Valve tonight released a SteamOS 3.6 Preview as the latest version of their Arch Linux derived operating system that powers the Steam Deck and can be installed on other devices as well.
Valve News Archives
661 Valve open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2007.
For those that were hoping Steam on Linux numbers would crack the 2% marketshare for April, unfortunately, that didn't happen.
Valve and CodeWeavers today released the Proton 9.0 Release Candidate 2 build based off Wine 9.0 for powering Steam Play to enjoy an excellent assortment of modern (and legacy) Windows games on Linux.
With tonight's Steam client beta update they have reduced the default scaling factor for those running it on Linux with a 4K display.
A patch is undergoing work to add Steam Deck IMU support to the HID-Steam kernel driver for supporting the accelerometer and gyroscope sensors of the Steam Deck controller.
VKD3D-Proton 2.12 is out today as the newest version of this software used by Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for implementing Direct3D 12 over the Vulkan API. With VKD3D-proton 2.12 is initial support for NVIDIA Reflex technology along with various other features.
With Steam on Linux use for January clocking in at 1.95%, I was very eager to see if the February results would once again surpass the 2.0% threshold... Unfortunately, it moved in the opposite direction.
Wednesday's small Steam client beta update should fix a crash when starting the Steam client when no OpenGL drivers are found.
With Valve's release today of the Steam Audio SDK 4.5.2 they have made the software development kit fully open-source under an Apache 2.0 license.
With the start of a new month comes the Steam Survey results for the month prior. For January 2024, the reported Steam on Linux marketshare continued falling just short of the 2% threshold.
In addition to OBS adding AV1 VA-API support, some more good Linux video acceleration news this week is Valve enabling VA-API DRM hardware-accelerated video decoding when using Remote Play with the newest Steam beta.
Valve has rolled out Proton 8.0-5 as the newest version of their Wine downstream for powering Steam Play to enjoy mass amounts of Windows games to run rather well on Linux.
The Steam Survey results are out for December 2023 and the Linux gaming marketshare is at nearly 2%.
The SDL3 library commonly used by cross-platform games and heavily relied upon by Steam continues to be under heavy development at the start of 2024.
Earlier Phoronix reporting on the "Valve Galileo" as a new Steam Deck device proved accurate and that is the new Steam Deck OLED gaming console. Further improving the upstream Linux kernel support is a set of patches to further refine the Sound Open Firmware (SOF) support for this new platform.
Steam on Linux enjoyed a various nice boost in popularity during the course of November at least as it concerns Valve's Steam Survey.
Valve has released SteamOS 3.5.5 to its stable channel for Steam Deck users that brings Steam Deck OLED device support, HDR display settings if supported by the external display, the default color rendering for Steam Deck LCD now emulates the sRGB color gamut, and many other changes.
Valve's Steam Deck is a heavy user of relying on pre-compiled shaders to yield quicker start times and a more efficient handheld gaming experience. But in cases where bugs happen and a shader compiler fix needs to be back-ported, there isn't a straight-forward means of properly handling that for the Steam Deck. But with new knobs being added to the Mesa RADV driver code, there will be some options for better dealing with this moving forward.
Valve just announced the Steam Deck OLED as an upgraded version of their Steam Deck handheld Linux gaming device.
Valve just published their October 2023 stats for the monthly Steam Survey and they point to a nearly quarter point drop in the Linux usage after previously hitting its own highs.
For those wishing to interact with Steam from virtual reality (VR) headsets, today Valve promoted SteamVR 2.0 to stable.
Kicking off XDC 2023 yesterday in Spain was Igalia's Melissa Wen talking about her work on color management with the open-source AMD Linux graphics driver stack to empower Valve's Linux work on the Steam Deck. That was followed by Joshua Ashton of Valve talking about their work on HDR and color management from the Steam OS / Gamescope side for the Steam Deck.
Valve has just released Proton 8.0-4 as stable on the Steam client for enhancing the experience for running Windows games on Linux for this Wine-based software that powers Steam Play.
Prolific RADV developer Samuel Pitoiset with Valve's Linux graphics driver team has re-enabled Delta Color Compression (DCC) with mipmaps for AMD GFX11 (RDNA3) hardware for the Mesa 23.3 release.
Following the Counter-Strike 2 limited test since March, Counter-Strike 2 is now officially released and there is also a SteamOS/Linux build now available.
This shouldn't come as any surprise to any longtime Phoronix readers and dedicated open-source/Linux enthusiasts, but Valve with their work on the Steam Deck and SteamOS have been lifting the open-source ecosystem as a whole. A talk this week at the Linux Foundation Europe's Open-Source Summit highlighted some of the great and ongoing contributions by Valve and their partners.
