If you want an alternative to SteamOS (or Steam Deck OS as Valve sometimes decides to call it) for your Steam Deck, desktop PC or living room gaming machine - Bazzite is an interesting pick. Much like ChimeraOS, it aims to give you a good gaming experience.
As a reminder though: technically, Bazzite is not what you would call a traditional "Linux distro". It's built on top on Fedora, ublue-os/main and ublue-os/nvidia giving you good hardware support with the upstream projects handling things like maintenance and security updates with Bazzite simply expanding it into something better for gamers.
This "Phase II" of Bazzite upgrades the base to Fedora Linux 39 and they say it's "now at a point where it is completely functional as is on standard hardware (and the Steam Deck.)" and while the original focus was on providing something like SteamOS but be more flexible the scope has expanded to work on much more hardware.
Some of the features it offers:
- Proprietary Nvidia drivers pre-installed.
- Full hardware accelerated codec support for H264 decoding.
- Full support for AMD's ROCM OpenCL/HIP run-times.
- xone, xpadneo, and xpad-noone drivers for Xbox controllers.
- Full support for DisplayLink.
- Includes Valve's KDE themes from SteamOS.
- LatencyFleX, vkBasalt, MangoHud, and OBS VkCapture installed and available by default
- Support for Wallpaper Engine. (Only on KDE)
- ROM Properties Page shell extension included.
- Full support for Winesync/Fastsync/NTsync.
- Distrobox preinstalled with automatic updates for created containers.
- Automated
duperemoveandrmlintservices for reducing the disk space used by wine prefix contents.- Support for HDMI CEC via libCEC.
- System76-Scheduler preinstalled, providing automatic process priority tweaks to your focused application and keeping CPU time for background processes to a minimum.
- Customized System76-Scheduler config with additional rules.
- Uses Google's BBR TCP congestion control by default.
- Input Remapper preinstalled and enabled. (Available but default-disabled on the Deck variant)
- Bazzite Portal provides an easy way to install numerous applications and tweaks, including installing CoreCtrl and GreenWithEnvy.
- Nix package manager with Fleek optionally available for install via Bazzite Portal.
- Brew package manager optionally available for install via Bazzite Portal.
- Waydroid preinstalled for running Android apps. Future releases will offer to set this up for you through Bazzite Portal. (Not available on Nvidia builds)
- Manage applications using Flatseal, Warehouse, and Gear Lever.
- OpenRGB i2c-piix4 and i2c-nct6775 drivers for controlling RGB on certain motherboards.
- OpenRazer drivers built in, Select OpenRazer in Bazzite Portal or run
just install-openrazerin a terminal to begin using it.- OpenTabletDriver udev rules built in, with the full software suite installable via Bazzite Portal or by running
just install-opentabletdriverin a terminal.- GCAdapter_OC driver for overclocking Nintendo's Gamecube Controller Adapter to 1000hz polling.
- Out of the box support for Wooting keyboards.
- Built in support for Southern Islands (HD 7000) and Sea Islands (HD 8000) AMD GPUs under the
amdgpudriver.- A fix is available for a TF2 bug that makes the game crash on launch -
just patch-tf2-tcmalloc- XwaylandVideoBridge is available for Discord screensharing on Wayland. (Only on KDE)
Bazzite itself is split across multiple versions, depending on what type of experience / device you're going to be using it on but in a single download where you will pick inside the installer what you wish to install either the Desktop variant or Steam Deck/HTPC.
So if you choose the version for a console-like experience like the Steam Deck it will directly boot into a Gaming Mode just like SteamOS on Steam Deck does so you'll get the Big Picture Mode experience.
The Steam Deck / HTPC version also includes various other enhancements like options to install Decky Loader, EmuDeck, RetroDECK, and ProtonUp-Qt, among numerous other useful packages on installation. There's also upgraded Mesa drivers, a custom update system to deal with OS / Flatpaks / Nix packages (Via Fleek) and Distrobox images to be updated directly from the Gamemode UI, built-in support for Windows dual-boot and much more.
See their full announcement here.
Anyone been using Bazzite? What do you think to it?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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blindcoder Nov 9, 2023
That sounds interesting. I have an old-ish laptop here that I want to turn into a HTPC/Kodi/EmulationStation thing and this sounds like a good fit.
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I wonder if this works better than the official SteamOS on the Steam Deck, considering how long Valve is taking with 3.5. Maybe someone could test it 
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Mohandevir Nov 9, 2023
Is the GTX 900 gpus now supported in Gamescope/Bazzite?
Looking forward to install an htpc experience, on my old laptop...
I miss the old bpm, in that regard.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 9 November 2023 at 3:16 pm UTC
Looking forward to install an htpc experience, on my old laptop...
I miss the old bpm, in that regard.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 9 November 2023 at 3:16 pm UTC
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Quoting: PyreticI wonder if this works better than the official SteamOS on the Steam Deck, considering how long Valve is taking with 3.5. Maybe someone could test it
I've been using it. As long as you don't have a stock 64GB Steam Deck, it's basically SteamOS 3.5 with the option of layering packages between updates. You do miss out on color options and HDR until Fedora gets that. Other than that it's pretty identical.
