Latest SteamOS Beta Now Includes Ntsync Kernel Driver | Hacker News Reader

Latest SteamOS Beta Now Includes Ntsync Kernel Driver

phoronix.com

106 pointsLorenDB41 comments

If anyone from Valve is reading this, my biggest wishlist from Steam OS is a proper general purpose browsing tab. Please make it happen ..

I currently use that web browser from Decky loader, but that keeps breaking so often. Plus it would be nice to have something that i can login my YouTube, Netflix etc.. accounts ..

What's wrong with Desktop mode?

Having to switch to desktop mode and back.

It's not exactly rocket science to add a "browser app" to the Steam system to use certain web sites in an appliance-ish mode, but it's not great for general purpose browsing.

A slightly more advanced browser frontend that offered an experience comparable to Edge on Xbox would be very nice.

Decky warns that the Steam's built in browser is outdated and may have security vulnerability. I suppose properly maintaining a browser is a burden.

Did you try loading the browser as a non-game application?

To be honest, I primarily do my browsing offline, and I installed https://localsend.org using Flatpak to move files to/from the Steam Deck. It works amazingly well.

You can install Microsoft Edge from Flathub. (And I think maybe Chrome too?) Edge has the advantage that XBox Cloud Gaming works on it.

Why Edge? You can get Firefox from Flathub, and it's a better browser.

“Better” is debatable.

With Google doing everything in its power to end ad blocking, I’ve made a real attempt to switch to Firefox and Firefox-based browsers. I unpinned Chrome from my taskbar and only popped into it when I needed to. Over the span of a couple months, eventually the Chrome window never got closed… Eventually it was pinned to my taskbar again… And at some point it was my default browser again and all I was using.

I don’t like how Firefox handles tab groups, I don’t want to rely on extensions to fix that, I don’t like their dev tools, I don’t like how their private window shortcut is different from what every other browser uses with no way to change it, I personally think it’s ugly, I could go on.

I tried alternatives like Zen but I end up not liking their weird ideas of how a browser should be used, and trusting small FOSS project maintainers to ship a stable, secure browser has not been great in my experience.

Chrome is boring and reliable which is really what I want. Edge is a slightly worse version of it due to Microsoft incompetence/lack of taste but I’d still rather use that than Firefox.

The Steam Deck is a gaming device.

Flathub has all the major browsers. Chrome, Chromium, Firefox, Vivaldi, Brave, Floorp, etc... and Edge.

Install in Desktop mode, then add as a “non steam game”

https://beebom.com/how-install-google-chrome-steam-deck/

This works for any cloud gaming services too. Another hack is putting a link in your profile comments.

Explanation of what this kernel API does and why it's beneficial:

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/f4cc1a38-1441-62f8-47e4-0c67f5a...

I could not pass the making sure you are not a bot on an airline flight mid Atlantic. So stupid.

https://archive.is/c0k7v

weird, i’ve passed plenty of these on flights.

Just change your User-Agent to one that doesn't include Mozilla and you will bypass it. There is a WebExtension that can do that automatically for Anubis sites, or you can just do it more generally.

that was an awesome read; so professional/ organized (and super interesting)... kind of makes me want to work at codeweavers ^_^

Ya masterfully crafted

BTW, this driver is genuinely useful even for Linux code. WaitForMultipleObjects is super-helpful if you want to do sane thread cancellation without jumping through POSIX hoops.

Can you please explain like 5 year old what it means to players?

Games that have problems with the previous approach might have hitches or stalls, though it could manifest in many ways.

Edit: I am running a kernel with it on, as well as Proton-CachyOS which has it opt-in. I have yet to see it make an improvement of any kind. Maybe it might help on lower-spec hardware such as the Deck.

You likely won't see any improvement aside of resolving some bugs in some very specific edge cases that you may have never stumbled on personally.

Cyberpunk 2077 used to stall on shutdown with esync. No such problem with ntsync.

From my reading, it will be replacing a user-space sync emulation handler with a kernel-space sync module. Generally, kernel space will be faster or more efficient than user space. Whether this matters in any appreciable way (more than 1% improvement) in reality will have to be seen.

It's more that FSync was close to but subtly different from the Windows synchronization primitives when used in certain specific ways and NTSync is a 100% accurate implementation of those same exact Windows synchronization primitives. It should resolve hitching and other minor issues in older games, especially.

Basically it will have no performance improvement, in some cases minor degradation, but it resolves some compatibility issues with older multi-threaded programs.

I don't understand. You say it's no perf improvement yet it resolves hitching. Hitching to me is a pretty clear perf problem.

It's not a performance improvement, it's fixing a performance regression (compared to the Windows baseline).

Just reading about it now, it implements some system calls from Windows NT normally emulated via Proton in user-space to the kernel which should reduce overhead. Very cool.

Sounds like it would be useful for that new Linux/Win32 user space distribution.

The Linux Subsystem for Windows

I think he meant the recent distro called Loss32.

That absolutely makes sense. Thanks for a quick TLDR!

Better performance and less bugs.

For more info, see here, including a link to Youtube video with more details: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20241213193511.457338-1-zfigura...

Yeah, the page could use some inline context.

It does link to this page, which has a bit more info and links to further info. Not at all 5-year-old level, but should help: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.14-NTSYNC-Driver-Ready

Faster games

Nice. I've been using ntsync with Wine for a while since Wine merged the support. It works better than esync, especially for Cyberpunk 2077.

Cookie Banner too annoying, won’t read.

Still no 64 bit steam client?

Nope, the client is now 64bit as of Dec 19th 2025 https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail....

Unless you mean linux client, but that is presumably coming at some point now that the windows client is 64bit.

TIL thanks!

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