Call for Testing: Steam snap for arm64

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Steam snap for arm64: Call for Testing

Hi everyone! :wave:

We have been building an arm64 version of the Steam snap and gaming-graphics for the past few months, and they’re now ready for broader testing!

Since the Steam client for Linux is currently only available for x86, we’ve bundled that version of Steam along with FEX in our arm64 snap, which is used to emulate amd64 and i386 for Steam.
This should be treated like a beta test, so you may encounter unexpected behavior or bugs.

If you have an arm64 device and would like to try it out, simply run
sudo snap install --candidate steam

and then launch Steam normally via the app launcher!

Please let us know how it performs on your devices!

Important notes

  • This snap is not officially supported by Valve, so If you encounter any issues, please open an issue in our bug tracker.
    • (However, we are extremely grateful for Valve’s extensive work on FEX and Proton, without which none of this would have been possible).
  • If you previously installed Steam on your arm64 device using fex_autoinstall (either my or NVIDIA’s version), I recommend uninstalling that version first via sudo apt remove steam-launcher before installing the snap.

Platform testing and compatibility

  • Our primary focus so far has been developing and testing this on the NVIDIA DGX Spark with the 580.95.05 NVIDIA driver series.

  • Early performance testing on DGX Spark is promising in several games in our libraries (both native, and via Proton). (Details below)

  • We are currently investigating a known issue preventing proper client functionality on Qualcomm Snapdragon X laptops

    • Edit 1/13/26: We are also now aware of an issue launching the client on Raspberry Pi devices due to missing v3d drivers, and are investigating this as well. (Thanks for the reports!)
      • Edit 3/4/26: Some openGL games have been confirmed to be working with the Raspberry Pi drivers using the snap version currently in the edge channel, when less computationally intensive graphical settings are used. (If Steam gives you a “Legacy OpenGL option” when launching a game, you may need to select this - I needed to for Team Fortress 2 to launch on my Pi 5).
    • Edit 2/2/26: We have released an update to the edge channel that should enable the client on Snapdragon X laptops. Try it out with sudo snap refresh --edge steam (if you already have a version of the snap installed) or sudo snap install --edge steam (if you don’t have the snap installed yet)!

    This snap will not currently run on Apple Silicon Macs running Asahi Linux due to their 16k page size requirement

  • Edit 1/20/26: We have identified an issue where some resource-intensive games have audio choppiness. If your game encounters this issue, we recommend setting the following custom launch option for that game (by right-clicking on the game in Steam, selecting ‘properties’, and then adding this to your “launch options” box):

    • PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=50
      • We have opted not to set this as a global default since it might be undesirable for some competitive games which currently don’t experience this issue.

Game Performance

My team and I have tested the following games on our DGX Sparks. (Note that this is not intended to be comprehensive; rather, it is just a quick a look into the types of games we’ve had success with so far)

Game Native Platform Performance Device
Cyberpunk 2077 Windows x86 (via Proton) 200+ FPS w/ DLSS NVIDIA DGX Spark w/ DGX OS (Ubuntu Noble)
Counter-Strike 2 Linux x86 smooth, no notable performance issues (2+ hour session, mostly arms race) NVIDIA DGX Spark w/ DGX OS (Ubuntu Noble)
Marvel Cosmic Invasion Linux x86 no notable performance issues NVIDIA DGX Spark w/ DGX OS (Ubuntu Noble)
Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders Windows x86 (via Proton) smooth, no notable performance issues. (2+ hour session) NVIDIA DGX Spark w/ DGX OS (Ubuntu Noble)
DOTA 2 Linux x86 smooth, no notable performance issues NVIDIA DGX Spark w/ DGX OS (Ubuntu Noble)
Outer Wilds Windows x86 (via ProtonGE-10-17) smooth, no notable performance issues (~20 minute test) NVIDIA DGX Spark w/ DGX OS (Ubuntu Noble)
Half-Life 2 Linux x86 smooth, no notable performance issues NVIDIA DGX Spark w/ DGX OS (Ubuntu Noble)
Portal 2 Linux x86 smooth, no notable performance issues NVIDIA DGX Spark w/ DGX OS (Ubuntu Noble)
Garry’s Mod Linux x86 smooth, no notable performance issues NVIDIA DGX Spark w/ DGX OS (Ubuntu Noble)
Hollow Knight Silksong Windows x86 (via Proton) Very smooth (~10 minute test) NVIDIA DGX Spark w/ Ubuntu Questing
Clair Obscur Expedition 33 Windows x86 (via Proton) Playable (~10 minute test) NVIDIA DGX Spark w/ Ubuntu Questing
Golf with your Friends Linux x86 100+ FPS, smooth, no notable performance issues NVIDIA DGX Spark w/ DGX OS (Ubuntu Noble)
PEAK Windows x86 (via ProtonGE-10-17) Was previously unstable, but is now stable across 3x ~10 minute tests after a recent game update when testing on 1/7/26. (but have not yet tested with multiple players). NVIDIA DGX Spark w/ DGX OS (Ubuntu Noble)

