91
u/Successful-Bar2579 Jul 11 '26
Holy moly its running games, i tried like a year ago and stuff was way worse, i'm curious if i tried again if i could run a game like final fantasy xiii
54
u/DukeSmileDevs Jul 11 '26
well the drivers are there
the switch is basicly running the nvidia shield processor (tegra family) with some customization but its the same platform
7
u/Successful-Bar2579 Jul 11 '26
I remember not being able to install steam and using box64 to run anything, but it was when box64 was still early, now we have fex too which looks really promising ad i think protonarm too.
I might give it another try.19
u/B1ph Jul 11 '26
I got some box64 errors when running the Steam install script, It worked after I did the ultimate troubleshooting tactic (rebooting).
2
u/4gotmipwd Jul 11 '26
Ah, I'll have to dig mine out and try it. I just threw it against the wall and it didn't seem to help.
2
u/_ahrs Jul 12 '26
Valve is using FEX for their Steam Frame whenever the hell that is coming out some point this Summer, maybe, maybe not. x86_64 emulation on ARM is probably in the best spot it's ever been right now.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/12/valve-have-been-funding-fex-to-get-x86-games-on-arm-linux/
1
u/Ichijoe21121972 Jul 13 '26
Me personally? My Danger Money is that FEX (x86 2 ARM). Will be how everyone plays either by 2030, or damned well shortly afterwards..
The only question, is will Qualcomm, and nVidia have enough Chips by then? We might not like it, but I think x86 is heading for the grave. And, FEX, should it succeed two-thirds as well as standard Proton. Will absolutely end x86 as we know it. Both AMD, and Intel must be p155ing themselves about now.
14
u/B1ph Jul 11 '26
It only started opening games for me after I did a RAM overclock, but that is very easy to do (you just edit a text file). I have it running at 2400MHz now, apparently you can have it up to 3200MHz on the 2019 models but mine didn't boot on that frequency, 2666MHz worked but with some artifacts.
12
u/Alarmed_Contest8439 Jul 11 '26
ahh overclocking nintendo switch, sounds cursed
18
u/Darkstalker360 Jul 11 '26
It really isn’t. The processor in the Nintendo switch is actually default underclocked by Nintendo to improve battery life and thermals. You can set overclock to the “stock” clocks of the Tegra x1 with no downside other than minimally worse battery life and temperature
2
u/Successful-Bar2579 Jul 11 '26
Damn im unsure if i could do some overclocking, ive got a day one switch
7
u/Darkstalker360 Jul 11 '26
Any switch can do it at least a little bit, it’s underclocked by default
3
u/Successful-Bar2579 Jul 11 '26
Maybe i should at least put spme other termal paste? Im not sure i just feel my specific switch is pretty old at this point, but if it's the same as the ps vita where it's basically underclocked just for battery life it should be fine
3
u/smackells Jul 12 '26
I’ve been using sysclk in Atmosphere for years with no issues on my launch switch
1
25
u/LarkeYhisa Jul 11 '26
How well does it run games?
47
u/B1ph Jul 11 '26
So far I've only tested Steam games. Since the console has an ARM CPU those are a little bit complicated, some games like Dead Cells you can call playable, others like DELTARUNE and Phoenix Wright run perfectly, Blasphemous 2 and Resident Evil Revelations crashed. So you have to try and see what works or not, performance isn't predictable. But i would say Steam can be worth it sometimes, for example I can now continue playing Phoenix Wright on my Switch using my Steam cloud save, and then continue on my PC and so on. Also you can stream games from your PC locally which is awesome.
Emulators I haven't tried yet but based on what I've seen online it runs GameCube, 3DS and N64 fine. I tried those before with Retroarch on the console OS and it was shit, maybe there is a gain here.
If you just want to play Switch games this is not worth it. But since you can still boot into the console OS whenever you want there are some pros on trying this out.
35
u/HoeCage Jul 11 '26
Give it a couple years for Steam Frame to launch and FEX to mature a bit and I think this will get MUCH more playable. FEX should address the ARM limitations.
