Valve today (12 November 2025) announced their new Steam Machine (x86 CPU, 6x more powerful than Steam Deck) and Steam Frame (self-contained and PCVR streaming VR headset with ARM CPU & “FEX” translation of x86 to ARM) to be released in early 2026. No prices yet.
I’m trying to speculate what effects this will have on the wider Linux ecosystem. Both devices will be running Steam OS and be open so you can run any OS.
First, I’ve read many people state that the Steam Deck considerably increased the number of devices running Linux, so it seems to me that these two new devices will accelerate that trend.
Second, it seems to me that the Steam Frame will significantly increase VR use and development for Linux.
Third, I wonder what the implications of Frame’s x86 to arm translation layer (based on FEX, an open source project that I only learned about today) as well as Android compatibility (they state it can sideload Android APKs) will be. Could this somehow help either Linux on Apple silicon or Linux phone efforts? I’m very unfamiliar with what’s going on with either of these efforts, so I may be way out on a limb here.
What do you think about all this?
Edit: this article may prompt some additional thoughts with its discussion of the openness of the Frame - https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-steam-frame-catalog-whole-compatible/
If the Frame is as open as the Deck it will be the perfect device for VR devs to play around with and make awesome stuff with. i think one of the things holding back VR was that almost every headset was super locked down.
If the Quests had been more open we’d have had much more experimental games. Maybe the Metaverse would actually be a thing. But Meta prefers to keep everything under their control not realising that this hampers development and adoption.
It’s so weird considering how differently their approach is to like pytorch and LLAMA
LLAMA if I recall correctly was closed source until the source code was leaked online. After that Meta decided to just open source it.
Look at the article that I edited the OP to post. It sounds like Valve is intent on keeping this thing as open as possible. I agree that it could lead to really interesting developments, not to mention when you consider the SD card slot and the high speed accessory interface that will allow external cameras and who knows what else. This thing is going to be crazy.
Interestingly enough, when Quest first released the hand tracking functionality I remember seeing some really interesting developments using that, but I guess the developers never took it all the way to publish games with those concepts.