The mainline Linux 7.4 kernel will be capable of running on the Steam Frame VR headset.
Upstreamed as part of the SoC changes for Linux 7.4 is an addition worthy of its own shout-out... The Steam Frame VR headset is supported by the mainline kernel. Thus potentially opening the door for other Linux distributions to cater to the Steam Frame as an alternative to SteamOS.
The Steam Frame VR headset under the "Deckard" codename was upstreamed to the Linux kernel on Sunday with the SoC merge. Linaro engineer Neil Armstrong authored the patches. Yes, the Steam Frame is making use of Device Tree as is common in the ARM Linux space.
Neil noted in the merged patch adding the Device Tree for the Steam Frame:
"Add an initial DeviceTree for the Valve "Steam Frame" codename Deckard. The Steam Frame is a virtual reality headset based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC (SM8650).Providing initial support for:
- System reserved memory, regulators, gpio keys, PMIC functions..
- PMIC ADC Channels
- UFS Storage
- USB Gadget
- WCN7850 Wifi7 + Bluetooth
- I2C + basic peripherals
- SDCard slotThe bootloader starts Linux in EL2, thus a bunch of EL1 & DSP related nodes needs to be removed and the reserved-memory mapping must be defined."
The most polished and full-featured support for the Steam Frame will continue to be found with the downstream SteamOS kernel builds, but nice to see mainline kernel support being upstreamed not far behind the launch that happened in September.