The Steam Deck OLED has been running without working audio on the mainline Linux kernel for over two years, and a proper fix is finally landing upstream. A regression introduced in late 2023 and merged into Linux 6.8 broke audio probing on the OLED model specifically, leaving anyone running a non-SteamOS distribution on the handheld without sound. Valve's own kernel carried a workaround, as did community distributions targeting the hardware, but the mainline kernel has gone without a solution until now.
The root cause traces back to an AMD Audio Co-Processor (ACP) change in the ASoC machine driver that altered CPU DAI and DAILINK creation for the I2S Bluetooth instance. That change exposed a problem with the Steam Deck OLED's audio topology file, which differs from the original LCD model. A straightforward fix was proposed early on, but it would have broken other devices, and the suggested proper solution of fixing the topology file itself was never implemented. The result was a long stalemate where the OLED model simply stayed broken upstream.
Guilherme Piccoli of Igalia broke the deadlock with a DMI quirk that targets the Steam Deck OLED specifically, sidestepping the topology issue without affecting other hardware. The approach mirrors existing DMI quirks already present throughout the kernel's sound drivers and leaves the door open for a clean removal once Valve updates the topology file. Piccoli noted the fix is especially relevant because some games, including Ori and the Blind Forest, fail to run properly without a functional audio device.
The patch was merged this week as part of the ASoC fixes pull and will appear in the Linux 7.1-rc2 release on 2026-05-04. It is also a candidate for backporting to existing stable kernel series, which would bring the fix to current long-term support releases.