Valve has always made it clear that Steam Deck can run Windows, which required an official Windows 10 driver. Well, they are currently available. The company posted a link to the driver on the Steam blog and instructions on how to get back to SteamDeck OS if the player gets stuck.
Windows 10 drivers allow fans to boot their operating system on the Steam deck, but at this point the options are a bit limited. Currently, Steam Deck can only be fully installed on Windows 10 to replace Steam Deck OS. The new driver should help run Windows 10 very smoothly on the deck, but currently there is no way to run both.
However, Valve states in its post that Steam Deck has dual-boot OS capabilities. The dual boot wizard isn’t ready yet, but when it arrives at a later date, the player can choose which OS to boot.
The latest Windows OS, Windows 11, is also not available on Steam Deck. However, as with dual boot, the Windows 11 BIOS will be available soon.
With Windows on Steam Deck, there are some interesting things a player can do. In particular, it runs games that aren’t available on SteamOS for some reason. This includes Bungie’s popular sci-fi shooter Destiny 2, which cannot be run through SteamDeck OS due to BuntlEye’s anti-cheat issues. However, as shown in the video above, Steam Deck running Windows 10 allows players to interact with Destiny 2 on the go.
In theory, with Windows 10 installed, players can also use the Xbox Game Pass for PC on Steam Deck. However, all of this feature (and Steam Deck itself) is still new, so players can take weeks to discover the true potential of Windows Steam Deck.
Leave a Reply