A guide covering Steam Deck including the applications and tools that will make you a better and more efficient with your Steam Deck device.
Note: You can easily convert this markdown file to a PDF in VSCode using this handy extension Markdown PDF or the handy online tool AnyConv.
Note 2: This guide will constantly be updated with new info as becomes available and please feel to make an issue if you think something should be added.
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Getting Started with the Steam Deck
- Steam Deck Accessories
- Steam Deck Development
- SteamDB
- Getting Software
- Other Linux Operating Systems for the Steam Deck
- Getting Windows 10 or 11 on the Steam Deck
- Improving Battery Life
- Tools to Copy/Transfer files to your Steam Deck
- Running Android Apps on your Steam Deck
- Steam Deck Power Tools
- Steam Tinker Launch
- RetroDECK
- Adding Btrfs on Steam Deck
- Plugin Loader for Steam Deck
Steam Deck is a handheld gaming computer developed by Valve Corporation in cooperation with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). It allows users to play their entire Steam game library but can be modified by the user to run other gaming storefronts or applications. The Steam Deck started shipping in February 2022.
Steam Deck Teardown by Jeff Suovanen | iFixit
Steam Deck Hardware Review by Linus Tech Tips
Steam Deck Unboxing Experience by Linus Tech Tips
Steam Deck Tear Down by Linus Tech Tips
Steam Deck device. Source: Steam Deck
Steam OS 3.0 is an immutable Operating System(OS) using the KDE Plasma desktop. This allows you to install applications in containers using Flatpak, rather than onto the root filesystem. This means not only that the installation of applications is isolated from the core filesystem, but also that the ability for malicious applications to compromise/break your system is significantly reduced.
Steam Deck Specs:
Operating system: SteamOS 3.0 based on ArchLinux.
System on a chip (SoC): AMD custom APU.
CPU: Zen 2, 4-core, 8-threads, variable frequency @ 2.4–3.5 GHz.
Memory: 16 GB LPDDR5 @ 5500 MT/s.
Storage Options:
- Base model: 64 GB eMMC for $399(US).
- Mid model: 256 GB NVMe SSD for $529(US).
- Top model: 512 GB NVMe SSD for $649(US).
All models use M.2 2230 interface.
Removable Storage: microSD supports up to 2TB of additional storage for games.
Display: 7-inch, 1280 × 800 LCD, native 800p @ 60Hz.
Docked: Up to 8K @ 60Hz or 4K @ 120Hz.
Graphics: RDNA 2 with 8 CUs, variable frequency @ 1.0–1.6 GHz.
PROJECT Killswitch is a custom protective case for the Steam Deck designed by dbrand.
Front
Back
NexDock is an accessory with a HDMI-in port and Type-C cable NexDock that turns the Steam Deck into a fully functional computer.
NexDock 2-in-1. Source: NexDock
Glass Sceen Protector for Steam Deck
SanDisk 1TB MicroSD Card on Amazon
Samsung 512GB EVO Select MicroSD Card on Amazon
Anker 45w Ultra Slim Charging PowerPort
Quick Links to Development Resources
Steamworks is a free suite of tools available to any developer to use in their game or software on Steam and the Steam Deck.
Steam Hardware GitLab Repo is a repository that contains CAD files for the external shell (surface topology) of Steam Deck, under a Creative Commons license. This includes an STP model, STL model, and drawings (DWG) for reference.
Dynamic Cloud Sync is a tool that Steam will use to automatically upload all modified save game data to the cloud prior to the device entering sleep mode. Users can then resume their game on any PC, laptop or other device. Steam will also automatically download any save game changes when users return to their Steam Deck and wake up the device.
Steam Cloud is a tool that provides an easy and transparent remote file storage system for your game. Files specified in the Auto-Cloud configuration or written to disk (created, modified, deleted, etc.) using the Cloud API will automatically be replicated to the Steam servers after the game exits. If the user changes computers, the files are automatically downloaded to the new computer prior to the game launching. The game can then access the files by reading them through the Cloud API or reading them directly from disk as usual. Avoid machine specific configurations such as video settings.
Gamescope is a SteamOS session micro-compositing window manager formerly known as steamcompmgr.
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is an open source, high-quality solution for producing high resolution frames from lower resolution inputs. FSR enables “practical performance” for costly render operations, such as hardware ray tracing for the AMD RDNA™ and AMD RDNA™ 2 architectures.
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 2.0 is an open source, high-quality solution for producing high resolution frames from lower resolution inputs. It uses temporal data and optimized anti-aliasing to boost framerates in supported games while delivering similar or better image quality than native resolution without requiring dedicated machine learning hardware. AMD FSR 2.0 will be available some time Q2 2022.
MangoHud is a Vulkan and OpenGL overlay for monitoring FPS, temperatures, CPU/GPU load and more.
GOverlay is an open source project aimed to create a Graphical UI to manage Vulkan/OpenGL overlays. It is still in early development.
ReplaySorcery is an open-source, instant-replay solution for Linux.
Luxtorpeda is a Steam Play compatibility tool to run games using native Linux engines.
Deck Verified is a program that reviews games in Steam's catalog verifying their compatibility with the Steam Deck. So when you visit your Library on Steam Deck, you’ll find a compatibility badge on each title, reflecting the kind of experience you can expect when playing each game on Steam Deck.
