Valve just released a set of drivers for the Steam Deck that will finally allow the portable gaming PC to function with a Windows OS. The launch of the console competitor was originally running via a heavily customized Linux distro, and that might be about to change. Valve has been pushing hard to try and capture some of the market share captured by the Nintendo Switch, and a Windows OS variant of the Steam Deck could help a lot in that regard.
The one thing to note is that this is very much an early release. The Windows drivers for Steam Deck are not perfect, and the user reports reflect that. Users are reporting various issues, such as broken audio output, or bugged games. This is to be expected with unintended features. But since PC gamers are a hard bunch to please, Valve is trying to accommodate them. Even the support page makes it clear that this is not the intended way to run this system. Valve says they “are providing these resources as is and are unfortunately unable to offer ‘Windows on Deck’ support.”
To download these Windows drivers, head to Steam’s support page here. Once you’re ready to get the updated drivers, you must load them into your Deck. You just need to download the files, then load them onto a USB drive and plug that into your Steam Deck.
Valve is reaching its goal, as the Deck is functionally a PC, so installing Windows on the Deck is the same as any other PC. You just need a USB drive that you can use the Windows installation media tool to turn into a typical Windows 10 media.
As of now, dual-boot is not supported, and there’s no guarantee that it’s coming anytime soon. The feature is coming, but it’s gotta wait until the launch of SteamOS 3.
So why go through all of this trouble? Theoretically, installing Windows will get around the issue with certain anti-cheat programs not working on SteamOS, meaning you should be able to play games like Destiny 2 and Halo Infinite.
