Valve says it will bring SteamOS support to Asus ROG Ally and other handhelds

Valve is reportedly supporting the Asus ROG Ally and other competing handhelds with its SteamOS. The company, which sells its own gaming handheld, the Steam Deck, has said that it will enable third-party devices to run its Linux-based operating system. SteamOS, which is designed and optimized for the “living room experience,” powers the Steam Deck, but most modern gaming handhelds, including the Asus ROG Ally, run Windows. While Microsoft’s operating system offers flexibility and broader support for third-party game launchers, Windows-based handhelds have faced criticism for their less-than-ideal OS experiences.

SteamOS support for other handhelds

The company confirmed its plans to The Edgeand says it plans to bring SteamOS support to Asus ROG Ally and other Windows-based handhelds. Currently, rival handhelds can run the Steam desktop app on Windows.

Recently, release notes for SteamOS 3.6. 9 Beta mentioned “Added support for additional ROG Ally keys”, leading people to speculate about SteamOS support for the device. Valve has now confirmed that it is working on it.

“The comment about ROG Ally keys is related to third-party device support for SteamOS. The team continues to work on adding support for additional handhelds on SteamOS,” Valve designer Lawrence Yang told The Verge. This means that Windows-based handhelds like the Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and MSI Claw could gain SteamOS support in the future.

That doesn’t mean rival companies will ship their handheld gaming PCs with SteamOS out of the box, however. According to the report, Asus is opting for Windows for its handheld because Microsoft wants its operating system to work across devices with different hardware specs and chipsets, among other reasons.

Windows-based handhelds

And while Valve has confirmed that it’s working on SteamOS support for third-party devices, don’t expect SteamOS to ship to other handhelds anytime soon. The report says that while the company has been “steadily making progress,” the OS isn’t yet ready to run on other devices out of the box.

Valve’s Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED models run SteamOS, which provides a console-like interface for the company’s digital games storefront, Steam. The Steam client works on other handhelds via the Windows app, but doesn’t offer the same intuitive interface.

The recently launched Asus ROG Ally X runs on the Steam Windows client

Windows-based handhelds like the ROG Ally enjoy wider support for game launchers like the Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Connect, and Xbox, but the touch-based Windows OS experience often leaves much to be desired. These devices essentially function as a handheld PC, with constant updates and bugs and bottlenecks associated with the Windows experience still very much present. Meanwhile, the Steam Deck, which also offers a traditional Linux-based PC experience in its Desktop Mode, brings a console-like interface with Steam OS, allowing users to smoothly browse and access their Steam libraries.

SteamOS is Valve’s Linux-based operating system that builds on Debian OS and optimizes it for a console-like “living room” experience, as Valve calls it. The operating system comes pre-installed on Steam Deck devices.