I installed a few utilities to try and work past this, then restarted the system. I slowly, painfully installed a few small Steam games using 5G, launched one, and discovered the Ally's buttons weren't being picked up as even a generic controller. I tethered my phone and eventually used a tiny USB Wi-Fi dongle to get past this.
From the outset, there was no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, which made installing Steam an issue. I had to use a USB-C dongle to attach a keyboard while also keeping power supplied, but I did get Nobara installed. After discovering the BIOS shortcut (hold the volume down button while powering up, must have power attached) and clearing the way, I first tried Nobara Linux, a distro based on Fedora ( not a "spin") that packs in lots of gaming-related software and tweaks. Once you do that, you'll trigger a BitLocker lock-out in Windows-and unless you installed that Windows yourself, you likely don't have the encryption recovery key to restore it.īut on we go. The most reliable way to make the change stick is to delete some or all of the signed keys loaded onto the Ally's firmware by Asus and other vendors. Disabling Secure Boot doesn't always "stick" on the Ally, though, as seen in many Reddit and Discord posts. As with most PCs, you have to head into the BIOS and (at least for now) disable Secure Boot to boot from a USB drive or the resulting OS on your internal drive. The ROG Ally will not make it easy for you to install a different OS. Earlier this month, ROG Ally units started showing up at buyers' doorsteps, and open source developers' work to Steam up this device has kicked into gear. I did not get that far during a period of more than a month where I had a review unit and nobody who actually understands hardware drivers had an Ally. And it's impressive enough, given you can hold it in your hands. Is that so bad? I wanted the big game squares, and you click the square with your game, the game plays, and Steam does a bunch of stuff in the background to make it work. But, like the many Linux developers who see the Ally as the Steam Deck's potentially beefier cousin, I wanted to leave the comforts of the Start menu for wilder lands.
It's a weird feeling, ignoring almost everything Asus has done to set up this device with gaming and power management software and starting over at the storage level.
With effort, you can get into the BIOS, disable Secure Boot, plug in a USB stick, and boot a USB stick with a live Linux distribution on it. The ROG Ally ships with Windows (Home) installed and a bunch of Asus software, but it is still, at heart, a PC. Windows is, of course, the main highway to most PC gaming, but it's also (as detailed in the review) not yet built to work well on a 7-inch gaming handheld. As soon as I was done with my review of the Asus ROG Ally, I grabbed my best USB stick and started looking for ISOs to download.
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