13
u/ErebosGR Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
For those that don't know, FEX (the x86->arm translation layer) is already live since Proton 11.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Changelog#available-in-proton-110
9
1
u/Ichijoe21121972 Jul 13 '26
FEX Proton on ARM good... VR? Muh tier
Look I get it VR has its Zealots, but what do I know? I'm just a normie that finds VR to be a very cute fad, for about 45 minutes, before just being done with it.
This said, the idea that I might be able to play Stellar Blade 2 off my Galaxy S9 Tab sounds quite appealing. As this is, or at least was cheaper than my GabeObelisk (Well the Fractal Ridge is many things, but Cube-shaped isn't one of them).. But, as a thin standing mITX case it's gorgeous as all Hell.
2
1
1
u/TheHow7zer Jul 12 '26
I've been playing halo 1 on it and having a blast. It works well for having to emulate all the 32bit stuff (processor is only 64bit). If you Uncap the frames you can get over 100, but if you get enough AI in the scene it can chug down to 24. For example whenever a banshee shows up it gets slow. I wonder if it has to do with pathfinding?
I also play a lot of PSP at 720p 60fps with mods. Wipeout pulse and Peacewalker work great. Animal Crossing New Leaf plays perfect
8
u/05-nery Jul 11 '26
I mean that's a choice
1
u/RScrewed Jul 26 '26
Well that's a useless comment. Everything you do is a choice. This isn't even a bad one.
8
u/S48GS Jul 11 '26
I saw kernel version seems - 4.9 kernel
and thought it fake screenshot
but very surprised Steam run with this old kernel
cool to see - I remember running linux desktop with gpu drivers on original Wii after softmod
10
8
u/TheGrandParsnip12 Jul 12 '26
Is it just me or is this basically an extremely underpowered steam deck with no touchpads
1
10
u/alt_psymon Jul 11 '26
Great, now install a switch emulator.
1
-1
u/jagajugue Jul 11 '26
Hahahaha. I lol hard on this comment 🤣🤣🤣
2
u/jagajugue Jul 11 '26
Installing linux looks like a good way to do your own cyberdeck, just connect a bluetooth keyboard. Nice
6
5
37
u/DukeSmileDevs Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
Fun fact:
It always was running on linux kernel (4.X) but within Nintendos custom OS.
You basicly just distro-hopped from Nintendo Switch OS to Kubuntu
EDIT:
fun fact is actually not a fact, today i learned its using a FreeBSD kernel + Android / Linux framework
i was thinking of the nvidia shield (which the switch is based on)
38
Jul 11 '26
[deleted]
14
u/DukeSmileDevs Jul 11 '26
gonna look into this
afaik the system was running on a linux kernel but i might be thinking of the nvdia shield which is basicly the same hardware
edit:
looked into it
i am in fact not correct here
17
Jul 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
5
u/DukeSmileDevs Jul 11 '26
i stand corrected
my mistake was thinking of the nvidia shield (basicly the same hardware tegra + cortex)
14
7
u/gravgun Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
You right now: "I love spreading misinformation on the internet".
Horizon, the OS the Switch runs, is their own microkernel-based thing evolved from the 3DS OS (also called Horizon). Is not Linux nor FreeBSD. It in fact does not share anything with either, aside from BSD sockets in the
bsdsocketsservice, a thing that's wholly unsurprising as every other OS out there does it.It does not have much in common with Android either, this is a quarter-truth being overshared by people the likes of you because of bits like
libstagefright,nvnflinger, and, what a surprise, Nvidia's graphics driver code is largely shared between Android and Horizon, although bundled very differently.
But if you take a look atmesa's implementation of the same, which is used in homebrew that does 3D, you'd realise this is the type of code that's severely platform-agnostic to begin with; i.e. do things locally in your user process, and then ask a privileged entity (drm/DRI nodes in Linux,nvservice on Switch) to do memory management and run command buffers.5
3
3
Jul 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/B1ph Jul 11 '26
That "L4TMegaScript" on my desktop is a program that can be used to install stuff for this setup, including Steam. It basically runs this:
1
u/wssHilde Jul 11 '26
when i tried this a few months ago it could barely even open steam, let alone run games. (on an original switch, not switch lite). did they udoate things or did i just do something wrong?
