The frames might be the first VR I buy.
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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Depending on price, likewise.
Same here!
Yeah, like you said, significant development of VR on Linux. But that also depends on the price tag.
VR on Linux is functional, at can work. But it requires a bunch of set up and can also just break down very easily too. VR on Linux is almost like what gaming on Linux was before Proton. If Valve can do to VR what they did with Proton then I'm sure I can convince a whole bunch of people to switch to Linux.
Good to hear, thanks for your first-hand impression of the current state of VR on Linux!
Valves choices the last few years are making me more optimistic that a Linux phone ecosystem could grow and improve. Sideloading APKs on an ARM-based easy-to-use linux system? Nice! It is possible using Waydroid etc today, but it is not very polished.
I'm crossing my fingers too!
I'm a bit surprised that Quallcom doesn't have a custom XR3 chip yet and Valve used the Snapgdragon8 Gen3
If the Frame is as open as the Deck it will be the perfect device for VR devs to play around with and make awesome stuff with. i think one of the things holding back VR was that almost every headset was super locked down.
If the Quests had been more open we'd have had much more experimental games. Maybe the Metaverse would actually be a thing. But Meta prefers to keep everything under their control not realising that this hampers development and adoption.
Look at the article that I edited the OP to post. It sounds like Valve is intent on keeping this thing as open as possible. I agree that it could lead to really interesting developments, not to mention when you consider the SD card slot and the high speed accessory interface that will allow external cameras and who knows what else. This thing is going to be crazy.
Interestingly enough, when Quest first released the hand tracking functionality I remember seeing some really interesting developments using that, but I guess the developers never took it all the way to publish games with those concepts.
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Huge win for Linux. Steam Deck was the first volley, but this hardware is an all-out assault on Windows' gaming dominance. MS is asleep at the wheel and making worse and worse software. I'm a 20 year Windows user and I'm planning my exit. If I were a gaming executive, I would assume 5 years from now that a smaller percentage of Steam users will be on Windows than there are today. I would want a damn good reason for my company's next game to not have full Linux support.
Microsoft will either:
- win through innovation
- win through monopolistic practices
- win through inertia
- slowly lose by having a worse product
My money is on #4. Windows will probably be the #1 desktop/laptop OS for the next 20 years, but we could enter a world where Linux and MacOS are each 10% or more of the market. Steam shows 95% Windows but that's for a gaming-focused market.
Valve isn't perfect. They're still a corporation. But if every company was as evil as Valve, we would achieve near world peace. They've contributed amazing things to open source through heavy investment.
Valve isn’t perfect. They’re still a corporation. But if every company was as evil as Valve, we would achieve near world peace. They’ve contributed amazing things to open source through heavy investment.
It's a privately own company, and it shows. Linux and open source just wins, because it allows to set these symbiosis with partners instead of treating everything as competition, my way-or-the-highway-style.
I’m a 20 year Windows user and I’m planning my exit.
Hear hear. I'm a 35 year DOS -> Windows user (personally and professionally) and already actively working on my exit.
I would want a damn good reason for my company’s next game to not have full Linux support.
I think I remember reading comments indicating that lots of (indie?) developers are taking the strategy of ensuring that their games work well on WINE/Proton instead of specifically developing for Linux. That makes sense economically for a small company at this point. 5 years from now will probably be a different story than now though, like you said.
I’m planning my exit.
How can I help?
Embarrassingly, make a Windows 10-like OS. (More specifically, a window manager, probably.) Or have an affirmative vision for the future (non-Windows 95-derived) like Niri or (fascist-adjacent) Omarchy. 15+ years ago I booted my first distro. I ran Ubuntu with Unity on a side PC for years. Good for single screen use. I daily drove Debian for 3 months in 2018 but never got it to look more modern than Windows 2000. I never "enjoyed" it. This matches my thoughts. https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/10/deduplicating_the_desktops/
Going to try out https://www.anduinos.com/ and Zorin. Have done distro hop roulette for months and a lot of them are unsatisfying. KDE looks close to how I want but runs slow e.g. https://lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz/post/58790510
I'm big on super+arrow to move windows from one screen to another. I rarely need more than 4 active windows per display. But my big problem with tiling is that I like seeing the windows I have open at the bottom of my screen. (this was for my laptop but similar points https://lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz/post/58681232 )
My side OS on my main PC is Mint with MATE, but I also don't gel with it. Ran it on a family PC for years and it did the job for casual use. Random gripe off the top of my head I think applies in MATE: sorting is in byte order, not in brain order. Many linuxes sort 10, 1, 2 instead of 1, 2, 10. MATE and Xfce (iirc) have terrible file operation handling compared to Windows or (the gold standard?) Teracopy in Windows.
Every default GUI archive/extract program in Linux sucks, that I could find. I prefer Peazip but even 7z-gui (the stock one) is good. Even native windows zip support feels more pleasant. This goes back to a bazzite/omarchy philosophy of shipping software that is good, instead of defaults that suck.
Oddly enough I kind of respect AntiX + IceWM, as well as Lxqt / Lubuntu more than most of the crap modern WMs I've used.
SSH key exchange / setup is a fucking nightmare and I don't know why I'm copy pasting keys into text files or piping multiple commands together for the 50% odds that my OS setup allows it. I still don't really understand the Linux threat model where passwords on a local account make sense. (Is it to prevent local scripts from escalating to admin?)
I've run Linux servers for 5 years and I run WSL, but nothing clicks per se. I'm always more at home in Windows. Niri feels close to what I want, but too high a learning curve. I may make a post about it someday.
There is a mix of very precise issues with very detailed examples but also a thread of not being "comfortable" which makes it challenging for me to make practical suggestions.
