SteamVR Beta brings a number of fixes for Linux gamers

Valve recently launched some fresh fixes for SteamVR, and thankfully it seems Linux is finally seeing some more attention with it. This is the Beta branch, so you need to opt into it via the properties on SteamVR inside your Steam Library.

With SteamVR Beta v2.16.1 that arrived April 7th, all these fixes came in:

SteamVR:

• Fixed issue causing shimmering on the edges of the display on some headsets.
• Dashboard: Resolved some memory leaks on AMD hardware.
• Dashboard: Improved compatibility on some older (legacy) AMD hardware.
• Streaming: Advanced settings UX now respects global toggle.
• Improved version compatibility handshake when streaming.
• Fixed HTC Vive users not being able to activate the laser mouse by clicking the HMD button after the dashboard is visible.
• Numerous overall stability improvements.

Linux:

• Fix a crash in SteamVR when a game crashes.
• Fixed texture leaks when mirror window was visible.
• Improved robustness for VR streaming.
• Improved interop with gamescope overlay forwarding.
• The vrcompositor process is always a child of vrserver now (instead of whatever process first uses the compositor).
• Improved GPU synchronization implementation on Linux (now uses timeline semaphores).
• Stop invoking `pidof` internally.

OpenXR

• Added support for XR_EXT_interaction_profile_battery_state_display.
• Fix OpenXR crash related to xrDestroyInstance.
• Improved XrCompositionLayerProjection support (fixes distortion when scene projection and display projection differ).

Developer/Internal

• SteamVR won't kill UnrealEditor upon exiting VR.
• Reduce the number of uninteresting vrevents, especially under VR streaming.
• Improved compositor initialization timing.
• Internal Improvements to Dashboard visibility model.
• Internal Improvements to UX focus model.
• Cleaner driver shutdown sequencing.

SteamVR on Linux was not great the last time I tried, as it just completely refused to run the room setup so I wasn't actually able to get it going on my current Fedora KDE install. This has been a problem that's been reported many times on and off over the last few years. Quite a nuisance, but I'm hopeful that with the Steam Frame powered by SteamOS that we might see some more desktop fixes like the above too.

SteamVR Beta v2.16.2 was also released April 9th with:

SteamVR:

• Fixed streaming certain OpenXR games on Quest (including Pavlov and Into The Radius 2).
• Fixed additional dashboard related bugs.