Open Gaming Collective (OGC) formed to push Linux gaming even further

Just to clarify, the project **is** a Linux Kernel distribution, but what is less common is that it was built as designed to be "immutable", which is another trait to consider, since some do and I believe a Linux Kernel instance must be mutable and modular in the first place, including custom middleware/drivers for the hardware you have in your environment, and for personal more straightforward and transparent audits, too.

Since every single environment is unique and must be maintainable conveniently and independently of the vendor.

Meanwhile, this is incredible indeed, of course! Let's wish them success, stability, less piracy and more prosperity, peace, and safety to eventually unveil even more miracles of ineffably magnificent art of people in the infinity of the world...

I recall Bazzite being very early with Steam Deck / handheld SteamOS-alternative, so I think that was why they use HHD? But InputPlumber being what Valve uses made it not a surprise it is what the rest of the community standardized on instead of HHD.

I did saw one person complained about CachyOS not supporting HHD, that it meant that it's less flexible than Bazzite, and they're right but it is clearly a double-edged sword given the maintenance burden of not using what everyone else is using.

The rest of the Open Gaming Collective is interesting. Notably, CachyOS isn't on that list, despite Nobara which had been based on a lot of what CachyOS did (and PikaOS I think is based on Nobara) being on the group.

Oh, and Faugus is good but I had issues with portals on Game Mode but I was also using a jank NixOS + Jovian setup on my ROG Ally so idk. Still, dropping Lutris? Hm, has Lutris Flatpak version matured enough? I feel like Lutris is still a core of getting many non-Steam non-Heroic games running.

[quote]For too long, the Linux gaming ecosystem has been fragmented. Individual distributions have spent countless hours duplicating efforts on kernel patches, input tooling, and essential packages.

no shit sherlock

Last edited by elmapul on 29 Jan 2026 at 2:37 am UTC

Quoting: fenglengshunThe rest of the Open Gaming Collective is interesting. Notably, CachyOS isn't on that list, despite Nobara which had been based on a lot of what CachyOS did (and PikaOS I think is based on Nobara) being on the group.

I feel like this is due to the nature of this project vs Arch, the reluctance to make software decisions for the user, and the rolling release model. OGC is probably looking to implement concepts more in-line with their members(Bazzite, Nobara, et al) and that's always been quite opposite to the way Arch/CachyOS operates.

That doesn't mean that there won't be contribution to what OGC is trying to accomplish. I imagine there will be a fair amount of borrowing from the CachyOS developers' work on their kernel and schedulers. Which is great. With Clear Linux now defunct there aren't exactly many choices for advanced kernel tech that's sufficiently tested for an end user's environment.

"Reduce duplicate efforts", "replacing Lutris with fagus launcher" ... Nobody forced them not to use Flatpaks...

This really sounds like a self inflicted issue caused by point-releases and their cravings to package everything downstream instead. Then call it a win to form an organization to fix what they caused themselves...

I mean nobody prohibited them to push their modifications to the mainline kernel even before.

While I also came to learn that all these "gaming tweaks" and "optimisations" usually don't deliver any real differences or significant improvements over something not having these "gaming optimisations".

So this basically?

https://xkcd.com/927/

Quoting: The_Real_Bitterman"Reduce duplicate efforts", "replacing Lutris with fagus launcher" ... Nobody forced them not to use Flatpaks...

This really sounds like a self inflicted issue caused by point-releases and their cravings to package everything downstream instead. Then call it a win to form an organization to fix what they caused themselves...

I mean nobody prohibited them to push their modifications to the mainline kernel even before.

While I also came to learn that all these "gaming tweaks" and "optimisations" usually don't deliver any real differences or significant improvements over something not having these "gaming optimisations".

Flatpak launchers have many issues including gamescope/scopebuddy not working and using their own outdated Mesa, as well as being affected by the Nvidia Flatpak driver issues, this is why a built in launcher is greatly preferred

Last edited by Stella on 29 Jan 2026 at 7:32 am UTC

Often you have hardware that has no or just out of tree drivers, so i welcome any concerted effort to change that.
Gaming critical software for me also includes wine, wine-staging, umu, proton, LACT, coolercontrol, DXVK, VKD3D , Mangohud, Goverlay, LinuxGamingBenchmark,CapFrameX,Heroic-Launcher, Lutris, Playnite, VR-Stuff , OBS,OpenRazer, OpenRGB and more besides the drivers.

