SteamOS 3.4 has now reached the stable branch. I’m not going to re-hash what I’ve already said about it, but as a quick refresh, here’s a few of the new features:

  • update to the Arch base; Plasma, Mesa, GLIBC, and more software have been updated
  • KDE Connect is now included
  • tons of bug fixes, ranging from graphics driver crashes to input to audio
  • new firmware for docking station
  • you can now force vsync off by enabling screen tearing
  • level 2 MangoHUD now goes across the screen rather than going down; perfect for games that use 16:9
  • TRIM has been re-enabled
  • eject option added for removable drives
  • automatic mounting of ext4 external drives
  • support for 8BitDo Ultimate wireless controller dongle

Two hotfixes were added later on to “address a regression in how SD cards were handled” and to “fix an issue with HDMI/DisplayPort audio going to sleep after being idle on external displays.” And I guess hardware encoding for remote play works now.

CryoByte33, author of the CryoUtilities script, has added a friendly reminder that “you need to check that the VRAM setting persisted in BIOS and can optionally disable my TRIM-on-schedule,” since TRIM has already been re-enabled with this release.

See the full patch notes on Steam.