Deck Verified Program Categories. Source: Steam Deck
Steam Library Compatibility Badges for Games. Source: Steam Deck
SteamDB is a database of everything on Steam. Important note SteamDB is a hobby project and is not affiliated with Valve or Steam.
Discover is an software center that let's you manage software from multiple sources, including your operating system's software repository, Flatpak repos, the Snap store, or even AppImages from store.kde.org. Also, Discover allows you to find, install, and manage add-ons for Plasma and all your favorite KDE apps.
KDE Plasma Discover App Store
Flathub is an app store and build service for hundreds of apps which can be easily installed on any Linux distribution. Browse the apps online, from your app center or the command line.
Flathub App Store
Note: Flathub app search will be integrated in Discover, if you want to limit the app search to Flathub you can mark Flatpak as default by clicking on the star.
Flatseal is a graphical utility to review and modify permissions from your Flatpak applications. Get it on Flathub store.
HoloISO is a SteamOS 3 (Holo) archiso configuration. It aims to bring the Steam Deck's Holo OS into a generic, installable format, and provide a close-to-official SteamOS experience.
HoloISO Desktop. Credit: theVakhovskeIsTaken
Nobara Project is an unofficial Fedora Linux Spin that's tailored for Gaming. It adds the necessary packages/tools (such as Lutris and ProtonUp-Qt), and fixes issues to make Fedora awesome for gaming. This project is developed and maintained by Thomas Crider AKA Glorious Eggroll.
WinesapOS is a project developed by LukeShortCloud that provides an easy to setup installation of Linux. It can be used on a flash drive, SD card, HDD, SSD, NVMe, or any other storage device. The release images are based on SteamOS 3 and the KDE Plasma desktop environment to align with what Valve's Steam Deck uses.
WineapOS Desktop. Credit: LukeShortCloud
ArchTitus created by ChrisTitusTech
Recovery instructions for getting back to the default Steam Deck OS.
Steam Deck - How To Get The Best Battery Life In Games! | The Phawx YouTube
auto-cpufreq is an automatic CPU speed & power optimizer for Linux based on active monitoring of laptop's battery state, CPU usage, CPU temperature and system load. Ultimately allowing you to improve battery life without making any compromises.
Power-Control-Panel is a software tool that allows easy change of TDP on windows handheld devices(including Steam Deck). Features include:
- Configurable profiles with charger vs battery values -xinput TDP change capability (hold LB, RB, and a dpad direction)
- Assign an exe to a profile to auto start when exe opens
- Auto startup at logon to system tray
- Touch friendly interface, keyboard (mostly) not required.
Power Control App | Project-SBC YouTube
KDE Connect is a tool that lets you easily link up your phone to your computer, your computer to your tablet; or your computer to your Steam Deck device. It can be used to share files across devices, read and send SMS directly from your laptop, and lock up your computer remotely.
Warpinator is a free, open-source tool for sending and receiving files between computers that are on the same network. Warpinator Flatpak
FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. FileZilla Flatpak
Dragit is an application for intuitive file sharing between devices. It's useful for when you want to send file from one computer to another with minimal effort. Dragit automatically detects devices in the local network with help of mDNS protocol and allows you to send file immediately. Dragit Flatpak
WinFsp is a set of software components for Windows computers that allows the creation of user mode file systems. In this sense it is similar to FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace), which provides the same functionality on UNIX-like computers.
SSHFS-Win is a minimal port of SSHFS to Windows. Looking under the hood it uses Cygwin for the POSIX environment and WinFsp for the FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) functionality.
RiftShare is a cross platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux) file sharing tool that supports fully encrypted transfers both on the local network and off network using a simple passphrase. RiftShare uses magic-wormhole under the hood and is compatible with other magic-wormhole clients. It is also fully open source and licensed under the GPLv3. RiftShare Flatpak
Waydroid is a container-based approach to boot a full Android system on a regular Linux system. Make sure to checkout the Waydroid Arch wiki page.
Anbox is a container-based software for running a full Android system on Linux distributions. Make sure to checkout the Anbox Arch wiki page.
Steam Deck PowerTools is a tool that provides system tweaks for power users.
- Enable & disable CPU threads & SMT
- Set CPU max frequency and toggle boost
- Set some GPU power parameters (fastPPT & slowPPT)
- Set the fan RPM (unsupported on SteamOS beta)
- Display supplementary battery info
- Keep settings between restarts (stored in ~/.config/powertools.json)
Steam Tinker Launch is a Linux wrapper tool for use with the Steam client which allows customizing and start tools and options for games quickly on the fly.
RetroDECK is a tool that brings an environment to catalog and play your retro games directly from SteamOS and it's tailored specifically for the Steam Deck. It's powered by EmulationStation Desktop Edition, which uses RetroArch and other standalone emulators to allow you to import and play your favorite retro (and even non-retro) games in a tidy environment without flooding your Steam library.
Warning: This project is still experimental and buggy so this is only recommended for advanced users!
Btrfdeck is a project that will help get you from using ext4 on your Steam Deck's microSD card, to Btrfs.
