Valve add Asus ROG Ally to SteamOS support list

[Fish5796]

I am a proud owner of the Steam Deck and I absolutely love it. However, I also own an Asus Rog Ally and I believe it would be a great addition to the list of devices with SteamOS support.

The Asus Rog Ally is a powerful gaming laptop and has been known for its exceptional performance and graphics. With the addition of SteamOS, it would elevate the gaming experience to the next level.

I understand that launching SteamOS for a new device requires a lot of planning and resources, but I believe it would be a worthwhile investment for both Valve and Asus.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Fish5796 lähetti viestin:

I am a proud owner of the Steam Deck and I absolutely love it. However, I also own an Asus Rog Ally and I believe it would be a great addition to the list of devices with SteamOS support.

The Asus Rog Ally is a powerful gaming laptop and has been known for its exceptional performance and graphics. With the addition of SteamOS, it would elevate the gaming experience to the next level.

I understand that launching SteamOS for a new device requires a lot of planning and resources, but I believe it would be a worthwhile investment for both Valve and Asus.

The Ally isn't a gaming laptop and isn't known for the things you listed. Most performance test put it marginally better than the Deck unless you want to drain it's battery within an hour.

[Spawn of Totoro]

SteamOS is Linux with Steam running in Big Picture Mode. There is no need to plan anything, you can simply download SteamOS and install it onto a system.

You can also just download a version of Linux and install Steam, having it boot with the system.

SteamOS that is included on the Steam Deck uses ArchLinux.

So if you can install an OS on the computer, it isn't really difficult to get SteamOS or something similar running on it.

Not sure if the Asus Rog Ally allows for a change in OS on it, so may want to contact Nvidia on the matter first.

[Brian9824]

As stated Steam OS is open source and free. Valve can't plan anything to do with someone else's devices or get them to use it. Your free to contact the Asus Rog Ally developers and ask them to support it and they can if they wish to.

Depending on the security on the Ally it might already support it, just like the Steam deck supports windows even though microsoft didn't make it support windows, Steam aka the developer allowed it to be installed

[wuddih]

asus has to provide linux drivers for their more exotic implemented hardware, whatever that is.
Valve has to release holo(SteamOS3) to the public.

there is nothing to "support".

but ... dunno why you would do that ... the ally is a perfectly fine windows-preinstalled device.

[[?]legit]

SteamOS is the weakest link of the deck, I'm genuinely surprised why you would install that on your allye.

[Mailer]

I've seen videos of people putting SteamOS on it (through ChimeraOS), so I imagine it is very possible to do. The problem is that you likely won't have the immediate ability to set TDP and other performance limits on the device unless someone creates a compatibility layer that lets SteamOS communicate and set limits to Asus hardware, just so that it has the same features as armory crate would have.

https://youtu.be/6r8t90fW7Kg

[Cathulhu]

SteamOS is "just" a Linux, so it's not surprising to see it run on non-SteamDeck devices.
But as SteamOS 3.0 isn't available for Desktops yet, it may lack a lot of driver support for hardware not present in non-SteamDeck devices.

[BOMB]

?legit lähetti viestin:

SteamOS is the weakest link of the deck, I'm genuinely surprised why you would install that on your allye.

Dumbest thing I've heard in quite a while

[Fish5796]

Thank you for all of your comments. I apologize that my request seems dumb. I will try to set up my Ally to be more like a Steam Deck. I believe that SteamOS can make games run more smoothly and improve the overall gaming experience in PC handheld consoles.

[[?]legit]

Fish5796 lähetti viestin:

I believe that SteamOS can make games run more smoothly and improve the overall gaming experience in PC handheld consoles.

This is a popular misconception that has been proven wrong several times.

[Boblin the Goblin]

?legit lähetti viestin:

Fish5796 lähetti viestin:

I believe that SteamOS can make games run more smoothly and improve the overall gaming experience in PC handheld consoles.

This is a popular misconception that has been proven wrong several times.

Ironic.


There are games that it does run smoother on.

[Cathulhu]

Compared to what? Windows on a SteamDeck? Which has tons of issues due to half-assed support by Valve providing drivers.

[spectar82]

Say if I took my SSD out of my steam deck and put it in the ROG ally. I wonder how buggy it might be?

[chill out]

Mailer lähetti viestin:

I've seen videos of people putting SteamOS on it (through ChimeraOS), so I imagine it is very possible to do. The problem is that you likely won't have the immediate ability to set TDP and other performance limits on the device unless someone creates a compatibility layer that lets SteamOS communicate and set limits to Asus hardware, just so that it has the same features as armory crate would have.

https://youtu.be/6r8t90fW7Kg

I would think TDP control works fine on the Ally in HoloISO or Chimera, if not now then Soon(tm), as it's just another AMD SOC. Once AMD gets their kernel mode drivers and power management up and running for that, it will probably work either OOB or with minimal work by Chimera or Valve, as it'll be using the same functions/system values to control power, with maybe some extra settings unique to the new architecture.
No need to reinvent the wheel there, unless ASUS did something really bone-headed and tried to stuff their own power manager into a separate chip, and disable the AMD power management on a hardware level. Which, they didn't, that would be stupid even for ASUS.

Most of this stuff is just linux kernel work or kernel modules, so it's not really like Valve has to explicitly work with ASUS or reverse engineer anything. It'll just kinda be there when AMD gets it there.

To the bickering about SteamOS vs Windows, though, I switched recently from Windows to SteamOS on a GPD Win2, which is sort of a worst case for handheld linux gaming. 2 cores and 4 threads is not a lot of CPU for background shader compilation, and the hardware can barely even run the BPM UI half the time.
In game, though, things tend to run pretty close to Windows. Some games see maybe 10~20% lower performance, others run par, some even run better, and there are more, better, and more stable options for controlling resolution, using integer scaling, and other useful stuff to make the overall experience nicer on SteamOS than Windows.
On something with a modern CPU and GPU architecture and more performance, SteamOS probably comes well ahead as a gaming platform compared to Windows, with the exception of some poor compatibility with a small selection of games.

[Calini]

I might add that it's not as simple as "just" installing Linux and opening Steam in Big Picture mode (or more precisely with the `-gamepadui` flag). There are a couple of things that I would love to see ironed out, if Steam ever decides to provide support for other popular handhelds like the Ally.
For example, gyro is not yet supported, but it could, if the Ally would be added as a new controller definition, besides the Xbox, PS4/5, JoyCon definitions. It would make gyro and the front/back buttons support possible. After that, it's as easy as setting Steam to boot into Gamepad UI in Windows, and removing Armory Crate.