The lack of official hardware support for NVIDIA GPUs in SteamOS is one of the OS's missing pieces preventing the OS from going mainstream. However, in a report by IGN, two of Valve's software developers have confirmed that the company is making progress developing support for NVIDIA hardware for SteamOS, and has gotten to the point where they have reportedly enabled their NVIDIA driver in the main tree of SteamOS.
Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais revealed to IGN that its NVIDIA driver in its current state is technically functional but is very limited and can only "light up" things on specific generations of NVIDIA GPUs. Griffais also reportedly told IGN that there is still a "bit of a rift" between where its driver is and where the "state of the art" is, but was hopeful, saying that driver performance is "getting better day-to-day."
Griffais put everyone's expectations in check, noting that it takes years to develop drivers. "... It's one of those things just like FEX and working on the Qualcomm driver, it just takes years." As a result, we probably won't be seeing NVIDIA support until next year or 2028. Valve first announced collaboration with NVIDIA on NVIDIA GPU support in late June, so the company has been hard at work on this project for at least three months.
It's worth mentioning that SteamOS uses a lot of custom software Valve made specifically for the OS, including custom features such as Gamescope. Getting these software layers to work with NVIDIA's proprietary Linux GPU driver stack is the technical reason why driver support is taking so long to develop.
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Regardless of how long it takes, Valve's top priority is getting SteamOS to run well on NVIDIA hardware. Over 70% of PC gamers are using NVIDIA GPUs according to Valve's latest Steam Hardware Survey, so getting driver support working is very important for Valve to get the OS into as many PC gamers' hands as possible. It also opens the door for Valve to make new products based around NVIDIA GPUs in the future, including using Nvidia-based SoCs not just discrete GPUs.