Plugin Loader is a plugin loader tool for the Steam Deck.
Features:
- Clean injecting and loading of one or more plugins.
- Persistent, meaning it doesn't need to be reinstalled after every system update.
- Allows 2-way communication between the plugins and the loader.
- Allows plugins to define python functions and run them from javascript.
- Allows plugins to make fetch calls, bypassing cors completely.
Steam Remote Play Together is a steam service that let's you share your Steam local multi-player games with friends over the internet, for free. Using Remote Play Together, one player owns and runs the game, then up to four players can join.
Steam Link app is available free of charge, streaming your Steam PC games to phones, tablets, and TV.
Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this.
ProtonUp-Qt is a tool to install and manage Proton-GE and Luxtorpeda for Steam and Wine-GE for Lutris with this graphical user interface. Based on AUNaseef's ProtonUp, made with Python 3 and Qt 6.
ProtonDB is a collection of over 100,000 gaming reports from other gamers as they test games with Proton on Linux and provide aggregate scores of how well games perform. A growing pool of suggestions provides tweaks that you can try to get games working while Proton continues development. In addition to this, you may explore the Steam game catalog on this site to browse and discover a wide range of titles that were previously unavailable for use on Linux.
Lutris is a gaming client for Linux. It gives you access to all your video games with the exception of the current console generation. Also, integrates nicely with other stores like GOG, Steam, Battle.net, Origin, Ubisoft Connect and many other sources that allow you to import your existing game library and community maintained install scripts give you a completely automated setup.
GameHub is a unified library for all your games. It allows you to store your games from different platforms into one program to make it easier for you to manage your games.
GameHub supports:
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native games for Linux
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multiple compatibility layers:
- Wine
- Proton
- DOSBox
- RetroArch
- ScummVM
- WineWrap — a set of preconfigured wrappers for supported games;
- custom emulators
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multiple game platforms:
Heroic is an Open Source Game Launcher for Linux, Windows and macOS (for both Native and Windows Games using Crossover). It supports launching games from the Epic Games Store using Legendary, a CLI alternative to the Epic Games Launcher. Flatpak for Heroic Games Launcher
Epic Games Store is a digital video game storefront for Microsoft Windows and macOS, operated by Epic Games.
Geforce NOW is NVIDIA's Cloud Gaming Service.
Moonlight Game Streaming is a program that let you stream from your PC games over the Internet with no configuration required. Stream from almost any device, whether you're in another room or miles away from your gaming rig.
Chiaki is a Free and Open Source Software Client for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 Remote Play for Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Android, macOS, Windows, Nintendo Switch and potentially even more platforms. Chiaki Flatpak
Xbox Cloud Gaming is Microsoft's cloud-based Xbox game-streaming technology (currently in Beta). Play games like Forza Horizon 4, Halo 5: Guardians, Gears of War 4, Sea of Thieves, Cuphead, Red Dead Redemption 2, and 100+ other games on your mobile device or Chrome web browser. Xbox Cloud Gaming does require an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription.
Stadia is Google's gaming platform that lets you instantly play your favorite video games on screens you already own. Game on TVs with Chromecast with Google TV, laptops, desktops, tablets or compatible phones. Stadia Pro is a subscription($9.99 per month) that unlocks a growing collection of free games to play on Stadia.
Parsec is a video game streaming platform, which offers a wide variety of games and genres to choose from and provides a high-quality and smooth gameplay. SParsec is developed in order to provide a high-quality smooth gameplay, same time to be free of all ads and in-game purchases.
Amazon Luna is Amazon's Cloud Gaming Service. Amazon Luna is Compatible/Supported on a vartiey of Devices and Browsers.
EmuDeck is a tool that takes care of everything for your retrogaming needs from RetroArch Configuration, Bezels, Gamepad Configuration for GameCube, Wii, Citra, SNES, etc. EmuDeck will even install EmulationStation Desktop Edition and carry over all their custom configurations and no need to configure ROM paths or anything.
EmulationStation Desktop Edition (ES-DE) is a frontend application for browsing and launching games from your multi-platform game collection. It's available for Unix/Linux, macOS(M1 & Intel) and Windows.
RetroPie is a frontend for emulators that allows you to turn your Raspberry Pi, ODroid C1/C2, or PC into a retro-gaming machine. It builds upon Raspbian, EmulationStation, RetroArch and many other projects to enable you to play your favourite Arcade, home-console, and classic PC games with the minimum set-up.
RetroArch is a frontend for emulators, game engines and media players. It enables you to run classic games on a wide range of computers and consoles through its slick graphical interface. Settings are also unified so configuration is done once and for all. RetroArch Flatpak
Cartridge is a self-hosted game library made with Laravel + Vue.js.
