Following a recent small patch to the beta branch of Steam OS, which heralded fixes to many of the Linux distribution's desktop and gaming mode features, Valve has announced the Steam OS 3.9.0 Preview, which upgrades the Desktop Mode to KDE 6.7.3, from 6.4.3, and updates to the Linux kernel version 7.2.

Both the updates to KDE and the Linux kernel bring noteworthy improvements—from improved Krunner search functionality, clipboard pinning, and better support for drawing tablets, to Linux 7.2's Intel Arc B390 performance improvements and USB4Stream support for device-to-device sharing over USB4. Valve has apparently also made some changes to the configuration that make Steam OS easier to live with.

Aside from the aforementioned touches, Steam OS switches back to the wpa_supplicant backend to improve network compatibility, improves bootloader compatibility with third-party builds and motherboards, and unlocks the Desktop Mode lock screen option in settings. Valve has also implemented preliminary support for hibernation in Steam OS, although it is not yet exposed to the user.