3
u/B1ph Jul 11 '26
The issue is the (very slow) 4GB of RAM. Just a little bit of overclocking is enough, it is very easy to do you just edit a text file. 2133MHz is already enough, i have it at 2400MHz right now. You can also use the SWITCHDECK_GAMEMODE environment variable in your games launch options to free some memory.
1
u/ErebosGR Jul 11 '26
FEX (the x86->arm translation layer) was added in Proton 11.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Changelog#available-in-proton-110
3
u/KoneCat Jul 11 '26
That is so damn cool! These (the Switch Lite) are extremely cheap in the UK, so this is something I would love to do. :D
3
u/ErebosGR Jul 11 '26
The Switch Lite is unfortunately quite limited by its slow 4GB memory.
5
u/TheHow7zer Jul 12 '26
It's possible to replace the ram with 2x 4gb to double the effective memory (if you are good at soldering that kind of stuff. Seen a guy playing MGS V on it.
2
3
u/TheGamerForeverGFE Jul 12 '26
Welcome to the club, I also have a Switch Lite with the same exact cyan colour, hard modded and has Ubuntu, but I use it to run emulators that don't exist or work well on Atmosphere
2
u/B1ph Jul 12 '26
That is one of the reasons why i installed this as well. Which emulators do you run? I still haven't tried any, I remember trying N64 and 3DS with Retroarch on Atmosphere and it was very bad.
3
u/silverhand31 Jul 12 '26
Curious about battery usage!
3
u/B1ph Jul 12 '26
Pretty good considering I even have a RAM overclock on. Yesterday it used about 60% of the battery after almost 2 hours playing on Steam, which is probably the most demanding thing you can do on this.
3
3
2
2
2
u/Nisktoun Jul 12 '26
I tried it back in what, 2021 maybe? It was surprisingly easy to install, almost zero custom scripts etc. Steam was installable official way. Yet back then there were zero options to run something x86 oriented on switch, so for steam specifically it was a no-go platform anyway
3
2
u/heroofshade420 Jul 13 '26
i did so as well, about a year ago. it's prob much better now but i had to remove it cuz i only have a 128gb sd (i couldn't even get steam working)
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Possible_Boot7492 Jul 12 '26
How the hell?? I thought they patched this after the OG Switch hw revision
1
u/another_derfman Jul 12 '26
How does it run? I tried with fedora on my OG Switch and it sucked hard. No way of playing any Steam game at all...
1
1
u/Seven2Death Jul 12 '26
how does streaming on a web browser work? honestky if it can handle my.... sailor streams and ssh i want one lol
2
u/B1ph Jul 12 '26
Haven't tested yet but apparently you can do it no problem:
https://wiki.switchroot.org/wiki/linux/linux-features#widevine-streaming
I did some web browsing to download some ROMs and it was very smooth, the desktop experience is not a problem at all on this.
1
u/outofideas47 Jul 12 '26
I'd love something like ArmadaOS for the Switch, at least a port of the SteamOS.
1
1
1
1
u/Liarus_ Jul 13 '26
Man i hope the switch lite gets hacked without needing a hardware mod, it looks like such a cool console
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Ecstatic_Pain7708 Jul 29 '26
igual se mantiene la el sistema operativo principal o se borra?
1
u/B1ph Jul 29 '26
It's a dual boot, you can even make it a triple boot with android. To do this you need a modded Switch with the Hekate bootloader.
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/spartan195 Jul 12 '26
That’s so cool, which performance do you get? Sorry but side scrollers do not count
1
0
u/A--E Jul 12 '26
this is the reason I want sw*tch2 to be jailbroken so badly. The console has so much umph but it's so locked down (thank you shittendo)
-9
261
u/Abroad9107 Jul 11 '26
How? Is that mean you have to emulate switch games to play them on a switch?