Last edited by tpau on 29 Jan 2026 at 8:18 am UTC

Quoting: The_Real_Bitterman"Reduce duplicate efforts", "replacing Lutris with fagus launcher" ... Nobody forced them not to use Flatpaks...

This really sounds like a self inflicted issue caused by point-releases and their cravings to package everything downstream instead. Then call it a win to form an organization to fix what they caused themselves...

I mean nobody prohibited them to push their modifications to the mainline kernel even before.

While I also came to learn that all these "gaming tweaks" and "optimisations" usually don't deliver any real differences or significant improvements over something not having these "gaming optimisations".

The issue with Lutris is that, as far as I'm aware, there are still things that don't work as well with its Flatpak version vs Native version. The one thing that I recall was that Steam can't control / monitor the run status of games run by Flatpak Lutris - which could be an issue for a distro where user is expected to be on Steam's Game Mode a lot of the times.

For a distro based on Fedora Atomic that is meant to be as battery-included (ready-to-use) as possible, it does need to include a lot of things. This is their goal - and for the most part the issue has been the sheer amount of devices they support.

Which is where kernel is an issue. I used NixOS with nix-cachyos-kernel flake. Even with THAT there are still a number of things that don't work and performance was garbage (it was already garbage with the default kernel tbh). And that's with a kernel based on the distro that is most focused on performance. As soon as I actually switched to CachyOS itself, everything becomes so much faster. Even back on Bazzite, I've had days where after a while my ROG Ally slows down and I need to restart - something which hasn't been an issue with CachyOS as I left it for the past few days to sync files from my server and download my games from Steam. At the same time, Bazzite also did some work with HHD which requires working some custom kernel and config stuff - those are getting semi-abandoned, but not fully as they do want to bring things like ROG/View Button Switching even after the InputPlumber migration.

At the same time, these are versions of the kernel for specific usecase. Linux is still predominantly used for servers - Valve and everyone else do try to upstream what they can, but obviously not everything can make it upstream. Nevermind the need to just move fast and support hardware if we want people to take Linux seriously as a desktop OS and not just get easily dismissed with, "Yeah, it's cool, but it doesn't support my hardware until months later, so it's a useless OS for me."

It does matter - a lot of these does matter. I used to be someone who scoffed at all these custom stuff but after trying to do it myself, I really do appreciate how well they make these things as ready-to-use as possible even for newbies.

Quoting: tpauOften you have hardware that has no or just out of tree drivers, so i welcome any concerted effort to change that.
Gaming critical software for me also includes wine, wine-staging, umu, proton, LACT, coolercontrol, DXVK, VKD3D , Mangohud, Goverlay, LinuxGamingBenchmark,CapFrameX,Heroic-Launcher, Lutris, Playnite, VR-Stuff , OBS,OpenRazer, OpenRGB and more besides the drivers.

I agree, while I could just use Fedora Kionite and customize that, I can't really be bothered to do that when someone else already has done the hard work for me. When I'm tired after a long work week, I just want to play games and have a reliable working OS, and Bazzite provides just that.

Quoting: fenglengshun

Quoting: The_Real_Bitterman"Reduce duplicate efforts", "replacing Lutris with fagus launcher" ... Nobody forced them not to use Flatpaks...

This really sounds like a self inflicted issue caused by point-releases and their cravings to package everything downstream instead. Then call it a win to form an organization to fix what they caused themselves...

I mean nobody prohibited them to push their modifications to the mainline kernel even before.

While I also came to learn that all these "gaming tweaks" and "optimisations" usually don't deliver any real differences or significant improvements over something not having these "gaming optimisations".

The issue with Lutris is that, as far as I'm aware, there are still things that don't work as well with its Flatpak version vs Native version. The one thing that I recall was that Steam can't control / monitor the run status of games run by Flatpak Lutris - which could be an issue for a distro where user is expected to be on Steam's Game Mode a lot of the times.

For a distro based on Fedora Atomic that is meant to be as battery-included (ready-to-use) as possible, it does need to include a lot of things. This is their goal - and for the most part the issue has been the sheer amount of devices they support.