Cartridge Features
- Scan for ROM files and match with IGDB game information
- Serve ROM download links alongside game details
- Manage access to library with user creation and permissions (WIP)
- Allow users to request games (Planned)
- Play select ROMs in-browser using JS emulators (Planned)
- Track played and favorite games (even ones that aren't available for download) (Planned)
Cartridge UI
Dolphin is an emulator for two recent Nintendo video game consoles: the GameCube and the Wii. It allows PC gamers to enjoy games for these two consoles in full HD (1080p) with several enhancements: compatibility with all PC controllers, turbo speed, networked multiplayer, and even more. Dolphin Flatpak
Citra is an open-source emulator for the Nintendo 3DS capable of playing many of your favorite games. Citra Flatpak
yuzu is an experimental open-source emulator for the Nintendo Switch from the creators of Citra.Yuzu Flatpak
m64p is a Nintendo 64 Emulator. It uses mupen64plus-gui, a brand new mupen64plus frontend written in Qt5. It supports all of the things you’d expect from a frontend (savestate management, pausing, screenshots). m64p Flatpak
DeSmuME is a Nintendo DS emulator. DeSmuME Flatpak
Snes9x is a portable, freeware Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) emulator. Snes9x Flatpak
bsnes is a Super Nintendo (SNES) emulator focused on performance, features, and ease of use. bsnes flatpak
mGBA is a new emulator for running Game Boy Advance games. It aims to be faster and more accurate than many existing Game Boy Advance emulators, as well as adding features that other emulators lack. mGBA Flatpak
DOSBox is an open-source DOS emulator which primarily focuses on running DOS Games.
DOSBox Staging is a full x86 CPU emulator (independent of host architecture), capable of running DOS programs that require real or protected mode. DOSBox Staging Flatpak
Flycast is a multi-platform Sega Dreamcast, Naomi and Atomiswave emulator derived from reicast. Flycast Flatpak
PCSX2 is a PlayStation 2 'emulator', a free program that tries to replicate the PlayStation 2 console to enable you to play PS2 games on your PC. PCSX2 Flatpak
RPCS3 is an experimental open-source Sony PlayStation 3 emulator and debugger written in C++ for Windows and Linux. RPCS3 started development in May of 2011 by its founders DH and Hykem. The emulator is currently capable of running over 1800 commercial titles powered by Vulkan and OpenGL. RPCS3 Flatpak
MAME is a Arcade Machine Emulator.
xemu is an original Xbox emulator.
Xenia is an Xbox 360 Emulator.
Also checkout these subreddits for more great Game Emulators recommendations
- r/emulation
- r/emulations
- r/RetroArch
- r/RetroPie
- r/DolphinEmulator
- r/Citra
- r/cemu
- r/yuzu
- r/OpenEmu
- r/MAME
- r/EmuDev
- r/Roms
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If you would like to Donate to the Blender Project
Unreal Online Learning is a free learning platform that offers hands-on video courses and guided learning paths.
Unreal Engine Authorized Training Program
Unreal Engine Training & Simulation
Getting Started with DirectX 12 Ultimate
Getting Started with Apple Metal
Game Design Online Courses from Udemy
Game Design Online Courses from Skillshare
Learn Game Design with Online Courses and Classes from edX
Game Design Courses from Coursera
Game Design and Development Specialization Course from Coursera
Unreal Engine is a game engine developed by Epic Games with the world's most open and advanced real-time 3D creation tool. Continuously evolving to serve not only its original purpose as a state-of-the-art game engine, today it gives creators across industries the freedom and control to deliver cutting-edge content, interactive experiences, and immersive virtual worlds.
Unity is a cross-platform game development platform. Use Unity to build high-quality 3D and 2D games, deploy them across mobile, desktop, VR/AR, consoles or the Web, and connect with loyal and enthusiastic players and customers.
Unigine is a cross-platform game engine designed for development teams (C++/C# programmers, 3D artists) working on interactive 3D apps.
Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline.
Godot is a feature-packed, cross-platform game engine to create 2D and 3D games from a unified interface. It provides a comprehensive set of common tools, so that users can focus on making games without having to reinvent the wheel. Games can be exported in one click to a number of platforms, including the major desktop platforms (Linux, Mac OSX, Windows) as well as mobile (Android, iOS) and web-based (HTML5) platforms.
Panda3D is a game engine, a framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C++ programs, developed by Disney and CMU. Panda3D is open-source and free for any purpose, including commercial ventures.
Source 2 is a 3D video game engine in development by Valve as a successor to Source. It is used in Dota 2, Artifact, Dota Underlords, parts of The Lab, SteamVR Home, and Half-Life: Alyx.
Havok is a middleware software suite that provides a realistic physics engine component and related functions to video games. It is supported and optimized across all major platforms, including Nintendo Switch, PlayStation®, Stadia, and Xbox. Along with integrations for Unity and Unreal Engine and are used in countless proprietary game engines.
AutoDesk 3ds Max is a professional software program for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, and visualization. 3ds Max allows you to create stunning game environments, design visualizations, and virtual reality experiences.
Houdini is a 3D procedural software for modeling, rigging, animation, VFX, look development, lighting and rendering in film, TV, advertising and video game pipelines.
A-Frame is a web framework for building virtual reality experiences in WebVR with HTML and Entity-Component. A-Frame works on Vive, Rift, desktop, mobile platforms.
AppGameKit is a powerful game development engine, ideal for Hobbyist and Indie developers. Where you can start coding in the easy to learn AppGameKit BASIC or use the libraries in C++ & XCode.
Open Graphics Library(OpenGL) is an API used acrossed mulitple programming languages and platforms for hardware-accelerated rendering of 2D/3D vector graphics currently developed by the Khronos Group.
