Getting Started
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- Notice
- Assessing your system for compatibility
- Before we begin
- Obtaining SteamOS
- Creating a USB key
- Installation
While this wiki is a nice resource for those looking at utilizing SteamOS, please do note that official documentation at the SteamOS main landing page and official pinned-forum posts should be referenced in addition to what you see here. It is the aim of wiki contributors here to ensure the information is as close as possible to what is stated officially.
There is now also an effort to establish a hardware wiki to help others with compatible and known hardware configurations.
The current system requirements page at store.steampowered.com/steamos are a bit vague and out of date,[1] but in general, they indicate the kind of hardware you would generally want to have. The sections following this , contain more detailed information. The next section will contain some helpful hints on trying to ensure you have the best experience possible with SteamOS. While there is an official FAQ for SteamOS over at the Steam Universe community group, this wiki will try to help shed light on various other topics.
Valve has placed standards in place for OEM's selling Steam Machines for purchase. If purchase a Steam Machine, system requirements are not something you need to worry about. However, choosing the right Steam Machine is another matter. Do I plan for upgrade ability, or size and convenience? Whether or not you build your own, or purchase a Steam Machine, SteamOS will still be at your disposal.
| Processor | Intel or AMD 64-bit capable processor |
| Memory | 4 GB (or more) RAM |
| Hard Drive | 200 GB or larger hard disk |
| Video Card | NVIDIA graphics card |
| AMD graphics card (RADEON 8500 and later) | |
| Intel graphics | |
| Additional | USB Port for installation |
| UEFI Firmware (recommended) |
While the Steam Link will use an ARM processor, the DIY-approach with the SteamOS distribution is currently only supported on x86 processors. While Intel and AMD processors are the most popular in this spectrum, they are not the only manufacturers.
It is not required you have a UEFI-compatible motherboard, but suggested. Ensure you do not have secure boot enabled, and CSM disabled.
You can technically specify as low as a 40 GB hard drive (despite the 200 GB minimum noted above), of which less than 10 GB will be made available as space for games. There should be no impact to the ability to update/upgrade SteamOS with a drive this small, but such a small drive will limit your options for modern games, which can be over 50 GB each. For this reason alone, it is recommended to follow the 200 GB requirement.
In the realm of speed, an SSD drive will greatly help your gaming experience, but is not required. SSHD (SSD hybrid drives) are another option that can give you a boost over a traditional fully-mechanical drive.
The default partitioning scheme is as follows:
- 10.2 Gb - root
- 10.2 Gb - partition for the backup partition of root
- 10.2 Gb - swap
- nn Gb - home, taking up the rest rest of your drive's available space
Regarding USB drives as install targets:
USB drives as install targets are not supported. The installer is hardcoded to ignore USB drives as install targets, This is to avoid situations where some motherboards might present USB devices in the wrong order, causing the installer to try and install over itself (i.e. if the installer is sda, and it tries to install to sda as a target).
Experiences with older or non-supported GPUs may vary. It is best to compare the latest version of the chipset manufacturers driver available, to the details page of your manufacturer's driver. The list below is updated voluntarily, so it should not be the single source of truth. It may also be prudent to check the Wikipedia page on the Vulkan API. This contains a comprehensive list of GPU's and other details.
Please be aware that your GPU must support at least OpenGL 2.1 for SteamOS. Steam needs at least OpenGL 2.1 to render properly so that makes the Intel hardware support GMA 3000 (Gen 4) to Broadwell (Gen 8). Skylake (Gen 9) needs a newer version of mesa than is shipped in SteamOS as of this writing (see below). You can reference a chart of Intel generations on wikipedia. [4] If your graphics card is not supported, SteamOS will attempt to use mesa to provide GLX extensions.
| Vendor | Driver | Vulkan | stable ver. | beta ver. | Release notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD | amdgpu-pro | Yes | 16.40.4 | 16.40.4 | link |
| AMD | fglrx | No | 15.9 | 15.9 | link |
| Intel | intel + mesa [2][3] | No | 10.6.3 | 10.6.3 | link |
| Nvidia | nvidia | Yes | 381.22 | 381.22 | link |
* More in-depth information can be found in the Working with display drivers wiki page.
DistroWatch's listings are not always up to date. Pages, such as Nvidia's driver release notes, will list supported products. See alternative community spins for older GPU support (Not directly supported by Valve). The page also lists software that isn't part of the default installation (e.g. libreoffice).
Please note that SteamOS uses proprietary graphics card drivers for the major card manufacturers. For AMD users, this means you are, by default, utilizing the Catalyst driver (fglrx), or the binary userland driver, amdgpu-pro. AMD performance is still comparatively low to that of Nvidia's GPU's. However, a good experience can still be had using AMD graphics cards. Due to the open nature of SteamOS, alternative drivers can be used at the user's discretion. Newer drivers, such as amdgpu-pro and the nvidia driver, employ Vulkan API compatibility. This may level the playing field, not just between AMD and Nvidia, but also but between Linux and competing operating systems.
For information on the Vulkan API, see the Vulkan - the more you know wiki page
Dual-GPU configurations in laptops (e.g. Nvidia Optimus), are not officially supported, nor work well in SteamOS for most users. While this may be indeed possible, it is far from ideal. This should be taken into consideration when deciding upon using SteamOS. For those utilizing older graphics cards, alternative community spins, such as Stephenson's Rocket, can provide such support for those older cards.
However, one of the SteamOS developers noted this should indeed be possible:
If you want to configure Optimus from a standard SteamOS install, I think the minimal steps would be:
- Change /etc/init.d/build-dkms to never take the NVIDIA branch, by eg. changing the 'grep NVIDIA' to 'grep NVIDIO'
- After that you should have a working system running from Intel graphics
- Install bumblebee/primus as you would on a standard Debian install
- Inside of Steam Big Picture, change the launch options of the games you wish to offload to 'primusrun %command%'
- The man store page lists the official zip archives that will allow either an "Automatic" or "Expert" installation routine.
- The .zip contains the latest SteamOS installer, in a UEFI & USB-only format.
- The "Expert" installation mode will allow varying disk sizes and dual-booting. However, it will still require a UEFI-compatible motherboard installed from a USB drive.
- The alternative SteamOSDVD ISO image will allow legacy BIOS installations.
- The .iso image is built by the same script used for the .zip archive, but supports UEFI and BIOS, installed from either USB or DVD.
- The .iso and installer .zip are both around ~1.6 GB each.
There are many methods to create a USB key, some better than others. Below are what are generally considered good methods by the community at large.
See the SteamOS installation HUB page.
- SteamOS (Wikipedia)
-
Mesa also harbors most of the available free and open-source graphics device drivers, which is a bit misleading, since the actual device drivers are located in the kernel, and the user-space part consists of some compiler software. The mesa library is comprised of several packages. Checking the installed version of
libgl1-mesa-glxfor your current version should suffice. Otherwise, installmesa-utilsand runglxinfo | grep -i opengl. - Mesa-diverted You may notice 'mesa-diverted' vs 'mesa'being listed above. Several vendors provide access to GLX. "alternatives" are deployed to allow a switchable method to provide GLX extensions. These extensions are used by the Mesa stack, inside the X server, to render OpenGL commands. This allows Mesa to remain a vendor-neutral implementation of the OpenGL specification.
- See this Steam for Linux issues ticket
