Back in March, Valve brought Windows 10 support to its Steam Deck handheld gaming device. At the time, there were some compromises. For example, the inability to dual boot between Windows and the native SteamOS and missing drivers such as audio. Valve is now issuing a new driver for the device that provides more compatibility improvements.
Announced on the Steam Deck Twitter account, the company has made the following changes for Windows 10. Valve previously added audio drivers in October, so this update is focused on “various compatibility, security, stability, and performance improvements for Windows on Steam Deck.”
That is pretty vague and Valve does not go into more detail on either the tweet or the Steam Deck Windows driver page. And no, the ability to dual boot to SteamOS is still not available. Valve continues to say this feature will not arrive until the launch of SteamOS 3:
“While Steam Deck is fully capable of dual-boot, the SteamOS installer that provides a dual-boot wizard isn't ready yet. This will ship alongside SteamOS 3 once it's complete.”
Hello! Just a quick note that there is an updated Windows APU driver for Steam Deck. This update includes various compatibility, security, stability, and performance improvements for Windows on Steam Deck.
The new driver is available here: https://t.co/zjU2UbJhz8 pic.twitter.com/ylmbu90eKq
— Steam Deck (@OnDeck) November 8, 2022
Handheld PC
Steam Deck is a handheld gaming console from Steam developer Valve in collaboration with Advanced Micro Devices. It provides access to the Steam game platform and runs on SteamOS 3.0, a modified Arch Linux distro created by Valve.
While the company sells the device as a gaming handheld, Valve has also been vocal about the Deck's credentials as a handheld PC. Adding support for Windows was the first step towards building those credentials.
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