Which is where kernel is an issue. I used NixOS with nix-cachyos-kernel flake. Even with THAT there are still a number of things that don't work and performance was garbage (it was already garbage with the default kernel tbh). And that's with a kernel based on the distro that is most focused on performance. As soon as I actually switched to CachyOS itself, everything becomes so much faster. Even back on Bazzite, I've had days where after a while my ROG Ally slows down and I need to restart - something which hasn't been an issue with CachyOS as I left it for the past few days to sync files from my server and download my games from Steam. At the same time, Bazzite also did some work with HHD which requires working some custom kernel and config stuff - those are getting semi-abandoned, but not fully as they do want to bring things like ROG/View Button Switching even after the InputPlumber migration.

At the same time, these are versions of the kernel for specific usecase. Linux is still predominantly used for servers - Valve and everyone else do try to upstream what they can, but obviously not everything can make it upstream. Nevermind the need to just move fast and support hardware if we want people to take Linux seriously as a desktop OS and not just get easily dismissed with, "Yeah, it's cool, but it doesn't support my hardware until months later, so it's a useless OS for me."

It does matter - a lot of these does matter. I used to be someone who scoffed at all these custom stuff but after trying to do it myself, I really do appreciate how well they make these things as ready-to-use as possible even for newbies.

My experience seems to differ a lot. But first of I am a Tumbleweed user since forever. Hardware support on rolling release is usually not a big deal. It's all those pesky point-releases drawing the "Linux does not support new hardware"-image. While I say, a point release has nothing to do on a Desktop system.

As of CachyOS being so much faster I can not confirm. Everything I benchmark myself (with Tumbleweed vs Cachy) was roughly on par. Sometimes Cachy delivered a few more frames sometimes Tumbleweed. Most of the time neither did.

Tbh I don't know what TW does with their -default Kernel as there's also a -vanilla Linux kernel in the repos. Maybe they do some optimisations themselves which is why it doesn't get outperformed by Cachy.

As of unsupported Hardware I didn't ran into any systems not supported by Tumbleweed. Sure they do not have dedicated images for certain hardware as like Bazzite does. There's just one version (not counting Tumbleweed based distros like Kalpa or Aeon here). Also I do only own regular PCs, Laptop and a SteamDeck. Neither of which required extra tweaks or drivers (besides NVIDIA) to run properly.

Using stuff like OpenRGB made all the RGB stuff work as well.

No need for extra input drivers for the SteamDecks trackpads or extra buttons. They just worked (assuming Steam is running otherwise they where mapped to Keyboard and Mouse)

And so one. Zero issue since years. No need for a dedicated distro either. But I might as well not run the problematic systems, maybe, which is why I didn't ran into issues.

I am not sure if I understood the first thing you said right. What can't be controlled by flatpak Lutris? Inhibit screensaver? Sure this works. That's what portals and DBUS is made for.

Quoting: Stella

Quoting: The_Real_Bitterman"Reduce duplicate efforts", "replacing Lutris with fagus launcher" ... Nobody forced them not to use Flatpaks...

This really sounds like a self inflicted issue caused by point-releases and their cravings to package everything downstream instead. Then call it a win to form an organization to fix what they caused themselves...

I mean nobody prohibited them to push their modifications to the mainline kernel even before.

While I also came to learn that all these "gaming tweaks" and "optimisations" usually don't deliver any real differences or significant improvements over something not having these "gaming optimisations".

Flatpak launchers have many issues including gamescope/scopebuddy not working and using their own outdated Mesa, as well as being affected by the Nvidia Flatpak driver issues, this is why a built in launcher is greatly preferred

Uhm, no. Gamescope works fine here. I mean there's literally an up-to-date Gamescope runtime which just maps into every flatpaks supporting it. But also why then not shipping just Gamescope outside of flatpak? Gamemode works the same way. Installed on the host and everything flatpak can use gamemoderun just fine.

What NVIDIA flatpak driver issue? Do I live in a parallel universe? Zero issue with flatpaks and NVIDIA drivers here. They just work. (Well despite the usual NVIDIA stuff you have regardless)

Last edited by The_Real_Bitterman on 29 Jan 2026 at 9:59 am UTC

More collaboration in open-source is always welcome.

"ASUS Linux"? 🤔

Quoting: KeksusSo this basically?

https://xkcd.com/927/

No, it's literally the opposite, that's part of the entire point. They're bundling things together, and working more on upstreaming things so there's less competing things. Did...you even read the article? It was pretty clear lol.

Yes, the usual suspects and that is telling.