Tucked into their FAQ about the Steam Machine release was a mention about making your own Steam Machine by installing steamOS to a computer you already have. AMD only for now.
I prepped for this a long while. Right down to having an AMD CPU and AMD rdna 2 GPU.
I’ve never seen a computer that’s a Radiator. Thank you everyone have a great evening
Might I interest you in an Analytical Engine?
They should pay someone to finalize the jailbreak of the PS5, because SteamOS should run great on it if you have a hacked console.
Well actually no, because consoles tend to have very divergent, oddball architecture, compared to normal PC x86_64, where it tends to be fairly to extremely difficult to basically reverse engineer the drivers… because the normal drivers there are propietary, Sony keeps em secret.
Instead, they seem to have been collaborating with AMD and basically some open source hackers to get FSR4 working on RDNA 3 GPUs… 7000 series AMD GPUs, the Steam Machine, etc.
You can run steamos on a jailbroken ps5 already. You need to be on a fairly old firmware though
PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series are all x86_64, though, unless I’m misunderstanding?
Yes but… they have varying degrees of nonstandard busses and timings and weird, proprietary, basicslly custom hardware, as well as often having weird, propietary implementations of that hardware, that often only work with a bunch of other weird custom drivers on other components…
This is why emulation is hard, you habe to reverse engineer all that shit and then basically virtualize it and then try to map it to actually standard hardware.
Making a linux distro runs into many of thr same things, just, without (as much of) the virtualization parts.
Consoles have really been getting closer to more standard hardware over the last years. The WiiU was a mostly custom PowerPC box, with a proprietary version of wifi for the gamepad, and including hardware specifically to run Wii games. The Switch was a barely modified nvidia shield, with bluetooth wireless controllers. The PS3 had a fully custom CPU, and old models included PS2 hardware for backwards compatibility, the PS4 is x86_64 with a custom AMD GPU.
For the PS4/PS5, the majority of effort on running Linux is in getting it to boot in the first place. While some hardware does require patches to existing drivers (like mesa on PS4), or sometimes fully custom drivers (like the CPU fan on PS4), other hardware is completely standard, over a standard interface. Like the HDD and Blu-Ray drives on the PS4.
The big difference is that a game console is “allowed” to deviate from standards, as it does not need to be compatible with anything outside the control of the manufacturer. This results in often small differences that require changes to a kernel which wouldn’t work on any other device.
The biggest reason why emulation is hard, is often no longer the custom hardware like it used to be, but the OS and other fully custom standards like a graphics API. The structure of games is completely different too. The old “ship the drivers on the game disc” like on the Wii no longer holds true on modern consoles, and emulators don’t need to ensure the exact timing of an optical drive matches to get a game to work.
There have been some attempts to get modern console games to work through kernel patches and translation layers, see horizon-linux and fpPS4, proving just how close modern console hardware is to standard PCs.
All that being said, I don’t think SteamOS on PS5 would work for multiple reasons. It’s extremely difficult to get the process simple enough for the average consumer, especially with Sony quickly patching any exploits required to boot it. It’s also not in Valve’s business interest to make it easier and explicitly supported to buy a cheaper and more powerful standardized machine. As they would just be creating a direct competitor to the Steam Machine.
Ah, yeah, good points. I imagine even just getting their wireless controller receiver working would be quite a lot of reverse engineering
We shouldn’t need a jailbreak.
If Apple has to allow 3rd party stores, why not Sony?
Apple only allows 3rd party stores in the EU*
Yeah and even then, the compliance is malicious
And Google is about to copy it worldwide
It’s gone beyond the EU. Last week Apple announced third party app stores will be coming to Brazil and
Apple has already allowed alternative app stores and/or third-party payment systems on iOS in the EU, Japan, and South Korea, and it will likely be forced to do so in the UK and Australia too, due to similar regulations in those countries.
Everywhere except Freedom Land™
For now, this is just the start and when apple is forced to do it in enough regions, they will have to relent.
I hope my next iPhone will be open like this and have a desktop mode when docked.
Yeah, they aren’t going to be bringing it to the US unless they are forced to by law in the US unfortunately :( great time to be a postmarketOS user with Google now being as restrictive…
I was looking at that the other day. I wish my old android could be modded to run it.
This would make me use it again, it’s just gathering dust since I have a gaming laptop (bought on sale years ago, much better than the ps5), but mostly just use blender and watch tv, would be sick if it made it so I can play simracing games on it with my moza wheel because I never want to close out of my projects on my laptop.
It’d be nice to use it as a homeserver too, just leave it connected to the router and throw some selfhosted apps on there or whatever. Be so much more useful as another linux pc now that I don’t really game and if I do it’s never an exclusive. Just don’t care for linear single player story games.
If your firmware is old enough you can jailbreak it and run steamos already
I still get use of mine through my steam deck using Chiaki4Deck remote play, I had a big PS digital library built up and it’s the easiest way for me to access it with minimal setup. I’m not buying Skyrim again, I refuse
Gotta put in on my Steam Deck
Have someone managed to jailbreak it?
Dude that’d be so sick!
This appears to be the page to pay attention to for actually doing this. https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/65B4-2AA3-5F37-4227
It appears support is not yet there, but is intended to be.
Support started with 3.8 release. It might say steam deck in the file name, but as long as the version is 3.8.xx then it should be good.
Direct Link to download: https://steamdeck-images.steamos.cloud/steamdeck/20260618.10/steamdeck-oobe-repair-20260618.10-3.8.10.img.zip
Love it, giving us an easy arch-based gaming distro basically. Now they just gotta give us half-life 3 as well.
Wasn’t that always allowed?
It wasn’t officially supported for a long time even if they never stopped you. No real installer, etc. But now they started adding a lot more driver support even for hardware they aren’t going to use, which you only do if you want to let people use 3rd party hardware
Awesome, thanks for the info
Allowed but janky, this is probably a more polished installer.
What’s been janky about it? I have it installed on a custom build since like February, never had any hiccups, besides the same rare issues on my steam deck (some occasional sound issues when switching between desktop and game mode, recently now solved I think). It’s otherwise been a flawless experience. Config is pure AMD : 5800X + 7600 XT 16GB with 16GB RAM. I was just hoping to get a steam controller but that proved harder than expected :(
I think some hardware configs are harder to use, like if you have Nvidia.
I see, and yes, you needed some technical savvyness (is that a word?) to do this on your own before
“Savvy” is both the noun for the trait and the adjective for someone who possesses it.
They only had the old SteamOS available for installing to anything but a Steam Deck. But they had said the current SteamOS was going to be available for all PCs a long while back, anyway.
Allowed and available, but not endorsed.
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I aspire to be like valve
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