The Steam Deck was an unique launch from Valve, but it was also one that spawned a whole sub-genre of hardware. One of the most popular competitors, the ASUS ROG Ally, is getting support for Valve’s own SteamOS operating system.
Valve has confirmed that it’s actively working to support rival handhelds like the ASUS ROG Ally with its Linux-based SteamOS. This marks a significant step towards realizing the company’s original vision of having SteamOS run on various PC game consoles. While Valve has long indicated its plans to open up SteamOS to other companies, it explicitly acknowledged and confirmed support for the ASUS ROG Ally, which is notable because it’s a direct competitor to the company’s own Steam Deck. The recent discovery of a line in Valve’s latest SteamOS release notes referring to “extra ROG Ally keys” sparked speculation, which has now been confirmed by Valve designer Lawrence Yang to The Verge.
Although this doesn’t mean ASUS will officially endorse Valve’s installer or sell the Ally with SteamOS, it does open the possibility for users to install SteamOS on their devices in the future. The SteamOS port for the ROG Ally is still under development and isn’t ready for prime time yet. In addition to supporting rival handhelds, Valve is also making progress on a general release of SteamOS 3 for non-handheld PCs and is working towards enabling dual-boot support for Windows on Steam Decks. Once SteamOS is out for the ROG Ally, it can essentially just be a higher-specced Steam Deck in practice, which is probably something a lot of people would actually really, really like.
While Valve continues to work on expanding SteamOS support, it’s not alone in this endeavor. Universal Blue’s Bazzite operating system has already achieved support for the ASUS ROG Ally X. Putting Linux on your Windows handheld has never been this easy.
Source: The Verge
