If you have a wireless VR headset and a Linux system, you might be excited to know that Valve's Steam Link VR now appears to actually work.
Valve haven't actually formally announced it yet, but with SteamVR Beta 2.13.2 you should be able to use Steam Link to connect up to your Linux PC to play games on Meta Quest headsets. This Steam Link VR feature originally launched for Windows back in November 2023, so we've been waiting quite some time for this to arrive on Linux - where VR has historically not been great.
On Valve's GitHub page there's a bug thread with multiple confirmed reports of it working, although it's clearly still a work in progress with game support being limited as some don't work at all yet. Also keep in mind that Steam Flatpak is not a supported configuration for it, you'll need a proper Steam package installed.
Nice to see progress on it though, as eventually that will be another gap with Windows gaming closed off giving more people a chance to switch to Linux without losing access to streaming their VR games.
My Valve Index continues chugging along (much better since moving from NVIDIA to an AMD GPU), although perhaps I'll have to upgrade soon to Valve's next VR kit or whatever the Steam Frame turns out to be.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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You can also find comments for this article on social media: It does work well enough for me to play a couple of virtual reality from coach games. I had it working for about half year or more. Its not even Valve affiliated.
"Also keep in mind that Steam Flatpak is not a supported configuration for it, you'll need a proper Steam package installed." - you can also install steam from tar gz file, binary way.
It's very much in beta though. Yesterday the Quest App was completely unresponsive to any input, no matter if I purged and re-installed it. Today (I changed nothing, except sleeping) it just worked to pair my Ubuntu 24.04 VR notebook. Needs mesa 25.2.1 and/or nVidia 575.64.5. Though it does show the "empty room" (Steam VR home is disabled) and the Steam VR dashboard, no game really worked for me. After a game started, I might see its splash screen, but as soon as the game should render I'm in a black void. Opening the Steam VR dashboad does show the game too though, closing the dashboard again and I'm in limbo. Somebody mentioned the game started rendering when they toggled the dashboard, but that just crashes the game for me after a few tries.
Instead I tried WiVRn today, that has been around a bit longer, uses Monado and can be build kinda easily via Envision. As I'm a bit familiar with Monado already, have it up and running with my Valve Index, with wlx-overlay, WiVRn worked pretty well. I need to tinker around with its settings though, as compression hit hard on the visuals.
Nonetheless, having Steam Link VR now in beta is a really good sign. Looks like Steam Frame is full steam ahead!
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