If that's OK I'd suggest to start with the top 5 problems you have then I, and hopefully others, can give potential paths forward.
One generic advice though the learning curve might feel threateningly high but I'd argue it's if you consider this a short term adventure. If you think about the next year or so, discovering the intricacies of a distribution or shortcuts for a desktop environment look like a bad investment of your time. If now you consider this, especially as you mentioned managing servers for years, relying on WSL, etc a long term investment. If you imagine than in 10 years, heck even 50 years, console, servers, VR headsets, desktop, phones, tablets... all run Linux (which to be clear basically is the case now, even before the Valve recent announcement) then it's a totally different dynamic. I don't mean "behind the scene" kind of things, I mean today you can use adb shell on your standalone VR HMD, on your video projector, on your phone, etc. You can also have the console on your Mac laptop. It doesn't make learning easier, it's just a lot more motivating IMHO.
Also on that topic, my "trick" is to write down notes. It can be actual notes or just my ~/.bashrc or ~/bin in a more pragmatic day to day solutions. They do add up, day after day, years after years. Each challenge once overcome can be composable and a new opportunity to do more.
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The effort they are putting towards x86 emulation will definitely help the broader Linux community. I saw a bit about 24 min in on gamer nexas video. That would help down the line on all sorts of devices.
Yeah, pretty sure it was called "Fex" translation layer for emulating x86 binaries on ARM64. To me that was absolutely the biggest takeaway, because that's a massive game-changer for eventually moving the industry away from x86 exclusivity and into wider adoption of other architectures.
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Steam Machine
If the Steam Machine really takes off, I see way more people moving to Linux on their main rigs and laptops, and in turn making companies stop ignoring it, if it becomes a massive success I imagine:
- Mainstream games like FIFA supporting Linux
- Apps like Affinity Studio being distributed through Steam officially supported via Proton.
- Epic games will be the last company to keep ignoring Linux.
- Valve adopting Waydroid for SteamOS (for Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, etc)
- NVIDIA will redouble their Linux efforts.
- Greatest than ever VR support in Linux
Steam Frame
- Lots of Linux apps will work on Android desktop mode, like LibreOffice, Inkscape, etc.
- Linux phones will receive a lot more maintainers and funding.
Steam Deck
- Android apps on the Deck via Valve's Waydroid
- Steam Deck 2 on ARM
Other
- New use cases for ARM will motivate RISCV to speed up it's growth.
- KDE & Arch will receive more funding from Valve
- More contributions to the Kernel
- More Linux developers
- Increased security for Linux
- Flathub will grow
You know, in the trailer they did say "we're not talking about that yet" when referring to the Steam Deck.
So there's probably a Steam Deck 2 in the works, and if it runs on ARM the battery life would be amazing. Though... I wonder if that matters when it still needs to process x86 instructions.
Very cool, thanks for your comprehensive predictions of effects of these new devices! I hope that a lot of that will come true.
I hope a lot of those things will come true, but the one I am hoping will happen sooner than later is for apps like Affinity (and Vegas editor!) to improve/fix their support via WINE or Proton. Regarding Affinity specifically, I understand that they have made the entire suite free to use now, which I'm afraid may indicate that canva will slow down or stop its development.
Could this somehow help...Linux phone efforts?
I thought about this but the biggest problem with Android is lack of adoption from developers of third party app stores and UnifiedPush, and similarly widespread adoption of Play Integrity API. This won't solve those problems.
There's certainly the possibility that Android apps begin being distributed on Steam. But probably only gaming apps.
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I'll drop what I said about this in another thread:
I think you probably need to understand the underpinnings of what Valve accomplished over the past few years to understand why the Frame is useful.
Essentially, it's a Deck strapped to your face. Same OS, same everything, just different hardware platform.
Valve spent the time to revamp SteamOS in order to make it more portable to various devices, which are now launching. Couple that with their efforts on Proton, and you have an entire ecosystem with very little in the way of preventing people from adopting these devices with their ease of use.
Steam Deck was just sort of the appetizer and test launch to gauge interest and build a fully functional hardware development and support vertical in the company, and it was wildly successful. I guarantee (if they can get the price right) that the Frame will sell WAY more units than the awful Vision Pro. I honestly think people might adopt this over buying another version of the Deck if it's comfortable.
Some things I expect to happen with the Frame launch:
- A more expanded integration of Desktop features. If Valve doesn't do it, the community will.
- Virtual screen management
- Theater mode for viewing media
- Virtualized VR input (like steam-input but VR)
- Pairing capabilities for multiplayer
- Half-Life 3 release (not joking)
It will definitely be called Half Life Part 4, and it will break the Internet.
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I thought it was obvious, 2026 is going to be the year of the Linux desktop.
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Having a Linux machine, with decent hardware as a common target for developers will have huge implications for gaming in Linux. The SteamDeck has already inspired more devs to make native Linux versions of their games, rather than relying on Proton. This should expand the appeal for devs even more so
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A standalone VR headset that I don't have to give money to the zucc to enjoy? I'm buying like 12 of these things as soon as they'll take my money
Absolutely! This has been one of the reasons for me holding out on Meta Quest despite really wanting one. Now, the zucc can bite my shiny metal ass.
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Steam frame could be big for vr on linux. Before steam deck came out I dualbooted windows for gaming because gaming didn't work well on linux. Nowadays its great. Steam vr is super buggy on linux right now and doesn't even have feature parity with steam vr on windows. Hopefully steam vr becomes good on linux because I would imagine the steam frame needs it to be good
This is what I'm hoping for too. Thanks for providing your perspective from first-hand experience because I wasn't sure about any of this VR on Linux stuff.
It will help with linux on macs for the few (including me) blokes running it
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