I installed Windows on Steam Deck and I regret it

Summary

In Linus Tech Tips' exploration of installing Windows on the Steam Deck, he finds the experience to be less than stellar. Despite the initial excitement over Valve releasing drivers to support Windows on this device, Linus encounters a plethora of challenges that make the Windows experience on the Steam Deck far from optimal. From unresponsive controls and lack of audio drivers to poor gaming performance compared to SteamOS, the journey is filled with technical hurdles. Ultimately, Linus concludes that sticking with SteamOS is currently the better choice unless Valve improves Windows compatibility.

Highlights

• Installing Windows on the Steam Deck revealed multiple operational hiccups making it less appealing. 🎢
• Driver issues result in poor gaming performance and lack of audio output through traditional means. 🔊
• SteamOS significantly outperforms Windows in gaming benchmarks on the Steam Deck. ⚡
• Valve's support for Windows on the Steam Deck seems half-hearted until more optimizations are made. 💭

Key Takeaways

• Installing Windows on the Steam Deck isn't as smooth as hoped, mainly due to performance and control issues. 🎮
• While Valve has facilitated Windows installation, lacking drivers and hardware optimization make it challenging. 🤔
• For gamers who want a seamless experience, staying with SteamOS is recommended for now. 🚀

Overview

Installing Windows on the Steam Deck seemed like a bold move, but Linus quickly learned that it came with a heap of complications. From the beginning, touchscreen controls were inconsistent, and gaming performance suffered greatly compared to the native SteamOS. Linus humorously battles through one tech glitch after another, slowly realizing why sticking to SteamOS might be wiser for now.

Although Valve made strides by releasing drivers to make this installation possible, Windows still lacks the polish needed to shine on the Steam Deck. Missing audio drivers mean gamers can't easily use the 3.5mm jack or the speakers, and general responsiveness issues plague the device. The promise of better functionality with Xbox services is tempting but not enough when usability suffers overall.

