Steam engines 2.0?
While there hasn't been a wider official rollout for the Powered by SteamOS program yet, any move by Valve to offer officially licensed SteamOS compatibility for third-party hardware wouldn't be a complete surprise. As of 2022, Valve's Lawrence Yang says that “we're happy to see people making their own SteamOS machines.” And last November, Yang told PC Gamer that SteamOS would “soon be made available to other handhelds with a similar gamepad-style controller.”
In August, after a SteamOS beta update suggested that SteamOS might be coming to Asus' Windows-based ROG Ally handheld, Yang told The Verge that Valve's hardware team “continues to work on adding support for additional handhelds on SteamOS.”
While we've been waiting for official support – and a long-promised general public distribution of SteamOS 3 on PCs – fans have had to get a little creative to get the Linux-powered, gaming-focused operating system on their devices. Earlier this year, Ayaneo announced that its Next Lite handheld would ship with HoloISO, an Arch Linux fork that aims to “provide a near-official SteamOS experience” without the official support of Valve.
In 2015, limited and underperforming software support for early SteamOS made Steam Machines a pretty poor alternative to Windows-powered gaming platforms. Today, the launch of the Steam Deck and the widespread implementation of Proton-powered cross-compatibility has made modern SteamOS a much more attractive alternative to an expensive Windows license for hardware OEMs. We hope that more hardware manufacturers will soon have the opportunity to officially make use of that alternative.
