Moving to Bazzite
I am a PC gamer. For the past 20+ years I’ve always had a Windows machine in my life to play games on. It's a pretty big part of who I am. So with Windows becoming more and more intrusive, infested with ads, and enshittified by Microslop, what is a man to do? I refuse to install Recall on my computer. I do not want an AI-powered spying machine watching me fail at CS2.
Once again I feel like it’s Valve coming to the rescue for PC gamers. Over the past few years they have helped develop Proton, an emulation layer, to be able to decouple themselves from Microsoft. I think it’s been a key goal for them for a long time, and it’s enabled them to deliver devices such as the Steam Deck, and now (again) the Steam Machine. It all runs on Linux, something I haven’t touched since I was a teenager. Something I have never tried to game on.
I chose Bazzite because it’s supposed to be gaming focused, immutable, and Flatpak-first. In non-tech jargon that means: You can’t fuck up.
So this fall when I wrapped up my replay of Cyberpunk (all-time favourite) I decided to go ahead and try it. Within 30 minutes of starting the Bazzite installation I was sitting in Ghost of Tsushima (also a great game) and playing the game. Considering this is Linux and I am using a Nvidia GPU (they have notoriously bad Linux support) I was blown away.
Of course I’ve had some issues. My sound card, EVO4, has 4 channels despite being stereo. This is due to some input passthrough that I don’t really use. I did have to do some tinkering to get the stereo working properly. I also had to use a third-party app, running in a headless Arch VM, to control my Hue lights and sync them with the content on my display. But overall it didn’t take long to undervolt my GPU and get my fan control sorted.
I am mostly surprised with how boring it’s been. I’ve had some crashes, that were solved by using Gamescope. But I also had crashes and problems on Windows.
There are some bigger downsides with it though. Nvidia aren’t excellent in terms of driver support for Linux (hopefully better soon), I am not sure RTX really works for example. The biggest issue for me is the lack of After Effects or Fusion 360 support. But perhaps I solve that by getting a Mac Mini in the future and running the programs there, and then remoting into it to use them.
On the whole it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make to avoid using Windows. If you game on PC and you’re fed up with how intrusive and shitty Windows is becoming then I can say this: Linux is more accessible than it’s ever been.
So far the best thing about Bazzite is that I don’t really think of it. I just sit and play. That’s all I want from an OS. Now if I could just stop worrying about my GPU’s 12V-2x6 cable catching fire and burning my apartment down.