In time for the weekend gamers, SteamOS 3.5 has just rolled out into Valve's preview channel for the Steam Deck. Those switching over to the "Preview" mode from the System Update Channel setting can begin to enjoy this huge feature update for the Arch Linux based SteamOS.
Hans-Kristian Arntzen of Valve's stellar Linux graphics/Proton team has released VKD3D-Proton 2.10 as the newest feature release for this Direct3D 12 API implementation built atop Vulkan that allows for modern Windows games to run on Linux atop Steam Play.
A new version of DXVK-NVAPI is now available, the NVIDIA public NVAPI interface implemented atop DXVK for use by Direct3D games running on Valve's Steam Play (Proton). DXVK-NVAPI allows for NVIDIA DLSS for Vulkan / D3D11 / D3D12, NVIDIA Reflex support, PhysX, and other NVIDIA features to be enabled for popular Windows games running on Linux.
It's been nearly four months since the release of DXVK 2.2 for this Direct3D 9/10/11 API implementation built atop the Vulkan API that is used by Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for enjoying Windows games on Linux. Out today is DXVK 2.3 as the latest major step forward for the project.
In July the Steam Survey results pointed to a half percent jump in the Linux gaming marketshare, taking it to nearly 2% thanks to the success of Valve's Steam Deck that runs their Arch Linux powered SteamOS platform. After the big boost in July you are probably wondering what happened in August... Well, a few minutes ago the new Steam Survey monthly results were published.
The Steam Survey results for July 2023 were just published and it points to a large and unexpected jump in the Linux gaming marketshare.
Proton 8.0-3 is rolling out on Steam that powers Steam Play to enjoy the latest Windows games on Linux. Proton 8.0-3 brings many fixes and gets more Windows games now running gracefully on Linux desktop systems as well as the Steam Deck.
Valve has shared their Steam Survey results for the month of June which shows the Steam on Linux marketshare holding steady.
If your dream is to work for Valve Software, getting experienced with the open-source Linux graphics driver development niche seems to be a decent pathway. Besides Valve, all the big hardware companies are routinely looking for more Linux graphics driver developers as well.
While yesterday brought a major update to the Steam client stable series, tonight brings a new update to the Steam beta series with some notable enhancements to the Linux client.
Following recent Steam client beta updates that have introduced many new features, Valve tonight rolled out a rather big Steam client update to stable users.
Last month Steam on Linux aimed to enable NVIDIA GPU video hardware acceleration by default but ultimately ran into problems. With Tuesday's Steam beta update they hope to have that resolved and re-enabled the NVIDIA GPU video hardware acceleration by default.
Valve just published the Steam Survey results for May 2023 and on a percentage basis show the Steam on Linux marketshare growing ever so slightly.
Valve released a new Steam client beta overnight and contains a few notable fixes for NVIDIA Linux gamers.
DXVK 2.2 is now available as a big update to this open-source software for mapping the Direct3D 9/10/11 APIs to Vulkan and the first major release since DXVK 2.1 shipped back in January.
Today's Steam client beta will be a delight for some Linux gamers with the Steam client finally recognizing the GNOME and KDE desktop global scaling factor for text sizing.
Less than a month has passed since Proton 8.0-1 shipped as the software that powers Valve's Steam Play for enjoying Windows games on Linux. Already out today is the Proton 8.0-2.
At the start of April there were the Steam Survey results for March 2023 that showed a 0.54% dip to the marketshare. With that were als some strange shifts in the Windows 10 vs. 11 marketshare as well as a big boost to the Chinese marketshare. The March numbers were not revised but with the start of May comes the April numbers... Showing a boost to Linux and largely recovering from the April anomaly.
Valve is working toward the end of April on a high note as they issued a "significant" update to the Steam client beta.
Open-source Linux graphics driver engineer Melissa Wen with Igalia, Joshua Ashton with Valve, and Harry Wentland with AMD have been working on kernel mode-setting (KMS) color pipeline enhancements for SteamOS and in particular for enhancing the Steam Deck.
Valve's Linux graphics driver developers continue relentlessly optimizing the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" and today landed an optimization for an unnamed, upcoming game where now it's able to nearly match the performance enjoyed under Windows.
Valve and CodeWeavers have made available Proton 8.0-1 as their newest version of this downstream of Wine that powers Steam Play for enjoying Windows games on Linux.
Valve just published their Steam Survey results for March 2023 and these initial numbers show a 0.54% drop to the Linux gaming marketshare, putting the overall Linux gaming population at around 0.84% of the Steam customer base. However, once again these numbers appear skewed/inaccurate.
Following recent rumors and leaks, Valve today officially announced Counter-Strike 2 that they announce as the largest technical leap in Counter-Strike's history.
661 Valve news articles published on Phoronix.