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PayPalAfter cancelling the newer Nexus Mods app that had Linux support to refocus on the older Vortex, the Nexus Mods team now say Vortex will support SteamOS. This was quite a blow for the Linux modding scene, as the newer Nexus Mods app was very promising in terms of how clean it was and that it had proper full Linux support.
However, in a new blog post announcing their focus for 2026 and beyond, they made it clear their intention to get Vortex working nicely on Valve's SteamOS Linux. Here's what they said:
We’re also committing to supporting Vortex on SteamOS. We’ll be targeting vanilla Steam hardware like the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. We won’t be officially supporting any other configurations, but as Vortex is an open source project community developers will be free to extend support for their preferred Linux distros as they please.
So it should run on any plain desktop Linux distribution, but you'll be on your own for support and they'll rely on community contributions to fix up any issues elsewhere.
As part of this there's already work ongoing towards getting Linux support baked into Vortex. There's a code pull request open on the official GitHub that adds in Linux Steam and Proton support. The summary of which notes:
- Adds the most basic game detection support for Steam on Linux. Individual games will still need to be debugged and verified on Linux.
- Add Linux Steam path discovery supporting multiple installation methods (native, Flatpak, Snap, Debian
symlinks).- Detect Proton usage and resolve configured Proton version for Steam games.
- Automatically launch Linux Steam games through Steam (which handles Proton).
- Enable running Windows tools (.exe) through Proton using the game's existing prefix.
Hopefully this all works out well, and we see good modding support with Vortex eventually without resorting to various workarounds. It's one of the biggest things we're missing right now.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Last edited by AsciiWolf on 23 Jan 2026 at 2:54 pm UTC
theinsanegamer23 2 hours ago
Quoting: AsciiWolfSo, they care only about SteamOS?Unfortunately they're not the only ones. Thankfully, unlike anti-cheat that does hardware check, this should work on basically any distro as the Steam path and Steam library system are more or less the same.
The only downside of this is that it'll seemingly only work with Steam since they're relying on Steam for launching, detection, and prefix management. Sounds like if you use the GOG version, you'll probably be better off using something like Limo. It'd be nice if they added some basic functionality to set up non-steam games manually though.
A year later, a cross-platform, clean-sheet mod manager is announced. New devs hired to work on it, community built around it, active engagement with user base helped shape the product. Despite being clean, good, actively developed, no technical debt, and actively desired by the market segment, it's canceled.
To appease the peasants Nexus asserts they are "supporting" Linux by suckering remora-like onto Valve's compatibility work. The Vortex update will only be supported on Steam hardware; the rest of you Linux losers are on your own.
Did I get the timeline right? Sure wouldn't want to, I dunno, look like an _idiot_ or something....
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