Open Computing Language (OpenCL) is an open standard for parallel programming of heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, and other hardware accelerators found in supercomputers, cloud servers, personal computers, mobile devices and embedded platforms.
OpenGL Shading Language(GLSL) is a High Level Shading Language based on the C-style language, so it covers most of the features a user would expect with such a language. Such as control structures (for-loops, if-else statements, etc) exist in GLSL, including the switch statement.
High Level Shading Language(HLSL) is the High Level Shading Language for DirectX. Using HLSL, the user can create C-like programmable shaders for the Direct3D pipeline. HLSL was first created with DirectX 9 to set up the programmable 3D pipeline.
DirectX 12 Ultimate is an API(for high performance 2D & 3D graphics) from Microsoft. DirectX 12 Ultimate brings support for ray tracing, mesh shaders, variable rate shading, and sampler feedback. Available in Windows 2004 version(May 2020 Update).
Vulkan is a modern cross-platform graphics and compute API that provides high-efficiency, cross-platform access to modern GPUs used in a wide variety of devices from PCs and consoles to mobile phones and embedded platforms. Vulkan is currently in development by the Khronos Group consortium.
Mesa 3D Graphics Library is a project began as an open-source implementation of the OpenGL specification. A system for rendering interactive 3D graphics. Mesa ties into several other open-source projects: the Direct Rendering Infrastructure, X.org, and Wayland to provide OpenGL support on Linux, FreeBSD, and other operating systems.
OpenGL ES is the mobile subset of OpenGL. It's supported on all major mobile platforms, and is also the base for WebGL.
OpenCL is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, FPGAs and other processors or hardware accelerators.
EGL is an interface between Khronos rendering APIs such as OpenGL or OpenVG and the underlying native platform window system.
VDPAU is the Video Decode and Presentation API for UNIX. It provides an interface to video decode acceleration and presentation hardware present in modern GPUs.
VA API is an open-source library and API specification, which provides access to graphics hardware acceleration capabilities for video processing.
XvMC is an extension of the X video extension (Xv) for the X Window System. The XvMC API allows video programs to offload portions of the video decoding process to the GPU hardware.
AMD Radeon ProRender is a powerful physically-based rendering engine that enables creative professionals to produce stunningly photorealistic images on virtually any GPU, any CPU, and any OS in over a dozen leading digital content creation and CAD applications.
NVIDIA Omniverse is a powerful, multi-GPU, real-time simulation and collaboration platform for 3D production pipelines based on Pixar's Universal Scene Description and NVIDIA RTX.
LibGDX is a cross-platform Java game development framework based on OpenGL (ES) that works on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android, your WebGL enabled browser and iOS.
cocos2d-x is a multi-platform framework for building 2d games, interactive books, demos and other graphical applications. It is based on cocos2d-iphone, but instead of using Objective-C, it uses C++. It works on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows and Linux.
MonoGame is a framework for creating powerful cross-platform games. The spiritual successor to XNA with thousands of titles shipped across desktop, mobile, and console platforms. MonoGame is a fully managed .NET open source game framework without any black boxes.
Three.js is a cross-browser JavaScript library and application programming interface used to create and display animated 3D computer graphics in a web browser using WebGL.
Superpowers is a downloadable HTML5 app for real-time collaborative projects . You can use it solo like a regular offline game maker, or setup a password and let friends join in on your project through their Web browser.
URHO3D is a free lightweight, cross-platform 2D and 3D game engine implemented in C++ and released under the MIT license. Greatly inspired by OGRE and Horde3D.
Vivox is a voice & text chat platform that's trusted by the world's biggest gaming brands and titles such as Fortnite, PUBG, League of Legends, and Rainbow Six Siege.
HGIG is a volunteer group of companies from the game and TV display industries that meet to specify and make available for the public guidelines to improve consumer gaming experiences in HDR.
GameBlocks is a Server Side Anti-Cheat & Middleware software.
Vulkan® is a modern cross-platform graphics and compute API that provides high-efficiency, cross-platform access to modern GPUs used in a wide variety of devices from PCs and consoles to mobile phones and embedded platforms. Vulkan is currently in development by the Khronos consortium.
HLSL to SPIR-V Feature Mapping Manual
Vulkan GLSL Ray Tracing Emulator Tutorial
Vulkan SDK is a set of tools that enables Vulkan developers to develop Vulkan applications.
SPIR-V is a set of tools that enables high-level language front-ends to emit programs in a standardized intermediate form to be ingested by Vulkan, OpenGL or OpenCL drivers. It eliminates the need for high-level language front-end compilers in device drivers, significantly reducing driver complexity, enables a broad range of language and framework front-ends to run on diverse hardware architectures and encourages a vibrant ecosystem of open source analysis, porting, debug and optimization tools.
SPIRV-Reflect is a lightweight library that provides a C/C++ reflection API for SPIR-V shader bytecode in Vulkan applications.
Vulkan® Tools is a project that provides Khronos Group's official Vulkan Tools and Utilities for Windows, Linux, Android, and macOS.
Vulkan-Hpp is a API that provides a header only C++ bindings for the Vulkan C API to improve the developers Vulkan experience without introducing CPU runtime cost. It adds features like type safety for enums and bitfields, STL container support, exceptions and simple enumerations.
