Steam Link hub is a platform for connecting and managing Steam accounts.
Steam Link hub is a platform for connecting and managing Steam accounts.
While watching Linus' live stream of Hollow Knight, it seemed enjoyable and I decided to purchase it. Because it relies on a controller, it would make an excellent game for my entertainment center. I own an industrial fanless PC equipped with an Atom E3950 and 8GB RAM, currently unused, and I was curious about its potential as a Steam hub. Although it likely won’t be powerful enough to run SteamOS natively or play games in full control mode, it might function as a Steam Link box. It already has a Windows 10 setup, but I considered clearing the drive and installing Linux via the SteamLink app to reduce system load. Alternatively, I thought about installing SteamOS directly on the machine and streaming games from my PC that demand more processing power. Anyone have insights on this? It would help to clarify my approach before diving into this project.
Just set up Steam and log in on both devices, make sure game streaming is active on the gaming PC, and you should see the games appear on the other machine. If your gaming PC uses an Nvidia card, pairing Nvidia Gamestream/Sunshine with Moonlight on the remote seems to boost performance a bit while still working well together.
I don’t have any experience with SteamOS. What I meant was about having Steam on Windows. You don’t need SteamOS to stream games locally—just install it for Windows and enable game streaming on both PCs. The remote PC will list all the games installed on the gaming PCs. Yes, if you run games locally, they’ll appear together. In fact, the prominent green/blue button changes to “Stream” when you’re not playing a local game.
I believe this response covers nearly everything you needed. I’ll try it out and label it as the solution if it succeeds. It seems SteamOS functions similarly to a standard Linux setup with the Steam client, so based on your description, I’ll run it and see if it works. Looks like a worthwhile effort!
I've used SteamOS before, though not as extensively as now. The version I tried about a month ago is far from what's available on the Steam Decks. It seems that release hasn't happened yet. SteamOS for desktop isn't very impressive—especially compared to what I experienced previously. For most tasks, I'd suggest Windows if you're just linking to Steam or using a standard Linux distro that supports Proton. I think both devices need to run the same OS, and I've only managed to get it working between Windows PCs so far.
Thank you for the notification. It would have been a real hassle if I had reinstalled everything and later realized I could have left Windows running instead.