Comparing game performance side by side revealed just how much SteamOS holds an upper hand, delivering a more stable and smooth experience. Even though installing Windows broadens the potential for running more games, it’s clear there’s significant ground to cover. Until Valve enhances compatibility further, enthusiasts like Linus might find the journey exciting but ultimately frustrating.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Sponsor The chapter 'Introduction and Sponsor' discusses the release of drivers by Valve, which allow Windows to run on the Steam Deck device. This operating system capability has been long-awaited, despite Valve's efforts to make it unnecessary. While there's hesitation and even opposition from the Linux community, with suggestions not to endorse this action, the chapter expresses a sense of personal ownership, emphasizing the freedom to choose what to run on one's own device. The narrative notes that despite the new capability, the chapter doesn't outright recommend it, instead transitioning into a mention of a sponsor.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Desktop Controls and Schemes The chapter discusses the options for desktop controls and schemes available for configuring and customizing PCs. It begins with an introduction to Build Redux, a service that offers competitive pricing and an easy-to-use platform for building your PC. The chapter then transitions to details about desktop controls, starting with the use of the right joystick or trackpad to maneuver the mouse cursor, highlighting the advantages of having a trackpad.
• 03:00 - 04:30: Hardware and Driver Issues The chapter discusses hardware and driver issues, specifically focusing on the configuration of controls in a device. It highlights the unconventional setup where the right trigger acts as a left click and the left trigger as a right click, contrary to the standard arrangement found in most handheld devices. The absence of a 'push to tab' function is also noted, indicating a gap in intuitive functionality.
• 04:30 - 08:00: Gaming Performance Comparison The chapter discusses the nuances of gaming performance, focusing on user control and device interface aspects. It highlights how Valve believes the dominant hand should perform the most clicks, illustrating with examples of using analog sticks and on-screen keyboards. The importance of having Steam running for certain functions and the flexibility of using touchscreens are also touched upon.
• 08:00 - 11:00: Windows Experience and Emulation Issues The chapter discusses issues related to using a joystick in a Windows environment and emulation settings. It highlights a problem where the right joystick is non-functional, leaving only the trackpad operational. Two control schemes are described: the Windows default scheme where the trackpad is operational, and the Steam scheme where the entire controller, including the joystick, can be used to control the mouse. The chapter concludes by mentioning that launching an application with Steam resolves the control issues, but also notes the occurrence of User Account Control prompts in certain handheld devices.
• 11:00 - 15:00: Limitations and Obstacles with Windows on Steam Deck The chapter discusses the limitations and obstacles faced when using Windows on the Steam Deck. It highlights the issues such as the unreliable transition from joystick to mouse control and touchpad malfunctions, indicating a broadly imperfect experience on handheld devices. The chapter also mentions checking out the AMD Ryzen specifications on CPU-Z, though the specific model remains unknown.
• 15:00 - 18:00: Reasons to Run Windows on Steam Deck The chapter 'Reasons to Run Windows on Steam Deck' discusses the technical details and challenges of running Windows on the Steam Deck device. The focus is on the hardware specifications, like the LPDDR5 memory and a custom APU (accelerated processing unit). The chapter mentions using software tools such as 'gpu-045' and 'gpuz' to understand the hardware configuration. It highlights the struggle in getting correct details about the GPU clock and memory sharing between the GPU and CPU despite noting a memory speed of 1.2 gigabytes. The content suggests a detailed exploration of hardware compatibility and the feasibility of optimizing Windows performance on the Steam Deck.
• 18:00 - 21:00: Criticism and Personal Experience In this chapter titled 'Criticism and Personal Experience,' the speaker discusses hardware specifications and driver issues. The GPU uses reserved hardware memory, while connectivity features like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are functioning. However, device manager shows that some drivers, specifically for audio devices via multimedia controllers, are not operational. This affects the onboard audio, meaning the three and a half millimeter jack and the speakers do not work currently. As a workaround, the speaker suggests using Bluetooth or a type-C to headphone adapter for audio output. The speaker also plans to launch a game and mentions having a second Steam Deck available.
• 21:00 - 25:00: Conclusion and Final Thoughts The chapter titled 'Conclusion and Final Thoughts' discusses the stark contrast in performance between running a system on Windows and Linux. The speaker notes that the system is significantly less responsive on Windows compared to Linux, with issues like lower FPS and increased stutteriness. They find it amusing that there seemed to be speaker issues during testing, which was actually due to weak haptics rather than any real sound-related problem. Ultimately, the chapter conveys dissatisfaction with the unresponsiveness and lack of effective haptics on Windows.

