Valve announced the availability of its long-awaited Steam Machine yesterday, bringing its mini home gaming cube to the masses. However, some interesting details about SteamOS—the operating system behind the Valve machines—have surfaced thanks to an interview with Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais by The Verge. According to him, Valve has been working on expanding SteamOS compatibility with other hardware, even collaborating with NVIDIA to bring support for NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs to SteamOS, alongside numerous optimizations. Reportedly, Valve has been rolling out SteamOS improvements and optimizations to achieve much wider hardware compatibility than the current AMD-centric stack, meaning that the future landscape is expected to be much broader for Linux gaming enthusiasts.

For instance, SteamOS is Valve's fork of Arch Linux, with additional customization and optimization added to the operating system. Technically, NVIDIA GPUs can work under that OS with the installation of regular drivers, but Valve's modifications might hinder smooth usage due to many underlying OS changes. As a result, Valve has reportedly hired a "growing team" of engineers and developers to work on achieving proper support for NVIDIA drivers, which is expected to be available in the coming months. Griffais noted that this support might not arrive this year as Valve is optimizing the software stack for its current hardware like the Steam Deck and Steam Machine, but it will be available next year at the latest.

Technically, Valve's Steam Machine vision will extend beyond regular Valve-issued hardware, allowing PC DIY enthusiasts to design their own SteamOS-powered machines once compatibility has been improved. This will result in wider adoption and a much smoother experience when setting up the SteamOS system without any issues in the future.