with a big caveat.
This was announced on Steam today, for those who do want to put up with Windows (not me). There's a few notes they included on it but the biggest and most important is that Valve will not actually be supporting Windows on Deck in any way. It was put very clearly as Valve said "we are providing these resources as is and are unfortunately unable to offer 'Windows on Deck' support".
People are free to do what they want with it, unlike more traditional "consoles" but the point is that for official support, you need to use SteamOS.
The quick notes Valve included:
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
- For now you can only perform a full Windows install. While Steam Deck is fully capable of dual-boot, the SteamOS installer that provides a dual-boot wizard isn't ready yet.
- Also for now, you can only install Windows 10. Windows 11 requires a new BIOS that is currently in the pipe (which provides fTPM support) and will be shipping soon.
- Drivers are provided for GPU, WiFi, and Bluetooth. Audio drivers are still in the works with AMD and other parties - but you'll still be able to use Bluetooth or USB-C audio with Windows on Deck.
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyLeast of our worries. Valve have plenty of $$$, what they want is future-proofing and Microsoft cannot give them that and would not if it could.Friendly reminder that most of Valve's income is selling games for Windows users
Last edited by BielFPs on 10 March 2022 at 9:52 pm UTC
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Quoting: elmapulthere is an advantage on windows, at least on general hardware:Actually, you can not only swap them on linux, but even keep them together and choose what to use runtime, at least with amd.
windows can hot-swap drivers, linux cant AFAIK.
Last edited by kokoko3k on 10 March 2022 at 9:59 pm UTC
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If valve doesn't provide a dual-boot friendly installer in a few weeks, someone from the community will. Goes without saying, I probably won't try windows, but I haven't invested in windows-only gaming.
Last edited by const on 10 March 2022 at 10:27 pm UTC
Last edited by const on 10 March 2022 at 10:27 pm UTC
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Quoting: BielFPsSeparate issue. Valve might (although I don't really think so) reorient the thing more towards Windows for the sake of all the Windows users in their customer base, if they get sufficiently restless. They will not do so because Microsoft gives them $$, which is what you were suggesting.Quoting: Purple Library GuyLeast of our worries. Valve have plenty of $$$, what they want is future-proofing and Microsoft cannot give them that and would not if it could.Friendly reminder that most of Valve's income is selling games for Windows users
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AussieEevee Mar 10, 2022
Quoting: BielFPsQuoting: Purple Library GuyLeast of our worries. Valve have plenty of $$$, what they want is future-proofing and Microsoft cannot give them that and would not if it could.Friendly reminder that most of Valve's income is selling games for Windows users
Valve's income is selling PC games. With the Steam Deck able to play a very high number of Windows games now...
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Quoting: elmapulQuoting: CerberonQuoting: spacemonkeyI am curious about the performance difference. But no matter the results, I will never ever install Windows.Well a lot of games already run better on Linux, and given how vale should be able to optimize the OS specifically for the hardware and that windows will not be so optimized I would be surprised if windows is noticeably faster at anything.
there is an advantage on windows, at least on general hardware:
windows can hot-swap drivers, linux cant AFAIK.
that is quite usefull because you can use the best driver for each game or even make an driver specifically for an single game, and that do happen automatically without the user noticing.
i dont think that feature will apply to the deck, but it cant be under estimated.
nor can not having an translation layer.
You can *most definitely* hot swap drivers (i.e. kernel modules) on Linux... as long as the driver isn't busy serving a user. You might be referring to the graphics driver, which _seems_ like it can't be swapped, but that's because the GUI is using it. If you log out, you can hot swap the graphics driver too (but at that point you might as well take a 10s hit and restart).
That said, what you said doesn't make much sense. You can have per game optimizations inside the same driver, so you don't need to swap drivers. Even if you did, all that logic would be in the user-mode driver; that's the heavy part of the graphics driver which lives as a user-space library. The kernel driver is very thin. There is absolutely no problem swapping user-mode drivers on top of the same kernel-mode driver (if such a thing even made sense).
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Quoting: Purple Library GuySeparate issue. Valve might (although I don't really think so) reorient the thing more towards Windows for the sake of all the Windows users in their customer base, if they get sufficiently restless. They will not do so because Microsoft gives them $$, which is what you were suggesting.Using $ on the equation doesn't always mean "I'll pay you to support my OS", this could be a scenario which Microsoft says "Hey Valve, we had some engineer to curate Windows on steam deck hardware, so we only a$k you to make an small effort on your client in order to users get a similar experience if they opt to install windows". In this scenario, Valve still makes more money by selling hardware and software to more potential costumers (without have to support / maintain this use case alone) and Microsoft keeps users bounded to their system. In this scenario would be a win/win situation for Valve and Microsoft in my opinion.
Of course, Microsoft could also do this without any of Valve's help, or even do the opposite and launch a "xbox deck" to compete with.
All am I'm saying is that personally I don't think this "Windows not supported" scenario will last for a long time.
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Quoting: BielFPsI hope Microsoft doesn't a$k Valve to reconsider
I have altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further!
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Quoting: gabberInstalling Windows in 2022 on the Steamdeck is like installing Linux 10-15 years ago. Some parts work, some don't.Also, exactly like installing Windows 10-15 years ago. Like 2 or 3 comments above you just said most people have no idea how difficult it can be to do a clean install of Windows especially with a retail disc and not an OEM disc. Especially 15-20 years ago!
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Quoting: asmoore82Quoting: gabberInstalling Windows in 2022 on the Steamdeck is like installing Linux 10-15 years ago. Some parts work, some don't.Also, exactly like installing Windows 10-15 years ago. Like 2 or 3 comments above you just said most people have no idea how difficult it can be to do a clean install of Windows especially with a retail disc and not an OEM disc. Especially 15-20 years ago!
Also, exactly like installing windows right now. You install it, then half the hardware doesn't work until you download and install drivers (and wifi is one of them, so you need to boot to Linux to get the wifi drivers first :P).
It's only Linux that once you install it, everything just works.
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