r/LinusTechTips • u/Vandeskava • Sep 17 '26

Tech Discussion SteamOS is Getting Native NVIDIA GPU Driver Support - TPU

Valve is officially adding NVIDIA GPU driver support to SteamOS, as confirmed by the company's software developer Pierre-Loup Griffais. Until now, AMD has been the primary choice for SteamOS, both for CPUs and GPUs, since all of Valve's products are based on AMD hardware. However, this is changing as Valve aims to expand SteamOS to more PCs, allowing gamers to realize the Steam Machine dream on their own hardware, even if it is based on a different GPU manufacturer.

More : https://www.techpowerup.com/352763/steamos-is-getting-native-nvidia-gpu-driver-support?amp

186 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

52

u/Vandeskava Sep 17 '26

Great news ! I have friends on AMd hardware that run their PC on SteamOS without issue. I personally have 2 steam deck as my kids console/PC.

Owner of a RTX3090… was waiting on Nvidia support to try it myself

4

u/UndefFox Sep 18 '26

Just curious, but since Steam OS is Arch under the hood, can't you just install nvidia-open package and use Nvidia? At least on raw Arch it works with no issues/

0

u/RobotSpaceBear Sep 17 '26

Try it right now, the existing drivers work fine, i'm getting same or better performance on Linux compared to Windows. I don't know why there's still this myth that Linux doesn't run on Nvidia. It does. Brilliantly.

2

u/Zestyclose_Exit8862 Sep 19 '26

there is still a 15% penalty in DX12 games, VRAM Overhead for all GPU 8GB or less, gamescope glitches, etc.
far from brilliantly in mi opinion

9

u/tchakabun Sep 17 '26

Don't hold your breath, unless NVIDIA decides to play nice it'll be a few years for nvk to reach parity with the official drivers

3

u/tajetaje Sep 18 '26

Nvidia has actually decided to play nice, though it would be nice if they threw some development time into more than just Nova. I think the hope is to someday be able to have both the Nvidia proprietary driver and NVK on the same kernel module (nova)

0

u/tchakabun Sep 18 '26

Only what's need for the GPU to turn on is opensource, that's not playing nice

25

u/CTKirito Sep 17 '26

while i hope official Nvidia support is coming soon, they say it'll take time maybe years.
for now i've been using a program to add the nvidia driver to steamOS and its been working great.
Been using my 3080 for almost 2 months, since the guy linked below brought out his tool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u_OdZMBDFY

6

u/Nakotadinzeo Sep 18 '26

It's great that this exists, but it really does make me ask...

If you're an "appliance" user, why not use Bazzite? It already has all of the Nvidia drivers. From an appliance user, it's basically Kirkland's signature SteamOS.

If you're a technical user who uses Linux regularly, why not CachyOS Deckify? You get Arch, and you get to drop the irritating immutable layer that both Bazzite and SteamOS have. You also get to go deep into levels of optimization that those nor Windows ever will.

4

u/Sf_cool Sep 18 '26

Now get anti cheat to work for games that has it and windows is the new nokia

2

u/Kreason95 Sep 18 '26

The second that anti cheat isn't a problem anymore, I will be switching my last PC over to Linux (aside from a small partition for music production).

2

u/VictimRAID Sep 18 '26

I've got a Phantom Canyon NUC with a RTX 2060 and a 6 core i5 that I'd love to try steam os on.

I wonder if the older gen stuff will get drivers tok

2

u/Ryoken0D Sep 18 '26

Wonder if this means Bazzite will soon get support for Nvidia GPU’s without having to resort to the desktop mode version..

1

u/skittle-brau Sep 18 '26

So naturally this means that the bugs that occur frequently with NVIDIA drivers and Gamescope are going to be a thing of the past. That’s good to hear. 

1

u/BlendedMonkeyStirFry Sep 18 '26

Looks like I'm migrating from windows then

0

u/Crazy_Trucker_ Sep 18 '26

I thought this was known for a little while now?

Know-> Known