Disclaimer: This snap is experimental, comes without warranty or official support, and is provided on a best-effort basis

Updates

Edit 1/23/26:

We have published a version of the Steam snap to edge which enables FEX’s library forwarding functionality (thunking). This allows GL and Vulkan library calls to be forwarded to their native arm64 implementations on the host, rather than relying fully on emulation.

We encourage users to try this version out and let us know if they observe any notable differences in performance or functionality on their devices relative to the candidate version.

If you have not yet installed the Steam snap on your device, and would like to test the version with library forwarding, you can run sudo snap install --edge steam.

If you currently have the candidate version installed, and would like to switch to edge to use library forwarding, please use sudo snap refresh --edge steam instead.

Edit 2/2/26:

We have released an update to the edge channel that should fix the client on Snapdragon X laptops. Try it out with sudo snap refresh --edge steam (if you already have a version of the snap installed) or sudo snap install --edge steam (if you don’t have the snap installed yet)!

Additionally, we’ve adjusted thunking (library forwarding) to be user-configurable in this revision, with it being disabled by default.

If you’d like to re-enable thunking on your machine with this version, you can set the “GL” and “Vulkan” fields to 1 in ~/snap/steam/common/fex_config/Config.json.

Edit 3/6/26:

We have released an update to the edge channel that should fix several user-reported issues:

  • Hardware acceleration now works on Radxa devices
  • Raspberry Pi 5 should be able to handle some light legacy OpenGL games now
  • Vulkan and drm thunking (library forwarding) is now working on Snapdragon Thinkpads (set the “drm” and “Vulkan” fields to 1 in ~/snap/steam/common/fex_config/Config.json if you’d like to enable this.)
  • Updated FEX to 26.03

Try it out with sudo snap refresh --edge steam (if you already have a version of the snap installed) or sudo snap install --edge steam (if you don’t have the snap installed yet)!

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I did a quick test on a Phytium D2000 (8*A72), 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon RX-550, Ubuntu Noble (24.04).

Installation was slow, but you get a popup warning that it can take 10 minutes.

Is this running Vulkan and OpenGL on the ARM side?
With a manual installation of Fex you can change it with FEXConfig.

I tested Half-Life 2, but the performance was a bit underwhelming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk79KrxtvfM&t=40s

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Thanks for testing!

Is this running Vulkan and OpenGL on the ARM side?

At the moment, it is all being emulated. There are some additional changes we still need to make to our snap layout (in addition to the standard FEX config change you mention) to enable thunking in the snap, which is what I’m actively working on… so stay tuned!

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Bit of an edge case here, but i get a “fex_launcher.sh: line 116: 5360 Illegal instruction” error when trying to run it. cpuinfo shows my processor as an ARM cortex A57. To be slightly more specific, the CPU is a Tegra X1, housed in a small handheld gaming device made by certain Japanese company whose name starts with “N”. Running 24.04.3 LTS currently.

EDIT: The number before “illegal instruction” keeps going up if i re-run the command

EDIT2: Looks like the kernel is 4.9.140-l4t (a customized one for tegra) and it isn’t compatible with FEX (looks like it needs 5.15)

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Hi.

I’m testing on a MinisForum MS-R1 (Cixin P1 12 cores, 64GB RAM, SSD + RADEON RX550 2GB VRAM, UBUNTU 24.04.3).

