SteamOS for Asus ROG Ally takes another step with display and VRR support in Gamescope

Valve has long promised that it would release the SteamOS ISO for anyone to install on any PC or handheld gaming console of their choice, and recently even re-confirmed its commitment to this task, introducing support for the Asus ROG Ally's extra buttons in SteamOS. Now, Gamescope, Valve's sandboxed gaming micro-compositor has taken another step towards making SteamOS compatible with the Asus ROG Ally and Ally X. 

In a recent merge, a contributor to the project noted that they had added a configuration in Gamescope for the Asus ROG Ally display and had validated it to work with both the Asus ROG Ally X and the original Asus ROG Ally. According to the tests, the ROG Ally display configuration works across multiple games, with functionality including features like VRR and support for the SteamOS refresh rate slider in the game overlay. 

There is likely still a lot of work to be done before the Asus ROG Ally is fully operational running under SteamOS, however, the bulk of the proprietary work seems to be getting done first — things like custom button maps and screen hardware configurations. Valve previously stated that it was making steady progress on getting support and features implemented for other systems and gaming handhelds, although an exact release timeline is unclear. 

The Asus ROG Ally X currently sells for $799.99 at Best Buy and delivers a handy performance uplift over its predecessor. 

Currently, if you're looking for a SteamOS-like experience, replete with Gamescope, mind you, there are plenty of alternatives, like Bazzite and ChimeraOS. Both of these alternatives support a variety of system configurations, largely thanks to their Linux underpinnings, so there's reason to speculate that Valve is doing some work to optimise configurations and hardware support for these third-party devices. Valve has also said on more than one occasion that it doesn't exactly see these other gaming handhelds as competition for the Steam Deck — a position that only really makes sense when you consider that it's in Valve's best interest to get as many devices running SteamOS as possible, since it has historically sold the lower-end Steam Deck hardware at a loss.