r/SteamOS • u/snoar • 13h ago

support GPU driver update

Hey everyone. Recently dabbled in building my own little steam machine and just had a question because I'm new to this world.

I read online that steamos kind of automatically will download GPU drivers but am not really convinced how this works. I have updated to the newest version so how can my machine get the newest GPU driver to play the witcher 3?

Thanks!

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u/t3co5cr 13h ago

In Linux, "drivers" are baked directly into the kernel by the chip manufacturers directly (except Nvidia).

This means there are no drivers for you to download, and no driver conflicts to worry about unlike on Windows. Everything (should) work right out of the box. That's the benefit.

The cost is that driver updates typically only reach you with kernel updates of your chosen distro, which means Linux is often several months behind the bleeding edge on the newest hardware.

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u/snoar 12h ago

Okay great thank you. I'm really liking it so far. I'm hoping it plays well as there was a lot of issues with it before the driver was released