Valve has been Linux friendly. It says the new steam frame “is a PC” and will run Steam OS but I feel like there’s an insinuation that, like the steam deck, you can install whatever you like. I am cautiously excited at the premise of really digging in and having a Linux box strapped to my face.
Another friend has already referred to it as the Linux Vision Pro.
Edit: watching Linus tech tips review, it mentions side loading Android APKs as well
I’m very curious what the details are. A Linux Vision Pro sounds very enticing. It could be a lot of fun for inventing new user interaction modalities.
It’s not a Linux Vision Pro. Vision Pro is aimed at productivity and “Spatial Computing” or whatever.
This is a gaming device first and foremost, and you can see that from the black and white passthrough on the Valve machine.
But you’re right that it can definitely be the foundation for AR/VR forward Linux environments. It would be really cool to see a 100% spatial compositor that challenges the conventional flat computing paradigm.
But playing with full color passthrough and hand tracking on Quest 3 does make me a little disappointed in this. I was able to sideload standard Android APKs and interact and move them around with my hands which was mega cool. I could do the dishes with YouTube just floating in front of the sink. I didn’t actually do it more than once but it got me excited about the future of spatial computing.
I know Valve is all about this. They insisted on having a USB port on the Index HMD just so people could attach dodads to it.
The resolution (and price) is substantially lower than an Apple Vision Pro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Frame
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Vision_Pro
It’s a good start and has everything necessary for it, I guarantee a nice xr wayland compositor will exist for this in no time, and when they make the frame 2 it will likely be ready for xr as a usecase, all they really need is color passthrough and microoled, maybe higher fov and it’ll be there.