Go Install SteamOS on your ROG Ally Right Now

Saturday, February 7, 2026

That title probably feels strong to you and I get it, you’re like, “But Madison, you 9-foot-tall sex goddess, I bought the Ally X for Windows!” And to that I say: I’m not even 6 feet tall please get your eyes checked, but more importantly, I did too, and I’m here to tell you: it’s SO much better with SteamOS and proton.

Let me explain.

If you’re here and reading this you likely know what a ROG Ally, Steam Deck, and SteamOS are but just in case you wandered off of the streets of Blusky and are now looking around like a lost Travolta here’s the breakdown. All of these things are planets around the sun that is “gaming handhelds,” or, if you’re really new here, taking an entire gaming PC, stuffing it into a unit roughly the size of a Nintendo Switch, and then filling any remaining space with battery because boy are you gonna need it.

They are sick and awesome and sex and if you’ve never gotten one… well, that’s fair, they’re very expensive and I don’t want to assume anything about your financial situation. That said if you’re able, and interested, and like the idea of playing your favorite steam games on the go? They are all pretty fantastic options. Go to a retailer, and hold one. They have different hand feels and that’s honestly the more important aspect of how they’re gonna be for you to play on.

But today we’re talking about one of these in particular, the ASUS ROG Ally, the line of gaming handhelds, and the instructions here can apply to any of these units: Covering the Ally, the Ally X, and the Ally XBox. X-XBox? Whatever they put on the box.

And I envisioned this as more of a technical write up, describing the tweaks, and challenges, and addons, and hacks you would need to go through to get this done. However, I’m frankly astonished to say: that’s really not an issue, like, at all? There is one perma-broken feature of my Ally X now, at least at time of writing, and that’s those spiffy joystick LEDs. Yes, that’s it. At time of comment, you need the Armoury Crate application, which only runs on Windows, and ASUS is hiding the keys from Valve as to how to talk to it. But… I dunno. Pretty lights aren’t a reason, IMO, to not do this, YMMV.

But the upsides? Oh goodness, my friends, this thing runs so amazing now. I really can’t oversell this. I can run RoadCraft at full resolution, 1080p, and get about 45-60 FPS. It was unplayable under Windows! Halo Infinite still has to run at the bottom of every setting, but I can get solid 60-70 FPS now. And my other games? New Vegas literally just works, it’s astonishing (and kind of pathetic) how much better the Proton framework jives with the old girl. Snowrunner is an absolute rock steady 120FPS. Sleep and wake just works. No more fighting with Windows’ bizarre glitches, no more having to force-off the unit when Windows sleep breaks, no fighting with the controls… it’s brilliant. It’s simply brilliant.

Now the Technical Part

This is so short and I wanted to highlight that fact.

What do you need?

• Your ROG Ally (X/XBox)
• A Flash Drive (and likely a USB-C to USB-A adapter)
• A PC (you can do it with the Ally but it’s a little slow and kind of a pain)

And how do you do it?

• Get SteamOS Downloading, as it’ll take awhile. Mosey on over here and grab it from the men themselves.
• Download the Rufus Utility here
• Use Rufus to write the recovery image to the USB. It’s all very self explanatory, pick the image and pick the flash drive.
• Once you’re ready, grab your Ally, plug in the drive, and restart it. As the logo appears, hold volume-down until the BIOS screen opens up. In there:
  • Disable Secure Boot (this is part of Windows’ DRM, SteamOS does not need it)
  • Select the flash drive as the boot device. (If it doesn’t appear and you’re using an adapter, flip it over. Some adapters only have data lines in one direction)
• Apply the BIOS settings, reboot, and let it boot into SteamOS.
• You’ll eventually get a Kubuntu desktop with several icons. Incredibly awesomely, the touch screen does work here, so double-tap to restore SteamOS.
• Make a cocktail of your choice. Reflect on your excellent decision to do this.
• The device will restart. You’ll provide your wifi, use your phone to sign in to Steam. Now put it back down.
• Reflect further. Second cocktail is optional.
• The device will restart a couple more times to apply updates, then you’ll be ready to go.
• Download games. Play them. Further cocktails advised.

That’s it.

That’s it?

Yeah that’s it, works great. I scaled down the UI some for the desktop.

“But Madison, like you I have put an unhealthy amount of time into Fallout 4, and how will I get my huge breasts Chinese Assault Rifle mod back in?”

Relax. Vortex gets in this club.

If you want the Vortex mod manager on here, use Pikdum’s script (and star his repo dude did awesome work!) to get it. It handles the entire process save for one step: you’ll have to make a staging folder on your game SSD, which will appear as drive J: when Vortex asks for one. I just make it J:/vortexstaging.

Anti-climactic? Download and play a game on it, that’s the climax. :D

- Madison