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 [1]NTSYNC kernel driver has been in good shape for about one year now after [2]the implementation was finished up . From user-space [3]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.

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 [4]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 [5]SteamOS 3.7.20 beta now available for testing.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/NTSYNC

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.14-NTSYNC-Driver-Ready

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wine-10.16-Released

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-44-Nicer-NTSYNC

[5] https://steamcommunity.com/games/1675200/announcements/detail/500594947381003216