Vulkan® Memory Allocator (VMA) is a library that provides a simple and easy to integrate API to help you allocate memory for Vulkan® buffer and image storage.
AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan® is an open-source Vulkan driver for AMD Radeon™ graphics adapters on Linux®.
NVIDIA® Nsight™ Visual Studio Edition is an application development environment for heterogeneous platforms which brings GPU computing into Microsoft Visual Studio. NVIDIA Nsight™ VSE allows you to build and debug integrated GPU kernels and native CPU code as well as inspect the state of the GPU and memory.
Radeon™ GPU Profiler is a performance tool that can be used by developers to optimize DirectX®12, Vulkan® and OpenCL™ applications for AMD RDNA™ and GCN hardware.
Radeon™ GPU Analyzer is a compiler and code analysis tool for Vulkan®, DirectX®, OpenGL® and OpenCL™.
Radeon™ Memory Visualizer (RMV) is a tool provided by AMD for use by game engine developers. It allows engineers to examine, diagnose, and understand the GPU memory management within their projects.
DXVK is a Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 9/10/11 which allows running 3D applications on Linux using Wine.
MoltenVK is an implementation of Vulkan running on iOS and macOS using Apple's Metal graphics framework.
RenderDoc is a stand-alone graphics debugger that allows quick and easy single-frame capture and detailed introspection of any application using Vulkan, D3D11, OpenGL & OpenGL ES or D3D12 across Windows, Linux, Android, Stadia, or Nintendo Switch™.
PerfDoc is a cross-platform Vulkan layer which checks Vulkan applications for best practices on Arm Mali devices.
GLFW is an Open Source, multi-platform library for OpenGL, OpenGL ES and Vulkan application development. It provides a simple, platform-independent API for creating windows, contexts and surfaces, reading input, handling events, etc. GLFW natively supports Windows, macOS and Linux and other Unix-like systems. On Linux both X11 and Wayland are supported.
VulkanSharp is a project provides a .NET binding for the Vulkan API.
Vortice.Vulkan is a .NET Standard 2.0 and .NET5 low-level bindings for Vulkan API.
VKD3D-Proton is a fork of VKD3D, which aims to implement the full Direct3D 12 API on top of Vulkan.
ImGui is a bloat-free graphical user interface library for C++. It outputs optimized vertex buffers that you can render anytime in your 3D-pipeline enabled application. It is fast, portable, renderer agnostic and self-contained (no external dependencies).
Ash is a very lightweight wrapper around Vulkan.
gfx-rs is a low-level, cross-platform graphics and compute abstraction library in Rust.
Vulkan.jl is a lightweight wrapper around the Vulkan graphics and compute library. It exposes abstractions over the underlying C interface, primarily geared towards developers looking for a more natural way to work with Vulkan with minimal overhead.
Microsoft DirectX® is a low-level API that handles tasks related to multimedia for game programming and video on Microsoft platforms(Windows & Xbox).
Getting Started with DirectX 12 Ultimate
Getting Started with the DirectX 12 Agility SDK
DirectX 12 and Graphics Education | YouTube
DirectX 12 Technology | NVIDIA
AMD DirectX® 12 (DX12) Technology | AMD
Top Microsoft DirectX Courses Online | Udemy
DirectX - Learn Microsoft DirectX from Scratch Course | Udemy
DirectX 11 Programming Course | Udemy
Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft; which is a feature-rich application that can be used for many aspects of software development. Visual Studio makes it easy to edit, debug, build, and publish your app. By using Microsoft software development platforms such as Windows API, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, and Windows Store.
Visual Studio Code is a code editor redefined and optimized for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications.
DirectX-Graphics-Samples is a project that contains the DirectX 12 Graphics samples that demonstrate how to build graphics intensive applications for Windows 10.
PIX on Windows is a performance tuning and debugging tool for DirectX 12 games on Windows.
DirectStorage API is an API in the DirectX family originally designed for the Velocity Architecture to Windows. The DirectX API is architected in a way that takes all this into account and maximizes performance throughout the entire pipeline from NVMe drive all the way to the GPU. It does this in several ways: by reducing per-request NVMe overhead, enabling batched many-at-a-time parallel IO requests which can be efficiently fed to the GPU, and giving games finer grain control over when they get notified of IO request completion instead of having to react to every tiny IO completion. The DirectStorage API will be available on Windows 11 PCs with NVMe SSDs, but will also be support in Windows 10 version 1909 and newer.
NVIDIA® Nsight™ Visual Studio Edition is an application development environment for heterogeneous platforms which brings GPU computing into Microsoft Visual Studio. NVIDIA Nsight™ VSE allows you to build and debug integrated GPU kernels and native CPU code as well as inspect the state of the GPU and memory.
NVRHI (NVIDIA Rendering Hardware Interface) is a library that implements a common abstraction layer over multiple graphics APIs (GAPIs): Direct3D 11, Direct3D 12, and Vulkan 1.2. It works on Windows (x64 only) and Linux (x64 and ARM64).
