While it is not in any way officially supported by Valve, they have now released Windows drivers for the newer Steam Deck OLED model.
Since the Steam Deck ships with SteamOS (Linux) out of the box, and all of Valve's work goes into that, you're basically on your own if you choose to put Windows on the Steam Deck OLED. As per the support page, they note very clearly:
We are providing these resources as is and are unfortunately unable to offer 'Windows on Deck' support. If you get stuck and need a way back to the default Steam Deck OS, please follow these recovery instructions.
This is the same status for the original Steam Deck LCD model.
If you do wish to do so, you'll need to first update to SteamOS 3.6.9+ (currently in Beta/Preview), which includes the latest firmware. The drivers for Windows also need a manual download for each one including: APU, Audio, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth drivers. Currently though, the audio drivers only enable audio via headphones or Bluetooth, work for the speakers is still ongoing.
Dual-booting is also still not supported either but that is being worked on still but there's no timeline for it.
If you're thinking about Windows due to other stores and launchers, perhaps first look into the likes of the Heroic Games Launcher and NonSteamLaunchers.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
slaapliedje Aug 17
Quoting: ShabbyXI think CatKiller is correct, the devs likely see the sheer amount of proper bug reports and just thinks they're complaints. The culture is very different between Linux/Mac/Windows.Quoting: tfkJust read some post on the Steam forums. They got drivers now but are still complaining.
It's a small difference in attitude I'm observing here.
We get native Linux support for something, we say thanks and start to give feedback on any issues we encounter.
They get Windows support for something, they're like "About time!". And when there are issues they're like "It won't work! You suck! I'm selling my device!".
I can see why Valve had this on low priority.
You might not like hearing this, but most projects that treat Linux users as second class citizens have the exact same complaint, that Linux users are entitled and don't appreciate what they got.
People are people, Linux users are no better or worse than any other people.
A good example of this, especially with Linux/Windows vs Mac: there is a percentage of 'standard' utilities that everyone uses that are open source on Linux vs Windows vs Mac, and it goes in that order of greater to lesser. Pretty obvious to anyone, but once you start using macOS, you'll quickly realize that those standard utilities on the other two that are free (whether open source or closed) are pay for apps on macOS. Even just stupid things are not-zero dollars on the mac/ipad space. You basically need to install brew for anything useful...
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