If you have spent any time in gaming hardware circles, then you’ve probablyheard about the Steam Deck, theLinux-based handheld gaming PC built by Valve. Yes, you heard that right: notWindows, but Linux.
I’ve had my fair share of attempts at gaming on Linux. When it works, it’samazing. When it doesn’t, it’s incredibly frustrating. The last thing I wantto do when playing a game is to become a developer and start troubleshootingissues with all the layers between the hardware and the game.
What makes the Steam Deck different is that the compatibility layer (Proton) andall the bits and pieces associated with it are integrated in a way that shouldmake it unnoticeable to the user. Just start up your Steam Deck, pick your game,play, and you’re good to go.
Although I’ve thought about buying a Steam Deck myself for tinkering and testingpurposes, I could not justify that purchase. But thanks to videos fromthe ETAPRIME YouTube channel Ilearned about the existence of HoloISO,an unofficial SteamOS 3 installer.
HoloISO
HoloISO aims to be as close to the native SteamOS 3 experience as possible.The only reason it exists right now is because Valve does not yet officiallysupport SteamOS 3 as a distro that you can go and install. That might changein the future, but for those that are impatient like myself, HoloISO is a niceoption.
To test out HoloISO and give it a good chance at succeeding, I chose my ASRockDeskMini X300.It sports an AMD Ryzen 7 5700G,which is a high-end APU andshould result in performance that’s roughly comparable to the Steam Deck in mostscenarios. The GPU cores are not on the newest GPU architecture released by AMD,but the higher power budget should make up for any architectural deficiencies.
The installation of HoloISO is very easy, just download the installer and writeit to an USB stick. Once you’re booted up, follow the installation instructionsand reboot. You should now be at the SteamOS 3 setup screen.
First impressions
I’ll be the first one to admit that my Steam library is a bit out of date, whichis why my experience is limited to older titles. I can confirm that BeamNG driveand Dirt Rally 2 work fantastically though.
The only way to play GTA V on Linux without issues used to involve creating aWindows VM and passing a GPU to it. This is whyI was very impressed to see that installing and starting up GTA V worked outof the box. I could even go to GTA Online and play around without being kickedout or banned!
To make choosing and playing games a better experience for casual gamers, Steamhas also come up with the Deck verifiedprogram. You shouldn’t be discouraged if your favourite game is shown asunsupported or not tested, though. Try to start it up and see if it works.Burnout Paradise and Absolute Drift were not officially supported, but worked like a charm.
The unfortunate reality of SteamOS is that not every game will work out of thebox. Some older games, such as GTA III and GTA Vice City, would not work at all.You might be able to check out places like ProtonDBand see if a game has a tweak that you can apply. Tweaks can involve passingadditional launch options to a game or using another version of the compatibilitylayer (Proton).
What turned me off of this platform was Forza Horizon 4. On this setup, it didnot launch properly, the sound was there but the screen was black. Based onresults in YouTube, it seems like Forza Horizon 4 and Forza Horizon 5 do workon Steam Deck, so this issue might be down to a compatibility issue onmy hardware or HoloISO distribution of SteamOS 3. I wanted to play that gamethough, so I had to eventually end the experiment and install Windows 10 again.
As someone who wants to get a good overview of resources usage during gameplayto detect and resolve any performance issues, I tend to use tools like MSI Afterburner.With SteamOS 3, you can easily achieve similar results by enabling theperformance overlay. I was very happy to see that addition because that meansinstalling and configuring one less tool on my gaming box.
Quality of life issues
Even when things generally work, I did notice some annoyances when playing games.Sometimes I ran into issues with controls. Steam allows you to pick gamepadtemplates and layouts, which can involve community-provided setups. Sometimesit would default to a layout that simply did not work. Turning off Steam inputaltogether would sometimes improve the situation. If that did not work, thenpicking an alternative template would do the trick most of the time.
One major issue that I ran into was related to my XBOX controllers. Becausethe XBOX wireless adapter does not work out of the box on Linux, I connectedthem via Bluetooth. However, the latency was horrible and borderline unplayable.There do exist drivers that you can install, mainly xoneand xpadneo, and those do improve thesituation.
Desktop mode
One aspect of SteamOS 3 that made me actually consider buying a Steam Deck isthe desktop mode. Not only can you play games, but you can also boot into anormal KDE desktop environment. Install a web browser, emulators,tweak the system or do actual productive work on it, it just works!
Hell, you can even install an SSH server and manage your gaming box with Ansible!
Whenever I’ve had a gaming PC, I’ve usually hooked it up to a big screen,installed Windows and Steam on it, and called it a day. If you want to watchsome media, open up the browser and you’re good to go. I’m happy to report thatsomething similar can be achieved on SteamOS as well.
At the time of testing, there were some issues that I didn’t expect to have withdesktop mode. Firefox is included as a Flatpak and it did not support any formof hardware acceleration for video playback, which made it a no-go for a hometheater setup.
After browsing /r/SteamDeck for a while,you’ll notice that a lot of people are into modifying their consoles, and allof that is possible because Valve did not lock anything down. Pop the hood andwork with the Linux internals as much as you want to! With other gaming consolesyou’re going to have to wait until someone discovers an exploit that allows youto have proper control over hardware that you physically own.
Gaming outside of Steam
With the presence of desktop mode, you’re not only limited to games purchasedfrom Steam.
To see how well I could emulate games that I have purchased on older consoles,such as PS1, PS2 and PSP, I tried setting up some emulators. I’m happy to saythat setting them up is just as fiddly as it is on Windows, but they do seemto work quite well, at least for these consoles.
I gave Minecraft a go as well by installing it as a Flatpak from KDE Discoverysoftware manager, but for some reason it didn’t run and crashed on startup.I didn’t look into it further, but it seemed like something that an update canfix.
GOG is a platform similar to Steam, with one notableexception: their games are DRM-free. I don’t use that often, but with a gamelike art of rally I had to get it from there justfor that reason alone (and the developers publishing native Linux ports).Although there isn’t an official client for GOG on Linux, there do exist opensource implementations. I gave HeroicGamesLaunchera go and although it is a bit rough around the edges, it got the job done andI could play art of rally just fine.
Caveats
The HoloISO experience tries to be as close to the one provided by SteamOS 3,but it is not 100% there yet. It seems that there are differences presentunder the hood, such as Steam Deck shipping with the root filesystem beingread-only by default. I might not be aware of other differences between theHoloISO and official Steam Deck installation, so keep this in mind when makingany decisions based on info from this post.
The choice of hardware will also affect your experience. The requirementsregarding GPU-s is relatively strict and you’ll likely have the best experiencewith a modern AMD GPU since that’s what SteamOS 3 is built around. Inteland NVIDIA GPU-s may work, but are not guaranteed to.
Conclusion
SteamOS 3, even in its HoloISO implementation, is very impressive. So impressive,in fact, that I almost bought a Steam Deck. The uncertainty about support for myfavourite games and less than ideal performance on the big screen were whatheld me back. For now.
In its current form, SteamOS 3 (and by extension the Steam Deck itself) are atinkerers’ dream. There are some rough corners and caveats that you should beaware of as well. Not everyone is into tinkering and experimentation, and that’sOK.
I sincerely hope that Valve can use the momentum that Steam Deck has achievedto push gaming on Linux even further. After having to reinstall Windows more thanI’d like to admit, having my gaming PC run plain Linux and be fully manageablewith Ansible just feels so right.