RTXMU - RTX Memory Utility SDK is an SDK tool that batchs up all of the acceleration structure build inputs and pass them to RTXMU which in turn will perform all the suballocation memory requests and build details including compaction. Then post build info is abstracted away by the SDK in order to do compaction under the hood. RTXMU returns acceleration structure handle ids that are used to reference the underlying memory buffers. These handle ids are passed into RTXMU to create compaction copy workloads, deallocate unused build resources or remove all memory associated with an acceleration structure.
Radeon™ GPU Profiler is a performance tool that can be used by developers to optimize DirectX®12, Vulkan® and OpenCL™ applications for AMD RDNA™ and GCN hardware.
Radeon™ GPU Analyzer is a compiler and code analysis tool for Vulkan®, DirectX®, OpenGL® and OpenCL™.
Radeon™ Memory Visualizer (RMV) is a tool provided by AMD for use by game engine developers. It allows engineers to examine, diagnose, and understand the GPU memory management within their projects.
FNA is an XNA4 reimplementation that focuses solely on developing a fully accurate XNA4 runtime for the desktop.
FAudio is an XAudio reimplementation that focuses solely on developing fully accurate DirectX Audio runtime libraries for the FNA project, including XAudio2, X3DAudio, XAPO, and XACT3.
Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware via OpenGL and Direct3D. It is used by video playback software, emulators, and popular games including Valve's award winning catalog.
DXVK is a Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 9/10/11 which allows running 3D applications on Linux using Wine.
VKD3D-Proton is a fork of VKD3D, which aims to implement the full Direct3D 12 API on top of Vulkan.
RenderDoc is a stand-alone graphics debugger that allows quick and easy single-frame capture and detailed introspection of any application using Vulkan, D3D11, OpenGL & OpenGL ES or D3D12 across Windows, Linux, Android, Stadia, or Nintendo Switch™.
Open Graphics Library(OpenGL)™ is an API used across multiple programming languages and platforms for hardware-accelerated rendering of 2D/3D vector graphics currently developed by the Khronos Group.
OpenGL ES™ is the mobile subset of OpenGL for Embedded Systems(ES). It's supported on all major mobile platforms, and is also the base for WebGL.
WebGL™ is a cross-platform, royalty-free web standard for a low-level 3D graphics API based on OpenGL ES, exposed to JavaScript via the HTML5 Canvas element.
Khronos Technology Courses and Training
Top OpenGL Courses Online | Coursera
Top OpenGL Courses Online | Udemy
OpenGL Online Training Courses | LinkedIn Learning
Getting Started with OpenGL ES
BuGLe is a debugger for Linux and other UNIX-like OSes. BuGLe combines a graphical OpenGL debugger with a selection of filters on the OpenGL command stream. The debugger allows viewing of state, textures, framebuffers and shaders, while the filters allow for logging, error checking, video capture and more.
gDEBugger is a full-featured and free debugger and profiler representing the state-of-the-art in OpenGL and OpenGL ES debugging and profiling on Windows and Linux.
KTX is a lightweight file format for delivering textures to OpenGL family APIs.
RenderDoc is a stand-alone graphics debugger that allows quick and easy single-frame capture and detailed introspection of any application using Vulkan, D3D11, OpenGL & OpenGL ES or D3D12 across Windows, Linux, Android, Stadia, or Nintendo Switch™.
NVIDIA® Nsight™ Visual Studio Edition is an application development environment for heterogeneous platforms which brings GPU computing into Microsoft Visual Studio. NVIDIA Nsight™ VSE allows you to build and debug integrated GPU kernels and native CPU code as well as inspect the state of the GPU and memory.
Radeon™ GPU Profiler is a performance tool that can be used by developers to optimize DirectX®12, Vulkan® and OpenCL™ applications for AMD RDNA™ and GCN hardware.
Radeon™ GPU Analyzer is a compiler and code analysis tool for Vulkan®, DirectX®, OpenGL® and OpenCL™.
AMD Radeon ProRender is a powerful physically-based rendering engine that enables creative professionals to produce stunningly photorealistic images on virtually any GPU, any CPU, and any OS in over a dozen leading digital content creation and CAD applications.
NVIDIA Omniverse is a powerful, multi-GPU, real-time simulation and collaboration platform for 3D production pipelines based on Pixar's Universal Scene Description and NVIDIA RTX.
MoltenGL is an implementation of the OpenGL ES 2.0 API that runs on Apple's Metal graphics framework.
EGL is an interface between Khronos rendering APIs such as OpenGL or OpenVG and the underlying native platform window system.
Equalizer is an open source programming interface and resource management system for scalable OpenGL applications. An Equalizer application can be deployed on any visualization system, from a single-pipe workstation to large scale graphics clusters.
GLee is a free cross-platform extension loading library that takes the burden off your application. GLee makes it easy to check for OpenGL extension and core version availability, automatically setting up the entry points with no effort on your part.
GLEW is an open-source cross-platform extension loading library with thread-safe support for multiple rendering contexts and automatic code generation capability. GLEW provides easy-to-use and efficient methods for checking OpenGL extensions and core functionality.
GLUS is an open-source C library, which provides a hardware and operating system abstraction plus many functions usually needed for graphics programming using OpenGL, OpenGL ES or OpenVG.
