u/Dettweiler42 — Dettweiler

I've been playing:

Hotdogs, Horseshoes, and Handgrenades (looking forward to 2 coming)

Elite: Dangerous

DCS World

Derail Valley

Pavlov

Contractors (Battlefront mod FTW)

Beat Saber

MechWarrior 5 (modded)

Phasmophobia

TriveXR (sometimes in conjunction with VRChat)

War Thunder

Assetto Corsa

Project Cars 2

SUPERHOT

Pistol Whip

Waltz of the Wizard

Games I haven't played in a while, but I recommend:

Sprint Vector (I need people to race against)

GORN

Battle Zone Gold

Iron Wolf

Star Trek Bridge Crew

Boneworks (haven't tried Bonelab)

Zero Caliber

Job Simulator

Blasters of the Universe

Star Wars Squadrons

Electronauts

Open Brush (replaced Tiltbrush)

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

Sairento

Raw Data

Gunheart

War Dust

Drunkn Bar Fight

Please Don't Touch Anything 3D

Hard Bullet

Blade and Sorcery

Budget Cuts 2

Games I am looking forward to getting VR support:

Nuclear Option

Iron Nest

Star Trucker (I hope)

Games I plan to play:

Skyrim VR (with QoL mods)

Fallout 4 VR (same)

Among Us VR

Vermillion

Vox Machinae

VTOL VR

My Steam library is about 400 games. ~30% of those are exclusively VR titles, 10-15% are pancake with VR support, and less than 5% are VR with desktop support.

The only shortage I see is AAA titles, which I could care less for.

>Eligibility:

You must be a legal resident of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, any EU Member State, or Australia, at least 18 years old, and the registered account holder of an unlimited Steam account who has made one purchase prior to April 27, 2026.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/0AC8-A264-CC02-14F0

If selected, you will be notified via email using the email address associated with your qualifying Steam account on or about September 17, 2026 that you have been added to the reservation queue. As units become available, people in the reservation queue will receive an email with the option to purchase. We'll send the first batch of those starting Friday, September 18, 2026. Those emails will include a link for purchasing the Product (“Link”). The Link will expire 72 hours after it is sent by Valve. If you do not buy the Product by the expiration date, your opportunity will also expire. If you are not selected, you will receive an email letting you know that you’ve been added to the waitlist and we'll let you know when more units become available.

The lottery is just for the first wave of shipments. After that, it's a reservation queue.

It also requires an account that's been active for some period of time, and has made purchases (to try to cut down on scalper accounts).

I like both Mint and Zorin. Once I learned you can make your desktop environment whatever you want, I became less concerned about which specific Ubuntu distro I use, because I just want KDE Plasma. Kubuntu seems like a great option. Bazzite also seems good, but I haven't tried it yet and I like to tinker every once in a while.

We could always do this, by the way. SteamOS has been available since the release of the Steam Deck. The main drawback is that core updates will wipe a bunch of changes you've made to your OS. I got tired of reinstalling AUR and a bunch of other things every month, so I changed distros.

Once that issue goes away, I'll likely switch back.

I found that disabling my motherboard's Bluetooth and using a dongle improved that situation dramatically. I suspect all the EMI plus a steel desktop case was a big contributor.

The nice thing about Steam OS in Desktop mode is that you can get the Arch experience without setting up Arch.

I tried Steam OS for a while, locked into desktop mode, and it was great; but I got tired of having to reinstall aur after every update. Ended up going back to an Ubuntu build and using KDE Plasma Desktop, since that was the main thing I enjoyed.

On that note, though; I'm sure the RAM in the steam machine will likely be upgradeable, since it's basically a small form prefab PC with Arch / SteamOS pre-loaded on it.

In fact, I hope this means we will see a desktop release of SteamOS that isn't just turning your PC into a bulky Steam Deck.

I believe you are thinking of a Steam Machine with this response.

I'm hoping they do like the Steam Deck and let us get a spot in line. It took a few months for me to be able to buy a Deck.

A buddy of mine bought one of those a while back. We recently switched it over to steam OS and the performance improvement was substantial.

Well, as they say: when in Rome, do the Romans

I think that perceived smoothness from 40 fps comes from the LCD screen they chose, and using a controller. Docking the deck to a monitor and using a mouse makes it much more noticeable; but running games at 720p makes it much easier to hit 60 fps.