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⇱ Latest SteamOS Beta Now Includes NTSYNC Kernel Driver - Phoronix


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Latest SteamOS Beta Now Includes NTSYNC Kernel Driver

Written by Michael Larabel in Valve on 9 January 2026 at 05:47 AM EST. 14 Comments
Valve released the SteamOS 3.7.20 beta overnight and with it they are finally building the NTSYNC kernel driver for helping accelerate Windows NT synchronization primitives.

The NTSYNC kernel driver has been in good shape for about one year now after the implementation was finished up. From user-space Wine 10.16 added NTSYNC usage support as part of the upcoming Wine 11.0 stable release due out this month. In turn Proton 11.0 will see that support when it is re-based atop Wine 11.0. Albeit Proton (Steam Play) already has FSYNC for good performance but will be interesting to see how the NTSYNC path performs for SteamOS / Steam Play needs in comparison.

👁 SteamOS 3.7.20 beta


For gearing up for that future Proton NTSYNC support, SteamOS 3.7.20 enables the NTSYNC kernel driver and loads the module by default. Most Linux distributions are at least already building the NTSYNC kernel module though there's been different efforts on how to handle ensuring it's loaded when needed. The presence of the NTSYC kernel driver is the main highlight of the SteamOS 3.7.20 beta now available for testing.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.