OpenGL Mathematics (GLM) is a C++ mathematics library for 3D software based on the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) specification.
libktx is a library of functions(part of the KTX tool set) for writing KTX format files and instantiating GL textures from them.
OpenSceneGraph is a high-level 3D graphics toolkit exposing OpenGL's capabilities while providing many capabilities of its own. OpenSceneGraph boasts a large user community and has been employed for visual simulation, games, virtual reality, scientific visualization, and modeling.
Mesa 3D Graphics Library is a project that began as an open-source implementation of the OpenGL specification. A system for rendering interactive 3D graphics. Mesa ties into several other open-source projects: the Direct Rendering Infrastructure, X.org, and Wayland to provide OpenGL support on Linux, FreeBSD, and other operating systems.
Wayland is a protocol for a compositor to talk to its clients as well as a C library implementation of that protocol. The compositor can be a standalone display server running on Linux kernel modesetting and evdev input devices, an X application, or a Wayland client itself.
Sotfware Toolkits that have Wayland support right now
Contribution instructions for Wayland
Contribution instructions for Weston
WSLG: X11 and Wayland Applications in Windows Subsystem for Linux(WSL2)
Qt Wayland Compositor Examples
The Wayland Display Server on Fedora Docs
Wayland features on Fedora Project Wiki
KWin/Wayland on KDE Community Wiki
Wayland Desktop Landscape on Gentoo Wiki
Wayland in Void Linux Handbook
Weston is a lightweight and functional Wayland compositor.
XWayland is an X Server running as a Wayland client(for backwards compatibility), allowing the Xorg server can be modified to use wayland input devices for input and forward either the root window or individual top-level windows as wayland surfaces.
KWin is the window manager for the KDE Plasma Desktop. It gives you complete control over your windows, making sure they're not in the way but aid you in your task. It paints the window decoration, the bar on top of every window with (configurable) buttons like close, maximize and minimize.
Qt is the faster, smarter way to create innovative devices, modern UIs & applications for multiple screens. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the Wayland and X11 windowing.
GTK is a free and open source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces developed by GNOME Project. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the Wayland and X11 windowing.
NVIDIA Wayland EGL External Platform library is a work-in-progress implementation of a EGL External Platform library to add client-side Wayland support to EGL on top of EGLDevice and EGLStream families of extensions.
NVIDIA EGL External Platform Interface is a work-in-progress specification of the EGL External Platform interface for writing EGL platforms and their interactions with modern window systems on top of existing low-level EGL platform implementations. This keeps window system implementation specifics out of EGL drivers by using application-facing EGL functions.
Sway is an i3-compatible Wayland compositor.
wlroots is a modular Wayland compositor library.
WayfireWM is a 3D Wayland compositor, inspired by Compiz and based on wlroots.
SDDM is a modern display manager for X11 and Wayland aiming to be fast, simple and beautiful. It uses modern technologies like QtQuick, which in turn gives the designer the ability to create smooth, animated user interfaces.
x11docker is an application that you allows to run graphical desktop applications (and entire desktops) in Docker Linux containers.
Mako is a lightweight notification daemon for Wayland. It also works on Sway.
Wayland-rs is a Rust implementation of the wayland protocol (client and server).
Wine-wayland is an application that allows you to running DX9/DX11 and Vulkan games using pure Wayland and Wine/DXVK.
How Audio is implemented with PipeWire
How WirePlumber, the PipeWire session manager works. Source: Collabora
PipeWire is a server and user space API to deal with multimedia pipelines. It provides a low-latency, graph based processing engine on top of audio and video devices that can be used to support the use cases currently handled by both pulseaudio and JACK. PipeWire was designed with a powerful security model that makes interacting with audio and video devices from containerized applications easy. Nodes in the graph can be implemented as separate processes, communicating with sockets and exchanging multimedia content using fd passing.
WirePlumber is a modular session / policy manager for PipeWire and a GObject-based high-level library that wraps PipeWire’s API, providing convenience for writing the daemon’s modules as well as external tools for managing PipeWire. The WirePlumber daemon implements the session & policy management service. It follows a modular design, having plugins that implement the actual management functionality.
Core API is used by all clients that need to communicate with the PipeWire Daemon and provides the necessary structs to interface with the daemon.
Implementation API is primarily used by the PipeWire Daemon itself but also by the PipeWire Session Manager and modules/extensions that need to build objects in the graph.
SPA (Simple Plugin API) is an extensible API to implement all kinds of plugins.
GStreamer is a library for constructing graphs of media-handling components. The applications it supports range from simple Ogg/Vorbis playback, audio/video streaming to complex audio (mixing) and video (non-linear editing) processing. Applications can take advantage of advances in codec and filter technology transparently.
Media Source Extensions (MSE) is a W3C specification that allows JavaScript to send byte streams to media codecs within Web browsers that support HTML5 video and audio. Also, this allows the implementation of client-side prefetching and buffering code for streaming media entirely in JavaScript.
WebRTC is an open-source project that adds real-time communication capabilities to your application that works on top of an open standard. It supports video, voice, and generic data to be sent between peers, allowing developers to build powerful voice- and video-communication solutions.
- If would you like to contribute to this guide simply make a Pull Request.
Distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Public License.
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