I installed Windows on Steam Deck and I regret it Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 windows on steam deck it's here on thursday valve released the drivers that we needed to run the operating system that they have spent years trying to make sure we won't need linux users have literally begged us not to do this or at least not to recommend it but they forgot one simple fact i own this device it's mine so whatever i do what i want and besides even i don't know if i would recommend this yet what i would recommend is our sponsor
• 00:30 - 01:00 build redux build redux offers competitive pricing compared to building a pc yourself their website makes it easy to configure your build alongside their helpful support guides so head to buildredux.com linus and start creating your pc today we will talk about how we got to this point but i don't want to keep you guys waiting and i'm going to dive right in starting with desktop controls you can use either the right joystick or the right trackpad to move the mouse cursor around and i gotta say right out of the gate having this track pad here compared to
• 01:00 - 01:30 something like the joy x off on the ineo wow is that ever a lot better but there's one thing i immediately notice missing push to tab how is that not a thing no instead and this is sort of intuitive you actually use the right trigger for left click and the left trigger for right click pretty much every other handheld i've seen defaults the other way around left is left right is right
• 01:30 - 02:00 but it seems like valve is of the mind that the dominant hand should be the one that is the most often clicked okay how do i scroll down the page though it's probably left yeah there we go left analog stick oh okay we just brought up an on-screen keyboard by pushing down on the d-pad i'm gonna close steam for now we can use the touchscreen as well i guess that's worth mentioning oh wait no you need steam running in order to wait nope my mouse cursor's back
• 02:00 - 02:30 the right joystick doesn't work for it anymore though only the trackpad does basically there's two control schemes there's the windows default which allows you to use this as a trackpad and yeah it's still right to left and left to right or if you have steam launched it'll actually treat the entire controller as a seam controller and you can use the joystick to control the mouse as well now that i've got steam launched again let's try to launch an application okay is i've seen this on other handhelds as well for whatever reason uac prompts
• 02:30 - 03:00 disable whatever software is allowing you to joystick to mouse on the steam deck though at least you can still use the okay i swear the touchpad worked a second ago now it's not working to be clear a lot of these annoyances are kind of universal whenever you're trying to use windows on a handheld device it's just a very imperfect experience let's have a look at how this soc appears in cpu-z since we've got it amd ryzen we don't know exactly what kind custom
• 03:00 - 03:30 apu-045 super cool nope does not know that this is lpddr5 all right then how about gpuz same thing has no idea what to make of this mess gpu clock zero megahertz custom apu0405 fair enough gpu custom gpu 405. picks up the memory speed at least it doesn't seem to indicate in any way that this memory is shared between the gpu and cpu although it does note that 1.2 gigabytes
• 03:30 - 04:00 of it is hardware reserved which would be what's reserved for our gpu wi-fi works bluetooth appears to be here actually i should fire up device manager clearly all the drivers are not uh working yet unknown devices multimedia controller multimedia controller would be the onboard audio so the three and a half millimeter jack and the speakers do not work so you can use bluetooth or you can use a type c to headphone adapter for now i think we should launch a game and of course we have a second steam deck
• 04:00 - 04:30 i can already tell that this is running like absolute dog poo on windows compared to linux it's not even close it's not even just that the fps is lower it's just a difference in responsiveness and like stutteriness super unresponsive it's funny while i was testing this with the haptics going i thought that the speaker was going for some reason yeah because the haptics are so weak the haptics are well there's no haptics
• 04:30 - 05:00 it's just the vibration in the touch pads yeah so they've tuned that in linux so it doesn't feel so like kind of cheap and ugly sounding but in windows clearly that same tuning hasn't taken place well how about on windows what does the steam button and the overlay button do big fat load of nothing i mean the steam button should pull up the steam overlay or something but oh oh it does it does it pulls up the steam overlay which does allow me to exit the game so it's just the quick
• 05:00 - 05:30 access menu button that doesn't do anything okay that's that's that's good obviously it's a less comprehensive steam overlay let's try something else i have not played elven ring yet so far launch time looks pretty similar i started the windows once lately before that's a solid linux win right there that doesn't look right on the windows side it really doesn't when i was testing it earlier the loading screens are only 16x9 so the actual background like the game assets loading in could be seen in the seams at the top and bottom of the screen oh hilarious let's try
• 05:30 - 06:00 borderless windowed i've had better luck with that in some ca what hello weird oh oh hey hey we're back time to not mess with that again i'm loading up a new game here because we did all the benchmarking on this steam account where we're actually a little bit into the game but i wanted to be able to play them side by side with you guys so we got a new account for the linux machine and we wanted to be able to just switch back and forth between them
