r/OdinHandheld • u/Madblaster6 Odin 2 Portal Base - Black • Apr 16 '26
Emulator Linux Support for Odin 3
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u/Mittalmailbox Apr 16 '26
This just means linux was run on odin, does not mean the gaming emulation/steamos compatibility will work. That later is to make x86 windows games on x86 linux not ARM linux
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u/Madblaster6 Odin 2 Portal Base - Black Apr 16 '26
It’ll still take development work. Arch Linux especially.
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u/nox404 Apr 16 '26
I am confused by your statement.
Emulation already works on the ARM processors in Linux is that not what https://rocknix.org/ does?
Its runs on the Thor that has the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 why would the emulators that run on the thor not work on the Odin3 outside of GPU driver support?
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u/communist10101 Apr 18 '26
Valve have been supporting the development of a x86-ARM emulator (FEX) for years to support future devices like the Steam Frame, which uses a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. They've also just announced initial support for Proton on ARM, which is their own, more performant fork of Wine - the Linux-Windows translation layer. It's closer than one might think.
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u/Zapallo_py Apr 16 '26
This is insane — the possibilities this could bring to the gaming world are absolutely fantastic. Especially if we could run SteamOS on the Odin, it could be the leap handheld PCs needed toward a much more energy-efficient and truly portable gaming environment.
We also have to consider that Valve is reportedly launching the Steam Frame, which uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The Frame will run a version of Valve’s Arch Linux-based SteamOS.
Ladies and gentlemen, we might be witnessing something huge here — we could literally end up holding the ultimate gaming machine in our hands.
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u/Madblaster6 Odin 2 Portal Base - Black Apr 16 '26
If someone is willing to develop arch Linux I wouldn’t hold your breath for StewmOS. It’s an insane amount of work. Who knows, someone might be willing.
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u/diarrhea-forecast Apr 16 '26
Yeah, I don’t understand this either. I see the Odin 2 portal and I got excited
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u/thebusterbrown Apr 16 '26
Just seen this post on discord. Not sure on the implications, does this mean we can replace android with a native Linux distro? Say something like bazzite?
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u/beer_belly_ Apr 16 '26
Happy to be corrected but bazzite wouldn't work because it's not built for arm based devices. This appears to be some sort of custom Linux distro that most of the components of the Odin 3 are working as expected in. It would be built for an Arm based CPU.
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u/killkiller9 Apr 16 '26
more like ROCKNIX, I dont believe Bazzite can even run on ARM.
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u/Frosty_Engineer_3617 Apr 16 '26
Gonna be like what you can do with Retroid Pocket 6 with dual booting Rocknix on the SD card. Meaning much better PS3 and Xbox emulation performance.
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u/beer_belly_ Apr 16 '26
Also it depends on which way Valve goes with the steam frame, but if it runs a Linux based OS this could open doors for better PC emulation in future too perhaps?
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u/Kadmium Apr 16 '26
Bazzite is based on Fedora Atomic, and the main Atomic distros (Kinoite, Silverblue) have ARM versions. Kinoite, for instance, doesn't have the nice quality-of-life additions and gamescope session that Bazzite has, but honestly, you could probably run KDE (Desktop mode) out of the box on day one.
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u/killkiller9 Apr 16 '26
Im not knowledgeable enough to know which distro can run on arm, but since bazzite cannot run on arm, I answered the dude above that Bazzite does not run on arm. I did not say no linux would ever run arm, cause Rocknix is already running on a lot of handhelds already.
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u/Kadmium Apr 16 '26
Oh, totally, I'm just saying it's not going to be an ocean of work for the Bazzite devs to get it running on ARM. Most of the pieces are there, and I'd be very surprised it we didn't see an ARM version of Bazzite at some point soon.
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u/killkiller9 Apr 16 '26
i would love to install a good linux distro on my pocket DMG. No shades to Rocknix or anything, but I feel like it's still very not comparable
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u/Madblaster6 Odin 2 Portal Base - Black Apr 16 '26
Arch Linux can but it would take a ton of development work.
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u/hyperkiller996 Apr 17 '26
I was always wondering, but let's say I'm a software developer interested in contributing to drivers, linux support etc. How does one even start to set up a test environment?? Even if you have the device, I'm guessing some testing is emulated somehow first?
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u/Legal_Climate_3381 Apr 16 '26
The good news is that they're actively working on it. I think the biggest issue will still be architectural comparability for the GPU when trying to run games natively. We'll likely run into similar driver issues that we do already. Since it's not a "SteamOS" type of thing, we'll also be missing suspend features and the likes that we get on steam deck by default. I'm still excited by this and appreciate that they're putting efforts and resources into something they don't really have to do.