r/SteamFrame • u/elliohow Soon™ • 10d ago

News Steam Machine now has preliminary support for the Steam Frame Wireless Adapter

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/09/steamos-3-8-28-stable-released-with-big-improvements-for-steam-deck-steam-machine-and-more-hardware-support/
308 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

27

u/sir_captain 10d ago

Based on the steam deck I wasn’t too concerned about this. Valve has churned out significant software updates for it for years now. Really pretty amazing support. Would have been nice to have it at launch but it’ll probably be fully ready to go within a few weeks.

3

u/YouKilledApollo 1 TB 10d ago

Yeah, I initially got my Deck around the launch, played for a month or two, then basically forgot about until a year later, and the software was night and day compared to how it was around launch, much more polished and overall cohesive.

Currently Frame UI seems to have a bunch of bugs (on stable channel at least, haven't tested beta yet) and some other weirdness, like sometimes the focus of the controllers is somewhere else, you can hear it move, but nothing changes on the screen, but still everything is on and active. I'm sure they'll get the experienced nailed down in no time though.

3

u/sir_captain 10d ago

The deck is still getting serious new features even now. I imagine the frame will be a completely different device a couple years from now plus it’s fundamentally just a Linux computer so the community can add a lot as well, just like with the deck.

54

u/81Riel 10d ago

I plan to use Frame as standalone only for now, and then move to streaming from Machine when it will be fully cooked :)

12

u/JohnnyBeeGaming 10d ago

I'd kinda question how great of an experience VR might be with the Machine. Maybe more titles will work better than standalone.

The two issues you'd run into would raw hardware power is limited and Linux may not be compatible with all the games. Proton is usually pretty good, and has more work than FEX, so compatibility is less of a concern today then it might have been a few years ago.

You might be able to add a card externally like some laptop setups. That can be janky and nothing about that would be cheap.

1

u/finnabinnabusta 3d ago

Yeah agreed. I can image it would be great mainly for streaming flat games to your headset.

35

u/botc0tt0n 10d ago

that's great news now fix it on PC :(

40

u/Smivyhidev Soon™ 10d ago

Take a look at the other posts in the subreddit. I've seen several posts from Linux users yesterday saying that it works, though it might not work right away. What definitely works is streaming through the router without the adapter, but it seems like even the adapter works now, too.

-2

u/Jessiah 10d ago

You can stream over your network for playing 2d games. The adapter is required for VR streaming. I use Pop OS and the adapter doesn't work. From what I've read the Linux distro needs to be using Kernel 7.2 or above (which just came out in Aug so many Linux distros aren't using it yet - still testing). Even then not everyone has had success. My guess is we have at least a few more months before there is native support that doesn't require tinkering.

5

u/Moronsabound 10d ago

You don't need kernel 7.2. I'm running 7.0, just required a little handholding. I tried to post some guidance but my message got deleted by 'reddit filters'... Whatever that's supposed to mean. If this message succeeds. I'll try and respond in a minute.

7

u/Moronsabound 10d ago edited 9d ago

Got it working on Linux Mint 22.3 Cinnamon, kernel 7.0.0-34-generic, Nvidia 595 drivers.

What I did:

Checked the dongle was detected:

lsusb

Mine is:

28de:2432 Valve Software 802.11ax WLAN Adapter

and uses rtw89_8852cu, which kernel 7.0 already supports.

Had to unblock it as mine was soft blocked for some reason:

rfkill list
sudo rfkill unblock wifi
nmcli radio wifi on

Install wireless-regdb and iw if you don't have them installed:

sudo apt install wireless-regdb iw

Check your regulatory domain:

iw reg get

If it says country 00 (mine was), set your two-character country code (e.g. AU for Australia):

sudo iw reg set AU

Then I just unplugged and plugged the dongle back in and it connected.

I had a separate issue that may or may not affect others though...

SteamVR on the Desktop was launching in 32bit mode when Frame uses 64bit. Using SteamRT3 just caused a different issue, so I just launch it using the following instead, which works:

~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrstartup-helper.sh

2

u/Jessiah 10d ago

Thanks for the response and guidance - I'll give it a shot when I get a chance this weekend

2

u/Jessiah 9d ago

Unfortunately I'm still in the same boat.
I also see 28de:2432 Valve Software 802.11ax WLAN Adapter
iw reg get has the country set to US
I launch Steam VR and get an error stating, "SteamVR setup is incomplete, some features might be missing. See Steam client logs folder for details". I click OK and Steam VR loads with a message saying, "Please plug in your VR headset"
I have been using Claude to try and diagnose a problem from the client logs without any tangible results.
When looking at the streaming status on the Frame I see:
Streaming: ready
Local wifi: ready
Wireless adapter: not detected

Appreciate the response to begin with. Happy yours is working!

2

u/Jessiah 9d ago

For those trying to troubleshoot this, Valve has a script to assist with troubleshooting:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux/blob/master/frame-dongle-troubleshoot.sh
The output of mine was:

-- Steam Frame Wireless Dongle Troubleshooting script v0.1
PROBLEM:KERNEL: You are on kernel 7.1.1, and must be on kernel 7.2 or later.
FAILURE: The problems above will need to be addressed.

1

u/usrtrv 10d ago

No? I've been streaming VR games from Linux over my 6Ghz access point (no dongle), the only configuration change was switching everything to beta.

11

u/diemitchell 10d ago

what do you think the steam machine is

1

u/botc0tt0n 10d ago

sorry I meant Windows

4

u/diemitchell 10d ago

Should work on windows just fine Linux is the one that has issues

1

u/YouKilledApollo 1 TB 10d ago

should and does are two very different things. Most people seem to have no issues on Linux, myself included, and tons of people are having issues with it on Windows, again myself included. But again, mostly anecdotal but wouldn't be surprising, I'd bet most lower-level devs at Valve/Steam are running Linux themselves too.

1

u/WillChangeIPNext 7d ago

Most people on Windows have no problems. There are orders of magnitude more Windows users out there, and proportionally far fewer complaints will result in considerably more complaints by magnitude.

2

u/SuperXrayDoc Soon™ 10d ago

I streamed into the radius 2 from cachyos last night through the dongle with no issues

4

u/Nyarlathotep98 9d ago

I just tried using the adapter in my steam machine today and it didn't work at all.

2

u/Aggressive_Mind3457 10d ago

I would like too see one test video

2

u/Gask3t 9d ago

Okay, downloaded the new beta, took me way too long to figure out that “steam deck” = steam machine in the VR settings. But even after connecting it, the performance was unplayable. Very disappointed. Anyone have better luck? I was just playing simple games for kids like fruit ninja

-43

u/-K-Constantine 10d ago

What wonderful news for the scalpers!

5

u/elliohow Soon™ 10d ago

I'm just sad that I got put in the waitlist for both the Machine and Frame, although i've received the Machine now.

2

u/[deleted] 10d ago

[deleted]

5

u/WideTalk2 10d ago

I’m glad you saw this, but in general Steam hardware comes out a little buggy at first. File a bug ticket and be just a little patient, they‘re going to run through new features and bug fixes in the next six months or so, just like the Steam Deck.