Steam Machine
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excited
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positive
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tech
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Steam
Gaming
Linux Gaming
Gaming Hardware
A sale on Steam Machines is being discussed, offering discounts on gaming PCs or consoles designed for Steam.
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- 01Story posted
11/12/2025, 5:59:43 PM
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Interesting that it uses KDE Plasma for the desktop
They've been doing it since Steam Deck launched, or even since they started to contribute to Proton/Wine (depending on exactly what you see "OS" to be). They seem to have grips on it more or less already, Deck upgrades are a breeze and the machine and software itself is open enough for a Linux hacker like me to be very comfortable on it, and also closed down enough for my nieces to not be able to brick theirs by just tapping around.
If you're ok with running work stuff in a separate VM within SteamOS, that works great. Using Geekbench I saw only a 5% cpu performance penalty. Io takes a bigger hit, but that wasn't a blocker for me as I was intending to run VMs with encrypted storage anyway (which adds even more latency) but still a good experience for my work.
It can run just about everything I want to play, but yes, there are plenty of things that don't work yet. Doom Dark Ages, for example.
SteamOS on the Steam Deck already used KDE Plasma for the desktop.
> Steam Frame is a PC, and runs SteamOS powered by a Snapdragon® 8 Series Processor. With 16GB of RAM, Steam Frame supports stand-alone play on a growing number of both VR and non-VR games without needing to stream from your PC.
So Steam + Proton works on aarch64? Is this something already available/supported, or is this an announcement?
[1] Steam Frame, which is the VR Headset releasing alongside the Steam Machine. Dedicated discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/gaming-headsets/han...
This is fun, just found this issue from 2018 which was closed with this comment:
> Hello @setsunati, this is not a realistic objective for Proton. As @rkfg, mentions wine for ARM does not magically make x86 based games work on ARM cpus.
> Even if Steam were brought to ARM, and an x86 emulation layer was run underneath wine, the amount of games that could run fast and without hitting video driver quirks is small enough not to entertain this idea any time in the near future.
It's mentioned in this issue https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/8136 which was closed Oct 2024 with this comment by kisak-valve:
> Hello @Theleafir1, similar to #1493, this is not a realistic objective for Proton any time in the near future.
Out of all the IPs Valve owns, somehow it's TF2 that got a story conclusion and it couldn't have been more perfect.
I believe low wattage SOCs can make traditional desktop hardware irrelevant (ish), but I think ARM is orthogonal to that.
A company sufficiently scaled can largely only be fixed by the CEO, and often not even then.
Potential lottery ticket win, they are available for consulting internally anywhere that can add value, and they're not working for anyone else.
You would only translate into Vulcan when running on an OS that uses Vulcan as the native graphics API.
On a Mac, Wine translates directly into Metal.
I mostly no longer boot my Linux machine anymore to play games.
The anticheat story is probably not as good but I don't play any AAA games, so I wouldn't know.
You don't need Proton's Wine fork when you can just use Wine.
Wanting Proton on Mac isn't about that specific fork of Wine, it's shorthand for wanting the user experience that Valve gives you on Linux.
There's also DXMT which is open-source, but doesn't support DX12.
Proton previously only worked on x86, so there was not the additional overhead of x86 to ARM translation.
Proton on ARM will have the same performance constraints as Wine on ARM Macs.
It's textbook "perfect is the enemy of good" because yeah, compatibility layers have overhead, native is better, but if you insist on native everything but can't get devs on board then you just end up with no games.
Compare Steam Machine (2014) to Steam Machine (2026). The difference this time around is Proton support, and you can pretty easily see the hype on the internet for the new version, even after the original version was mocked relentlessly in some circles for having "no games."
Also, how could Apple kill the old software that is better than the new, if it doesn't control the emulation? This way they don't have to even have 10% of the features to force you to buy again.
cough /final cut/ cough
For funsies, try searching App Store apps and find a way to filter out results for apps with IAP. Nope!
(Source: me, who spent time at a mobile gaming company as we figured out how to continuously optimize our funnels so that some rich dudes in Qatar could continue to spend $40K a month on useless cosmetics.)
"evaluate your unmodified Windows executable on Apple silicon using the evaluation environment for Windows games"
A bunch of games just ship the Windows executable and some version of that translation layer in their MacOS App bundle
They'll spend billions on a handful of (late) AAA ports for macOS every 4-5 years, and then go radio silent again.
The efforts are usually short-lived and mostly fruitless, but I wouldn't say they're "grossed out" by gaming nerds.
They released Apple Vision Pro with no ability to play popular PC games on it.
A VR headset. That doesn't play games.
The available low-level API is Metal, and the existing software stack is written for Vulkan, so it makes more sense to implement Vulkan than to write a new Metal backend.
Apple's native gaming story has been similar failure as their AI and Siri ventures. Time to fix it.
Apple seeks to builds its own walled garden.
Their interests do not align. Apple doesn’t want portable software on their platform, they want exclusive software.
Every day I sit down at a Mac for work and proceed to launch VS Code, Zed, Outlook, DBeaver, Excel, Teams, LogSeq, Syncthing, Chrome, Firefox, LM Studio and Docker. I prefer MacOS but basically all of my application workflow exists for Windows verbatim and if using browser versions of the MS apps, on Linux too.
