Chrome OS to Get Steam Support, Starting with 10th-Gen Intel CPUs

Jul. 2, 2020

In its current state, Chrome OS and gaming seldom come on the same page. While there aregames that you can play on Chromebooks, the catalog doesn’t come anywhere close to what you get with Windows PCs. In January this year,Android Policereported Google’s plans to bringofficial Steam support for Chromebooks, and now,9to5Googlehas found some evidence.

While you can technicallyinstall and play steam games on a Chromebookright now, thanks toLinux supportandGPU acceleration, the process to enable and get started is not as seamless as a general user would expect.

Instead of scaling up its existing Linux project “Crostini” (codename), the Chrome OS development team is working to add a new Linux virtual machine for Chrome OS codenamed “Borealis”. Borealis apparentlyincludes a pre-installed copy of Steam.

The majordifference between Crostini and Borealis is that the former is based on Debian, while the latter is based on Ubuntu. Although Borealis is a full-fledged Linux distro at this moment, we could expect it to get integrated with Chrome OS.

As9to5Googlepoints out, the transition is probably because of Valve, the company that developed Steam. Besides Steam, Valve developed Proton – a compatibility layer based on Wine that enablesSteam gaming on Linux. Moreover, Proton favors Ubuntu over other Linux distributions.

Another code change inChromium Gerrithints that the first wave of Chromebooks using this new implementation based on Ubuntu would include10th generation Intel CPUs. This includes machines like theSamsung Galaxy Chromebook.

It seems unlikely that Google would allow Crostini (current Linux implementation) and Borealis to coexist. Chances are, the company may replace Crostini with Borealis going forward. Either way, this would enable a consumer-friendly gaming experience for those interested to play what Steam has to offer.

Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.