23 votes

Interview with Pierre-Loup Griffais on SteamOS, ARM, FEX and more

Posted by moocow1452
Tags: valve, arm, fex, emulation, interviews, pierre loup griffais, compatibility, author.sean hollister, source.the verge, paywall
https://www.theverge.com/report/820656/valve-interview-arm-gaming-steamos-pierre-loup-griffais

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Title
Steam Machine today, Steam Phones tomorrow
Authors
Sean Hollister
Published
Dec 2 2025
Word count
2895 words

5 comments

  1. [4]
    nocut12
    Link
    I'm pretty excited for this stuff to become more polished and available. I've been toying with FEX/Proton for a year or so on one of these and it's been surprisingly good. Even with the kinda...

    I'm pretty excited for this stuff to become more polished and available. I've been toying with FEX/Proton for a year or so on one of these and it's been surprisingly good. Even with the kinda anemic processor, it's pretty promising. I'm a lot more interested in something in this kind of size/price/power range than a steam deck, so I'm definitely happy that devices like this may become a more legit option. The steam client itself has actually been the most annoying part so far -- having a version of that compiled for aarch64 would go looong way towards making this stuff less of a pain in the ass. I hope it doesn't take long for that to make it off the headset.

    I'm also wondering if FEX will run differently on valve devices. Incompatibility between aarch64 and 32 bit arm seems to have been a pain point for a while now. I remember a bunch of stuff in old github issues and mailing lists and stuff about various kernel patches related to this that they weren't able to get in. Obviously valve could ship with whatever patches they want, but it would be a bit of a bummer if mainline kernels had a worse experience going forwards. Though I guess anyone running linux on ARM at the moment is probably no stranger to weird patched kernels.

    5 votes
    1. [3]
      moocow1452
      Link Parent
      Agreed with the hype. I barely use my Steam Deck that I got second hand, but I would day one pay for a Steam Deck mini on Arm that can play even the lightest of Steam Games as long as it was no...

      Agreed with the hype. I barely use my Steam Deck that I got second hand, but I would day one pay for a Steam Deck mini on Arm that can play even the lightest of Steam Games as long as it was no muss no fuss to get into the ecosystem. If Valve got into actual phones though, at the very least they could figure out controls in a way that others couldn't.

      2 votes
      1. [2]
        nocut12
        Link Parent
        It wouldn't really even have to be valve -- with an ARM client on linux, the companies that currently make these handhelds could do it. They'd need to focus a bit more on mainline linux support,...

        It wouldn't really even have to be valve -- with an ARM client on linux, the companies that currently make these handhelds could do it. They'd need to focus a bit more on mainline linux support, but it seems doable. These companies already make very impressive hardware at pretty solid prices (albeit worse now in the US post-tarriff)

        2 votes
        1. papasquat
          Link Parent
          I wouldn't mind steamOS becoming truly open source so that manufacturers could preinstall it on devices like that. I can appreciate the careful balance valve has to walk between opening up their...

          I wouldn't mind steamOS becoming truly open source so that manufacturers could preinstall it on devices like that.

          I can appreciate the careful balance valve has to walk between opening up their very robust utility and OS ecosystem, and ensuring that steamOS's reputation and brand doesn't get trashed and tainted by Cheap Chinese devices with horrible implementations. Valve can't do it all though, and more steam-deck like devices of various power levels and form factors would be great.

          I love my steam deck, but it's absolutely massive for a portable, and I sometimes don't even bring it with me on flights or long vacations because of how bulky it is, let alone to work or while out for the day.