HoloISO is a project that essentially turns the Steam Deck operating system into a generic, installable format that replicates the close-to-official SteamOS experience. In other words, you’ll be able to install the Steam Deck OS into any device that can support it. Of course, close-to-official doesn’t exactly mean “official” but still. This operating system works similarly to the Steam Deck OS. It’s not strange considering the code, and packages are straight from Valve with zero possible edits. Additionally, the ISO is being built on the official Steam Deck recovery image running inside a QEMU instance. So far, users will have access to the following features:
Boots SteamOS OOBE (SteamDeck UI First Boot Experience) Deck UI (separate session) Switch to Desktop from plasma/to plasma without user interference. Deck UI (-gamepadui) TDP/FPS limiting Global FSR Shader Pre-Caching Valve’s exclusive Vapor appearance for KDE Plasma SteamDeck pacman mirrors
While this OS is quite impressive. It’s still not suggested to be used as a primary desktop OS. NVIDIA GPUs can get stuck while running it and Intel GPUs/iGPUs require Gamescope and MESA downgrade in order to boot into the Steam Deck session. Still, if you’re willing to test it out, keep in mind that you still need to meet the following pre-requisites:
4GB flash drive AMD GPU with Vulkan and VDPAU support UEFI-enabled device Disabled secure boot
The HoloISO Steam Deck OS is currently at an early stage of its life so, of course, it’s expected to run into some issues. The OS will continue to grow as the development team continues working on it. You could also, you know, wait until the official release of the OS by Valve as well. At least the Q2 2022 pre-orders are currently being shipped.
