Valve confirms a public beta of SteamOS is coming as 'SteamOS expands beyond Steam Deck'

With the announcement of the Lenovo Legion Go S as the first third-party SteamOS device, Valve have now officially announced that SteamOS Linux is expanding beyond the Steam Deck.

Exciting times ahead, as a great many people have been wanting Valve to finally release a proper SteamOS Linux download. And so, Valve will answer the calls, with a Beta.

As Valve said in the announcement:

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.

Emphasis ours.

Update 21:05: after publishing, Valve tweaked the above quoted text (I've corrected the quote). It originally said "we will be shipping a beta of SteamOS which should improve the experience on other devices" but they've now changed the ending to say "other handhelds". Clearly right now they're trying to keep expectations a little in check.

The rest of the post is an FAQ with details most people who have a followed SteamOS, Linux and the Steam Deck will already know. Like how you have a full desktop mode where you can install anything — including other stores.

People have long joked about the "Year of the Linux Desktop", and while this might not be it exactly, 2025 is truly shaping up to be a really transformative year for Linux gaming as a whole. There's a great many Linux distributions out there, some a bit similar to SteamOS (like the popular Bazzite), but having Valve put out SteamOS themselves is sure to hook a few more people in to try it out. Now we just need that Steam Controller 2 to appear…

If you missed it, we also have the announcement that GeForce NOW is getting full Steam Deck support with a native app, hopefully one that's not locked to the Deck, so all SteamOS installs can make proper use of it.

Now I'm even more hopeful that the anti-cheat problem will get corrected so games will stop blocking Linux platforms. Remember to follow our new anti-cheat page for compatibility. It will also be interesting to see how the Linux user share on Steam changes over time with this.

Valve also did a tiny Proton Experimental update today (January 7th) that includes a one-line fix that doesn't need a whole article: "Fixed Killsquad freezing on character selection screen". Seems like a lot more people are about to find out just how good Proton is at running Windows games on Linux systems soon.

Be sure to follow our SteamOS tag (there's an RSS feed on all tags too!) to keep up with the latest.