The installation was very quick in the Snap store (under 3 minutes). Logging in was seamless, Steam runs smoothly.

As for the games:

Mafia 1 5-8 FPS FullHD def settings

Lara Croft: Angel of Darkness – doesn’t start

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light – doesn’t start

Commandos 2 - Proton 4.11 – runs smoothly, mouse works

Fear 2 - Proton 5.x – starts, below 15 FPS, mouse doesn’t work

More tests coming soon, also on an Nvidia 1050 Ti 4GB VRAM

Thank you for your work!!

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Thanks for the performance report!

We’ve internally identified a couple areas where we expect to be able to gain performance improvements, which we’re currently investigating.

Regarding some of the games that are not launching - I would recommend taking a look at the protondb.com pages for those games to see if there are any quick fixes, if you have not already. I have found that even on some of my amd64 systems, I sometimes need to try out a few different suggestions there to get things working.

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For fun, I tried running it on a Raspberry Pi 5 running 24.04 and 25.10 to see if it would do anything at all. (Yeah, I know the performance would be…lacking.) Steam installs just fine, as far as I can tell. But it hangs when you try to run it saying it can’t find v3d drivers. It looks like there are v3d drivers…but I don’t know if the hardware/software meets the requirements to run. If anyone has a fix for this, I am interested.

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I tried to install on Ubuntu Touch, without success

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Once thunking can be activated (running OpenGL and Vulkan on the ARM side), I think we will be able to run it on a Pi 5. With a manual install of Fex and Steam on a Radxa Dragon Q6A Snapdragon SBC, I need more than 8GB memory to run a game. So I need swap memory on top of 8GB RAM.

Performance will be lacking, but it should be possible to run some simple games.

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+1, this is my theory as well.

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hi,

i tried to run steam on an ARM64 CPU, AMD Radeon RX-550, Ubuntu Noble (24.04).

when the steam is launching, there are some outputs:

Running query: 1 - GpuTopology

CVulkanTopology: failed create vulkan instance: -9

CVulkanTopology: failed to create vulkan instanceFailed to query vulkan gpu topology

Failed to query vulkan gpu topology

Response:

Exit code: -2

i also tried vulkaninfo, vkcube, and vkmark, everything looks correct.

however, it seems these errorrs won’t stop the starting of steam, and the steam window appeared finally.

is there any impact on games?

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I don’t think this has any impact on games. Starting Half-Life 2, I see a popup it’s processing Vulkan shaders.

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I’m also using a DGX Spark.
I tried Satisfactory, which ran very smooth even on my larger denser factories, but I don’t think its rendering quite right, I remember it looking better than this at ultra graphics.
Brotato and Factorio appear to run perfectly with no issues.

EDIT
Returnal - the opening logo videos went slo mo, but after that the game ran smooth.

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Hi.

I just provided video with few games tested on my MinisForum MS-R1 Workstation with China CixinP1 12 core ARM and dGPU ( minipc have PCIE slot ) Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti.

https://youtu.be/PsC6GXEuiOM

All comments welcome - video is in polish language but Ai Dubbing can be enabled on desktop pc Youtube.

Great work DEVS!!

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Hello! Is the Asahi Linux restriction a short-term issue? Or it could take indefinite time to be resolved?

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You need something like a 4K guest Linux kernel, as explained here: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-asahi-remix/x86-support/

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Will you also include drivers for other ARM SBC chips?

msm for Snapdragon and I think Panfrost for Mali GPUs. And some boards might have PowerVR GPUs.

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Steam uses the gpu-2404 content interface, provided by the mesa-2404 snap, we’d need a mesa snap that carries these drivers (most likely in a specific channel, like we do have the kisak/stable or asahi/stable channels for it already) so you can simply swap out the standard mesa provided to steam by one that has msm, panforst and whatnot on board …

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Not sure why I can’t edit my post anymore.
Realized my resolution was off as a result of fixing a problem i initially had setting up my spark. Back to 4k now, satisfactory looks fine, I was running it at a lower resolution.

Tested Returnal again. still runs great.
HunterXHunter Nen Impact runs great
Soul Calibur VI runs great
Vampire Survivors runs great
Dunecrawl runs great

1 Like