The last straw with MacOS was when my US bank cards expired, I could no longer update apps I already paid for, I could no longer install apps I already paid for. Everything was held hostage, could not install FREE apps via the appstore on macos or on ipad.
That day my eyes opened to what Apple has become.
You simply cannot trust Apple with your computing future. They're a fashion company now.
Honestly right now there is so much overlapping between all the wine "flavors" and forks available (Stock wine, Crossover, Proton/Proton-GE/Wine-GE, Game Porting Toolkit, winevdm, probably a few more I'm forgetting right now) I'm not entirely sure how many features have been independently implemented already multiple times.
The new thing Proton is adding is translation from x86 to ARM.
Macs already have Wine, an x86 to ARM translation layer (Rosetta), and an Apple provided translation layer from Microsoft's DirectX to the Mac's native Metal graphics API (D3DMetal) which is integrated into upstream Wine.
But honestly at this point I’m destined to buy a Steam Machine despite having a hefty Mac that could do gaming if only it were possible. Valve have been amazing about open computing and Apple are basically the enemy at this point.
It makes me wonder about what using steam machine for all computing might look like, as the new home of open computing and gaming.
I don't think it's ever likely to return any time soon, but it'd be cool if it did. Valve seemingly have very little interest in macOS at the moment.
CodeWeavers work closely with Valve and the Wine project to improve compatibility with games, and Apple's own Game Porting Toolkit is based on CodeWeavers work on Wine too. So all the pieces are there in theory.
Edit: foveated streaming, not rendering
But if it's a very easy plug-n-play type deal to run SteamVR games (and on Linux!), that's a huge ergonomic improvement. Don't have to think too much about whether everything is running correctly or what-have-you.
Streaming VR content is just so sensitive. I have a good cabled network but even a simple switch introduced noticeable lag spikes. In the end I have a separate router that I just connect straight to my PC, and then I share my wifi connection through my PC to that network. A whole silly setup just to minimize latency and packet loss. If that could be replaced with a simple USB dongle I'd be amazed.
Looks like a very competent headset indeed though! Nice combo of fast streaming that can prioritize well with foveated encoding, and hopefully a pretty nice malleable capable standalone headset too.
discussed here: https://youtu.be/b7q2CS8HDHU?t=1074
"For foveated rendering, [the developers] have that option, but it's not compulsory"
Install Plex, JellyFin, FreeTube et.al. to it and you have a nice open source TV box.
You also get 4k gaming from Steam, GOG, Epic etc. and you get emulators. I've been wanting to build a computer like this, but CEC is hard to find and the adapters that exist don't support full 4k resolution.
I recently replaced a shield with an Ugoos Am6b+ running coreELEC, which works okay and supports some stuff the shield doesn't but I miss being able to run some android apps easily. I wonder if the new steam machine will support DV.
> Does not support resolutions and colour spaces greater than 4k60 4:2:0 8-bit colour.
This is kind of annoying if you want 4k60 4:4:4 and 10-bit HDR.
And now I'm curious if the Steam Frame allows inserts or fits well with glasses on.
> Passthrough - Monochrome passthrough via outward facing cameras
This is an outright bone-headed move that I can't believe Valve is making. Only having monochrome cameras means augmented reality is basically a non-starter.
AR has a lot of potential. I literally bought a Meta Quest 3 just for PianoVision [0] when I already had a Valve Index. I would love to see some sort of AR-based game you could play outdoors. But with only monochrome vision, that's gonna be awful.
That's plenty to support color passthrough as a physical addon, which in turn makes me think that, like with the OLED Deck, we'll see a Frame with built-in color-passthrough later as a different premium SKU when/if they justify it.
1: https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-steam-frame-official-announce...
When it's light & small enough to be a pair of glasses and more than just the expensive but limited gimmick that the form is currently, then it'll be world-changing. It's close, but it's not there yet.
PianoVision sounds like a really bad way to learn the piano. There are already pianos/midi controller that have the abilities to light up the keys you are supposed to play if you really needed that. But that is a gimmick that you might use the first few sessions and then never again. Same with PianoVision.
Generally, is is so much better to start with music notation from day one. I regret starting with all the piano learning apps because they only have been holding me back.
Name one that has to do with with this box competing with xbox and playstation in people's living room.
[0]: https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-dev-public@li...
Doesn't really mean much to Valve as SteamOS vendor:
- linux kernel supports aarch64 just fine
- user space supports aarach64 just as fine
- Valve provides runtime for games (be it via proton or native linux), so providing aarch64 builds is up to them anyway
The main point of ArchLinuxARM is providing compatible binaries, which isn't something hard to do in-house.
For more demanding games it's designed to stream from a PC.
CodeWeavers just announced[0] CrossOver on ARM a couple of days ago, so yes.
[0]: https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/mjohnson/2025/11/6/twist-ou...
Hmm. Not that it is big deal, but I would be somewhat worried about true longevity with the VRAM. Not sure if SteamOS helps there, but on PC some new titles are going over the 8GB VRAM.
If Steam Machine gains enough foothold, it will be treated like a console. It won't run the latest title in 4K@120, but the title will still run great on default settings.
There's absolutely no reasonable way to use more than 8GB of VRAM on this card.
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