Valve pushes Arch toward official Arm64 support

Valve and Collabora are working on an Arm64 port of Arch Linux for the upcoming Steam Frame VR headset, in a move that could eventually bring official Arm64 support to upstream Arch for the first time.

Arch Linux officially supports x86-64 only. As its homepage puts it: “Currently we have official packages optimized for the x86-64 architecture.” The new port, called Holo Core, is being developed first as the basis for the Steam Frame operating system, but the longer-term goal is broader: building Arm64 support directly into Arch’s original PKGBUILD scripts so packages can target both x86-64 and Arm64.

That would set it apart from existing alternatives. Arch Linux ARM, or ALARM, already supports 61 Arm devices, including the Raspberry Pi 2, 3, 4, and Zero 2, but it remains an independent downstream project rather than an official Arch variant. Its GitHub repository uses specially modified PKGBUILD scripts to produce Arm packages instead of relying on upstream support.

The work was rumored in May, and it ties directly to Valve’s next hardware platform. The Steam Frame, first reported in November, will not use the AMD CPUs found in the current Steam Deck and the forthcoming Steam Machine. Instead, its listed silicon is a “4 nm Snapdragon® 8 Gen 3.” Valve says the headset is designed for streaming games and media from other devices, but it will also support local playback.

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That hardware shift helps explain Valve’s investment in FEX, the emulation engine for running x86 binaries on Arm. Getting SteamOS 3 onto Arm64 also means major plumbing work: updating the build system and CI pipeline, then rebuilding thousands of packages and dependencies.

The timing matters because Arch is already dominant among Linux gamers on Steam. According to the June 2026 Steam Survey, Steam OS Holo 64-bit accounts for 22.83 percent of Steam Linux usage, with CachyOS at 14.03 percent. Those are the only two Linux distributions in double digits, and Arch-based distros combined represent 47.49 percent of Steam Linux usage.

There is no installable image yet, but Collabora has released preview binaries, source packages, and a development container. For developers using an x86 host, the simplest way to try it is through the container with QEMU emulation.