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A CD drive for the Steam Frame? That's probably not something most people would be interested in. But one user asked for exactly that in the Steam Community forums – and Valve responded within a day.
Marius Müller (translated by Marius Müller), Published 🇩🇪
On October 18, Steam user Aiodensghost asked in the Steam Community forums why they couldn't connect a CD drive to their Steam Frame. They wanted to watch movies on the go and install older games from CDs, with 2006's Need for Speed: Carbon being a particular favorite. However, the VR headset could neither access the contents of the discs nor supply enough power to the drive. The problem: Support for optical drives is currently disabled in the Steam Frame's customized Linux kernel.
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Valve developer Gabe Rowe responded the following day at 9:43 PM CEST – and just eight minutes later, at 9:51 PM, a commit from the same developer appeared on GitHub, enabling the necessary kernel support for CD-ROM drives. That doesn't mean the feature is already usable on the Steam Frame, but the software foundation is now in place. Before users can actually connect an external CD drive, the change still needs to be tested, integrated into a new system image and distributed through an update. When that will happen remains to be seen.
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As a child in the 90s, my Gameboy was my steady companion. After school, the PlayStation was fired up. When I finally got my first PC, I was completely hooked. My passion for gaming has never waned since. For me, writing for Notebookcheck means reporting on topics that are really close to my heart - in addition to gaming, I also like to write about e-mobility, photovoltaics and innovative gadgets. When I'm not sitting at my computer, I'm probably on water rescue duty on the Baltic coast or trying to counteract the downsides of my geek life - namely sitting for long periods - at the local swimming pool.
Marius Müller, 2026-10-26 (Update: 2026-10-26)