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Desktop Linux on phone (or even better, tablet) hardware would be very interesting to me. But with how locked down bootloaders are in those devices? I don’t have much hope for them currently.
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Definitely seems like a way for them to test ARM for potential Steam Deck 2 usage (for that “next generation performance/battery life” they want)
Could also be extremely useful for VR where every gram counts.
Isn’t the frame already arm? That’s why you can play your library on the thing
Yep! The article title is a bit misleading, as the Steam Machine is still x86_64. Which is good imo: that’ll have better compatibility and the power draw/thermals matter less there than in a handheld or headset.
The Frame is the arm-based hardware Valve is going to be shipping.
But their work on FEX is taking ARM compatibility into the future, much like how their work on Wine/Proton has taken Linux compatibility to a new level.
Anyways, I agree with the article, that it’s going to extend to more than the Frame as support matures. ARM CPUs (or RISCs in general) are the future for non-desktop processors; I’d argue Apple has already been there with their M-series laptops, though not to nearly the same extent with gaming.
Well then that makes a lot of sense
Would this allow the reverse too? Android apps compatible with Linux?
That’s already reality with waydroid.
Valve is saying you will be able to side load android apps on the headset so yes. Probably using waydroid
Does waydroid itself have an ARM build?
Yeah I’m pretty sure, I know it runs on pine phone
Every month I hope to read an article about some bug name using RISCV in consumer hardware as a flagship chip, but alas, it’s ARM again.
I had some severe hopium when I first read about the new Valve hardware. I thought all of them would be on ARM.
But sadly, only the goggles. Hope it goes well, we really need some boost for ARM here.
What we really need is a big boost to RISC. But I guess a boost to ARM will do while we wait…
On the plus side, all these tools for running x86/64 code on ARM likely helps a lot with running that same code on RISC.
I’d love it if we got to the point where Linux just brought the translation layers with it and automatically ran code compiled for any processor on any other processor. It’s not efficient, but it would be very useful.
I’ve been curious about how the Frame will handle games on the standalone side since the announcement and the discussion about the ARM compatibility layer has me wondering if, to play standalone, I would be expected to run the Meta version of games as Android apps and not, like, the actual PC versions on Steam I own running directly from the headset.
AFAIK, yes, plus one more.
It can use FEX to run x86 binaries, or use ARM binaries directly in steam for games that have them (games that support apple silicon macs, for example) and it can sideload apks meant for android, if the apk is actually standalone, and doesn’t have system dependencies that only exist on meta devices.
The game Valve used to demo the standalone capability, was Hades. The x86 version running on a virtual display, after just installing it via steam.
Apple silicon is weird. It uses 16k page files while most other things are set up for other files sizes.
The game Valve used to demo the standalone capability, was Hades.
I am aware; but I am specifically meaning VR games, not just PC games in general. And especially not something like Hades which I can’t imagine performing poorly even if emulated on a cheap smartphone. How well would it run Alyx? VRChat? Beat Saber?
