Valve’s huge SteamOS 3.8 update adds long

Steam Deck hibernation mode, Bluetooth headset microphones, and lots of support for Xbox Ally, Legion Go 2, and more.

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Valve has just released SteamOS 3.8.0 in preview , and it’s a doozy.

Not only is it the first release to support the upcoming Steam Machine living room gaming PC , it comes with long-awaited features for Valve’s handhelds and more support for other companies’ handhelds than we’ve seen to date — including Microsoft and Asus’ Xbox Ally series, the Lenovo Legion Go 2, the OneXPlayer X1, and additional support for MSI, GPD, Anbernic, OrangePi, and Zotac.

Plus, Valve has finally added a setting in its gaming mode to let you use your Bluetooth headset microphones — something I’ve been asking for since the beginning.

(Valve did add it to the Linux desktop mode last year.) And the Steam Deck LCD is finally getting Bluetooth Wake re-enabled, so you can turn on your TV-connected Deck with a wireless controller from your couch.

The update comes with all sorts of improvements for the Linux desktop modes that sound like they’ll come in handy on a Steam Machine plugged into a TV or monitor, too, including desktop HDR, VRR display support, per-display scaling, “improved windowing behavior for games running in Proton,” and an upgrade to KDE Plasma 6.4.3 among other things.

There’s also a new Arch system base and an updated graphics driver.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the “Non-Deck” section of the changelog is huge.

Valve says long-pressing your power button should work “across a wide variety of devices” to power off, restart, or switch to the desktop mode.

You should be able to change your processor’s power modes on the Xbox Ally now, and night mode and screen color settings should work on AMD Z2 Extreme handhelds in general.

There’s also “Greatly improved video memory management with discrete GPU platforms,” you can limit how far the battery charges in any of the Lenovo Legion Go handhelds (in desktop mode), and it should fix “washed out colors for Zotac and OneXPlayer handhelds with OLED.”
Valve began offering SteamOS for non-Valve handhelds last May , but the company’s hardware team doesn’t like to promise too much in the way of support and doesn’t currently let most rivals ship handhelds with preloaded SteamOS — Lenovo’s the only partner we’re aware of, and its second SteamOS handheld will be a variant of the Legion Go 2 in June.

If you want to put it on a different handheld, that requires sideloading and is at your own risk, despite Valve’s improvements.

There’s a lot in this update, and it’s possible I missed a feature you care about, so check out the whole changelog here and below.

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