This is more exciting to me than the other hardware announcements. Linux on a phone that can have both a desktop mode and gaming right in my pocket? It's the dream.
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2025
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Beyond Steam Machine: Why Valve's New ARM Support Shouldn't Be Overlooked
(www.digitalfoundry.net)
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.
Yeah that's downside.
Big kinda. Ubuntu touch is a thing. There are only a handful of phones for which it fully works on. I have one of them (a Fairphone 5). It's pretty bare bones, but it seems fairly responsive with good battery life. The most recent version of the OS even has snapd baked into the OS, so you would think that it would mean I'm spoiled for choice in terms of applications but you run into an issue when trying to install the first of my only two deal breaker applications Bitwarden.
Bitwarden can be installed with snapd, but an arm64 version doesn't exist and the install fails. That's pretty indicative of what a Linux mobile phone effort is up against. Valve bridging the gap between ARM and Linux gives me a sliver of hope that we see a little more support from more applications for ARM more generally.
I will be really happy the day I can boot steam big picture on my Android/Linux phone and launch a steam game through fex/Proton
Only for the technical achievement, or are there games you’d like to play on the road?
skong
skong release when??
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)
Imagine taking an old phone out of the junk drawer and suddenly having another Steam Deck.
Even really old smartphones would work as a portable retro console.
I have doubts that it would work well on the majority of older phones. I would think that the lack of a sizable memory pool would really be a hindrance to performance, let alone performing well for games. Hell, even on the Steam Deck, I have had to use Cryo tools to increase the page file to expand available memory in a couple of games to avoid crashing problems.
As for retro gaming, there are countless emulators already available on Android that work quite well. I can even play PS2 games on my phone surprisingly well.
There are tons of modern indie games that would work great on a phone. Modern does not mean performance hog necessarily. Silksong would be great. I bet a lot of people would love Stardew Valley on mobile. Hades II would probably be good. There are tons that would be amazing.
Stardew Valley is already on iOS and Android. But yeah, I do think there are a lot of modern indie games with simpler graphics that would be completely fine. Hell, they just ported Dredge to Android (not sure if they did on iOS or not and too lazy to Google).
Ah, cool. I was not aware. I haven't played much of it, but it seems like the perfect mobile game.
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.
bug name
?
U and I are right next to eachother..
But I'm wishing the same, good enough riscv for everyday usage. Browsing and such.
U and I are right next to eachother…
we may be ideologically aligned, I dunno...
MOSquito 6502
Is there a RISCV chip available with comparable performance & efficiency to current ARM chips? Seems like Valve would kill any chance their headset has if they unnecessarily reduced time between charging cycles.
All the RISC-V chips I see in the wild so far are stationary or tiny (like some new ESP wifi chips now run on RISC-V)
Mobile / laptop grade performance chips seems a few years away still, tons of optimizations needed (especially fast performance scaling and idle modes) for that
That will only happen for a company that cares about price and nothing else. The performance is vastly inferior, which matters in gaming.
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.
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
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.
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?
yeah I think this is really useful on steamframe. on the machine? hrmmm
Apple silicon is weird. It uses 16k page files while most other things are set up for other files sizes.
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.
I honestly wonder how much of this is just copied over from the functionality they wanted on the steamframe. because there it's a great, potentially fantastic tool, where as on the steam machine it's... interesting?
I'm not sure what you're saying here. Copied over from where to what? The Frame is the only ARM device in the lineup. The Steam Machine is x86.
I may have misread but I thought they were going both directions: arm chips that could execute x86 stuff via proton, and, x86 (whatever amd solution ends up in the machine) reading the APK side.
Every one should have the right to bear ARM.