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Quoting: MohandevirI miss the old bpm, in that regard.I miss it too. For all its sins (read bugs) it had a warm feeling to it. The new one feels cold, clinical, impersonal. I'm getting used to it, but in one place is still sorely lacking, and that is controller settings. The old BPM visual and intuitive gamepad settings were replaced with a cumbersome and convoluted mess of nested menus over menus. Probably useful for Steam Deck I suppose, where screen estate is premium, but, at least for me, useful only for basic profiles, the more advanced the profile I'm trying to set, the more lost I get.
Luckily I've kept an old Steam client from before the new interface and I use that to set new profiles, heck I still frequently game on that.
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-looks over at my old Steam Machine running Batocera and a clunky SteamOS
-checks calendar for free time to dedicate to weekend long pc projects
-checks calendar for free time to dedicate to weekend long pc projects
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Quoting: udekmp69I've been using it. As long as you don't have a stock 64GB Steam Deck, it's basically SteamOS 3.5 with the option of layering packages between updates. You do miss out on color options and HDR until Fedora gets that. Other than that it's pretty identical.
Great! I might check it out then! SteamOS is cool and all but the sporadic updates has left me wanting a little more.
Quoting: dubigrasuI'm getting used to it, but in one place is still sorely lacking, and that is controller settings. The old BPM visual and intuitive gamepad settings were replaced with a cumbersome and convoluted mess of nested menus over menus. Probably useful for Steam Deck I suppose, where screen estate is premium, but, at least for me, useful only for basic profiles, the more advanced the profile I'm trying to set, the more lost I get.
TBH, I don't like either. I tried using the old one and it was difficult to tell what buttons mapped to what. At least this one has some visual clarity.
That said, I wish they gave us an option to just view a diagram and then click the button that we want to remap. I get that the Steam Deck can't do that with its small screen size but PCs should at least get this.
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After reading this article I decided to give this a try as it seems really good compared to SteamOS in many respects, here are some early thoughts:
Pros:
- Waydroid works with tinkering, first time I actually get that to work. Tbf, my desktop is nVidia. It however broke after a reboot
- Excellent out-of-box experience for new users, far better than SteamOS (imo)
- I used the GNOME version which I assumed would be better for a touch-based experience, it worked pretty well
Cons:
- Uses the Fedora installer (an online version) so I had to set up a dock with keyboard and USB to install, wasn't too hard but not optimal
- Comes with Lutris pre-installed, not a fan since I don't use it but it's okay
- Weird issues with bluetooth pairing, couldn't get my Keychron to connect to it at all
- Over USB, keyboard kept disconnecting intermittently
I'm currently reinstalling SteamOS on my Deck and going back to the Preview branch, but Bazzite is very fun and interesting and I'll likely give it another go after a few updates have been pushed.
Pros:
- Waydroid works with tinkering, first time I actually get that to work. Tbf, my desktop is nVidia. It however broke after a reboot
- Excellent out-of-box experience for new users, far better than SteamOS (imo)
- I used the GNOME version which I assumed would be better for a touch-based experience, it worked pretty well
Cons:
- Uses the Fedora installer (an online version) so I had to set up a dock with keyboard and USB to install, wasn't too hard but not optimal
- Comes with Lutris pre-installed, not a fan since I don't use it but it's okay
- Weird issues with bluetooth pairing, couldn't get my Keychron to connect to it at all
- Over USB, keyboard kept disconnecting intermittently
I'm currently reinstalling SteamOS on my Deck and going back to the Preview branch, but Bazzite is very fun and interesting and I'll likely give it another go after a few updates have been pushed.
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I installed it on an asus with ryzen apu mini PC, and it's there to stay. Only thing that is not working as I expected is that sometimes the updates inside steamOS stay at 99%. On Chimera that part worked a bit better. Switching from game mode to desktop is fast, and can be used as a daily driver.
The worst thing, were some troubles trying to install in other devices, which they also state on their website:
On a NVIDIA second hand mini gaming PC (the one I used before the steamdeck) it doesn't boot at all, and on my latptop it installs but breaks at the end. Same for both Fedora Linux immutable versions (Kinoite & Silverblue) which Bazzite is based on.
The worst thing, were some troubles trying to install in other devices, which they also state on their website:
Installer issues from upstream still plague the user experience unfortunately.
However, things are looking up, so perhaps in the near future this will not be an issue anymore.
Post-installation, you should be able to use Bazzite on your device smoothly, but please let us know if you experience any issues.On a NVIDIA second hand mini gaming PC (the one I used before the steamdeck) it doesn't boot at all, and on my latptop it installs but breaks at the end. Same for both Fedora Linux immutable versions (Kinoite & Silverblue) which Bazzite is based on.
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fenglengshun Nov 10, 2023
Still waiting for the other repos that I have baked in for convenience (like TeamViewer and Wine) to have a 39 version, but I'm looking to rebase my ublue-os bazzite and kinoite image to 39 next month. For now, I'm pinning to 38, waiting for everything to be worked out, but I'm looking forward to the switch.
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