SteamOS is not a standard Linux distribution. It ships as a recovery image for the Steam Deck, not a generic ISO. That fact explains every strange requirement you face when you try to run it in a virtual machine. The file you download is a .bz2 archive, not an installer. The VM must present the virtual drive as NVMe . And if you let the system reboot right after installation it will launch into Gaming Mode, which cannot work without the Deck's custom AMD GPU.

I have a full in-depth walkthrough on my blog. This post gives you the reasoning and the exact commands to get a working VM, plus the one intervention that saves you from a permanent black screen.

The .bz2 Archive Hides a Raw Disk Image

Head to Valve's official SteamOS page and you get a steamOS-recovery-image.bz2 file. Decompress it with:

tar -xjf steamOS-recovery-image.bz2

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Inside you'll find a .img file. It's a raw block-level copy of a full SteamOS installation, not a live environment.…