• 06:00 - 06:30 okay wow big picture has work to do i mean valve has said that they're going to adapt big picture based on the steam os steam deck interface like this oh man night and day so much better there it is you can see the seams oh that's weird this is a famously bad port linux for the win for loading times again wow is windows really that far behind oh shoot i didn't open frame view this is
• 06:30 - 07:00 another thing that i'm not expecting to be a great experience on the steam deck other handhelds have a button to minimize the game and jump to the desktop i suspect valve has integrated no such functionality i mean i don't need frame view to tell me that's terrible i've read about hitches and stutters in this game but this is unbelievable valve apparently used the fact that they are translating
• 07:00 - 07:30 directx to vulcan to implement a pre-shader compilation routine that prevents it from starting the crazy thing about windows though is that this isn't even behaving like on-the-fly shader compiling like it should stop doing it it should after i do a full rotation but it doesn't and so the fact that we're running this translation layer actually results in better smoothness i think it's time for us to stop the side-by-side comparison and get
• 07:30 - 08:00 into the empirical data then we ran benchmarks on three great on-deck games and linux users can breathe a sigh of relief because steam os handily outperformed windows particularly in hitman 3 where steam os gives playable if inconsistent frame rates while windows averages a painful 19 fps due maternal hit a 60 fps average on steemos while windows was stuck in the high 40s and eldon ring famously far more playable on deck than on windows pulls
• 08:00 - 08:30 ahead in terms of frame rate and as you guys saw didn't suffer from the same stuttering that the pc port has treated windows gamers to our swackets don't suffer either by the way lttstore.com but what about controls outside of steam we already saw that launching steam takes over the deck's controller can we do the same in say an emulator uh what emulator should you put on here i just put on retroarch oh crap i don't have screen cap it did this in testing too for whatever reason retroarch what you're seeing on your
• 08:30 - 09:00 screen is not what i'm seeing on this screen this screen shows the desktop oh beautiful oh my god come on retroarch i just i mean this could be a steam controller issue how do i go back if my controller's not allowing me to go back wait oh and this is off now wait what back instead of going back negatively toggles a setting and then confirm activates the setting that is the strangest behavior i think i've ever seen out of a controller ever is
• 09:00 - 09:30 steam still running uh yes that might be the problem i don't even know if i'm going to be able to close this software there's no task manager button or control alt delete button like you would see on a windows optimized handheld that's the kind of thing that you could probably bind i mean the steam controller is infinitely customizable it's one of the best things about it but anthony i don't think i can close retroarch because i can't go back this is crazy x and y
• 09:30 - 10:00 will sometimes go down our up and down multiple items in the menu and sometimes just one see here it does just one what is happening oh you activated the on-screen keyboard i did yes you can't see it but i can unless there's an escape key on that no i don't think president quit yes full disclosure i expected that to happen oh thanks anthony well this is just as bad back doesn't go back how do i go back b is trying to close retroarch the default control scheme in windows
• 10:00 - 10:30 without steam running for the steam deck is that that key is escape so is that a valve issue or is that a windows issue that would be a valve's controller mapping issue now normally that makes sense for navigating windows because the up and down arrows are just the just like the yeah the d-pad is the up and down arrows left and right so you can navigate everything with the buttons pretty well we have an xbox controller here right because now b is back because it's picked up as a controller not as a windows
• 10:30 - 11:00 pointer device yeah so i think retroarch is going to have to add a controller definition file or something to hook into it like they do with the steam deck and with the xbox 360 controller and xbox one well will the game work the game should work okay let's try the game then at least [Music] what it doesn't work even in game it's still in oh man all right well i still want to know about the latency
• 11:00 - 11:30 i mean i guess it'll be fine it's just windows i mean it should be oh yeah i mean this feels great mostly i just wanted to show off the fact that the controls are hot garbage and broken yes got it so better use steam yeah pretty much oh no not charging chuck oh i want to get up there oh balls and there are a lot of other things to keep in mind if you want to
• 11:30 - 12:00 run windows on deck for one you're not able to dual boot steam os and windows until valve releases the final steamos installer with support for this baked in i already mentioned there isn't an audio driver for the speakers or the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack yet but audio via usbc or bluetooth does work apparently a driver will be coming for that sooner rather than later what we don't have an eta for is things like the brightness slider fix okay it works fine sometimes and sometimes it doesn't respond to the full
• 12:00 - 12:30 drag yeah so you need to kind of like drag it back and forth towards the end that you want to go to so if you want to get it brighter you need to go to max and drag it back and forth you want to go darker you need to i think if it goes slow it's fine so it might be an acceleration issue with the uh like the touch to mouse input detection or whatever i don't know the proper technical terms for it but it seems to be that if you go fast it doesn't make it the whole way which could be a touch screen responsiveness issue in windows i i'm sure it's fixable but we don't know
• 12:30 - 13:00 when or if that will ever be fixed and there's also the much larger problem where the deck doesn't like to come out of sleep in windows either it takes forever or never wakes up so you'll want to disable sleep unless you're into hard powering off in order to get back into windows but that's not a great experience for a handheld device what's more when you go to actually install windows you're going to notice that the display is rotated 90 degrees that's actually pretty common for devices like this because they often use
• 13:00 - 13:30 panels that were designed originally for tablets it just means that until you get to the windows desktop you're going to have to deal with that you won't have any wi-fi so you'll have to install without a product key if you don't have a type c ethernet dongle and speaking of you're probably going to want a type c to usb-a adapter or ideally a multi-port dongle like this one so that you can plug in a usb flash drive and a keyboard and mouse it can be done without but it's definitely not as seamless all of which raises the big question
• 13:30 - 14:00 here why would anyone want to run windows on the steam deck well i can think of a few reasons even ignoring familiarity with the interface and the apps access to xbox services comes to mind while alternative launchers and storefronts for epic game store and gog are available on linux xbox still isn't and that means there are some games that you simply cannot play on steamos right now even ignoring anti-cheat problems and you're certainly not going to get access
• 14:00 - 14:30 to game pass unless you're streaming from a windows device or from microsoft's own servers i've also personally run into some very frustrating bugs while gaming on the deck i just completed a run-through of horizon zero dawn start to finish on my personal deck and i saw everything from drops down to 1 fps for extended periods like i'm talking 10 30 seconds at a time to hard game crashes back to the steam interface to even black screens that necessitated a full system shutdown this
• 14:30 - 15:00 raises serious questions for me about the thoroughness of valve's game verification program horizon zero dawn is a great on deck game but my experience was anything but great and i sincerely doubt that if sony had actually been involved in this certification process they would have signed off on it being advertised as great on deck in fact there's a great blog post on gaming on linux from the lead developer of f audio which is a core component of proton the compatibility layer that allows windows
• 15:00 - 15:30 games to run on linux criticizing valve's collaboration or lack thereof with third-party developers so if valve is just yellowing it what's the process there are only so many hours in a day and valve seems to be validating a lot of freaking games based on my experience with horizon zero dawn what i suspect they're doing is they're just firing up the game playing early areas which in many games tend not to be as demanding and going yep seems good rubber stamp and i actually didn't have any issues in the first five hours of my
• 15:30 - 16:00 playthrough of horizon zero dawn but by the end i was getting crashing or stuttering about every 30 minutes or so not a great experience other than that though steamos is objectively the much more polished experience the quick access menu with its convenient diagnostics and controls is conspicuously absent from windows and even basic functionality like charging still seems to have issues in windows we actually observed our steam deck discharging while plugged in which is
• 16:00 - 16:30 something that i have never seen running steam os so valve is allowing users to run windows even facilitating it by providing drivers and public help dogs good guy valve 100 and we're going to have those linked down below if you want to do it yourself but the roughness of the experience does make me wonder are they ever going to put in the effort that it would take to make it as smooth as steam os my gut feeling is no which makes me wonder how much of the performance
• 16:30 - 17:00 difference we saw is down to a lack of optimization i mean theoretically the same hardware should perform very similarly across windows and linux and this our results were not even close now admittedly that could be as much amd's fault as valves and the steam deck also features a very unusual architecture for a windows machine with the cpu and gpu course sharing common memory i'm sure steamos on the other hand was carefully tuned to account for this i just feel like there was a lot of windows
• 17:00 - 17:30 performance left on the table here and our investigation today has left us with more questions than answers the one answer we have right now though is that we wouldn't recommend windows on the steam deck at least not in its current state so if your must-have games don't work in steam os you might just have to pony up for a competing handheld that is at least until valve makes dual booting possible which is something we're planning to explore along with a 2 terabyte internal storage upgrade to the deck so make sure you are subscribed for that and make sure you're subscribed to hear about our sponsor dbrand the robots at
• 17:30 - 18:00 dbrand drove a truck of money to our office to push their new project kill switch on pretty much every steam deck video that we have what's project kill switch well it's a project to kill the switch i think basically it's similar to their grip cases for phones and other devices but for your steam deck it's got a rugged rubberized finish plus a kickstand for when you're gaming on the go but you want to pull out a controller they've also got their tempered glass screen protector for the steam deck which we tested out for them turns out regular tempered glass inhibits touch
• 18:00 - 18:30 sensitivity but dbrand screen protectors are super precise and guaranteed to work on your display so why wait you can reserve projects kill switch now at dbrand.com killswitch or at the link down below thanks for watching guys go check out our initial review of the steam deck for more decky goodness it still blows my mind they managed to ship these things especially for this price