this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
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Bazzite Linux 44 lands for desktop gamers and it's a big release (www.gamingonlinux.com)
submitted 2 days ago by GamingBot@lemmy.zip to c/gaming@lemmy.zip
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[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Bazzite isn't a bad distro, I'm currently running it on my gaming PC, but to be honest I've found it kind of frustrating. I've gotten used to Debian through my self hosting experiences and Bazzite is much more sandboxed than that, and not in a fun way (at least to me). It's a good option for people coming from Windows but if you have previous Linux experience I don't think you would enjoy it. I will probably switch to something else soon.

Despite the recent hype, I also haven't had great experiences with gaming on Linux in general. It's much better than it used to be but there's still a lot of inconveniences in too many instances. Things that are not insurmountable but definitely more annoying than they should be. I don't think casual gamers would put up with most of it.

As an example, Helldivers 2 works pretty well except for the fact that it black screens anytime you alt+tab out of the game. What good is being able to play it if you have to restart every time you check a message from a friend, open a web browser, or start playing music? I don't want to deal with that and most people are way more likely to get frustrated with stuff like that and quit than I am.

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I come from Windows, I've been running Bazzite for about ~2 years. I love it. I have an AMD GPU, everything just works and I don't have to do shit. It's even better than Windows.

Also, as I use the bazzite-deck image, when my kids turn on the PC, it's just a console for them, they self-serve without any help from me.

Pure Bliss.

[–] sgnl@midwest.social 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I'm on Linux and I don't have your HD2 issue at all.

My guess is you have a setting that's somehilow donking things up.

And quite honestly those kinds of problems are something that exists on Windows too.

I switched several years back (first to Mint then Nobara, and I'll probably be migrating to Bazzite or CachyOS down the road) and I haven't looked back, it's a bummer you're having a bad experience but it won't apply to everyone.

[–] Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm currently running bazzite and it's a pretty solid option if you're looking for a strictly gaming experience. Steam and Discord work great, modding can be a pain in the ass but that's more to do with me not knowing my options than that OS. My biggest issue is that it isn't great for everything else I do. Cad software, image editing, 3dprinting, every other hobby I have runs into constant stumbling points because bazzite doesn't quite work like any of the other distros so even Fedora guides don't work. Box buddy is supposed to fix that, but for the life of me I've never gotten it to successfully run anything.

[–] sgnl@midwest.social 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah, Bazzite being immutable is one of the reasons I've held off for so long. Its extra hoops are a learning curve, and I would argue the benefits of immutable are worth it, there's just a time factor involved regarding learning. Hopefully as things develop, guides and workflows will simplify everything, and drag people over.

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I disagree that those things happen on Windows, at least with any comparable frequency. I can count on one hand the number of games that have caused me serious problems on Windows over 20 years. By comparison I can count on one hand the number of games that have worked without any issues on Linux.

Granted, I haven't tried nearly as many games on Linux but that does illustrate the point pretty well, which is that most people aren't going to fuss with settings for hours just to get a game to launch. They're going to get frustrated and say "this doesn't work" then switch back to Windows. I really want gaming on Linux to be a viable replacement but I honestly don't think I would recommend it to any of my less technically inclined friends. It would just be an annoyance to them.

[–] Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 1 points 2 days ago

I legit have the opposite problem. Everything I want to play works on Linux. Windows was installing an incorrect LAN driver to my system, first once a week, now it seems every day. Gone all the way through the registry, downloaded Intel's dumb ass app. Even manually installed the driver and attempted to tell windows not to touch it. It breaks my Ethernet connection every day, and I'm not restarting my damn PC every time I want to use it.

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 days ago

Have you got into podman/distrobox yet? I main bazzite now, but keep a couple Debian and Ubuntu containers around for programs that run/better on those.

I felt pretty limited at first into I kind of grokked the immutable os way.

[–] lazylemons@lemmy.today 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yea the Helldivers problem killllsss me and has since day 1. I arrange all my windows on my other displays so I can see as much as possible before I launch it. 😅

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

My problem is I forget and try to look at something else out of habit. Then I come back to the game and it's borked. Before I figured out that horrible vulkan shaders load time issue it would take 20 minutes for the game to launch again. Not exactly trouble free to say the least.

[–] superglue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago

I absolutely love Linux and even I went back to Windows on my gaming rig.

My problems were sleep and wake just will not work properly in Bazzite or any distro. And I found myself getting tired of having to troubleshoot 1/4 games I installed from Steam. Like sure, I did get them to run eventually, but I got tired of it.

And also pirated games. Again, you can get them to run, but depending on the game, you might spend hours tweaking things. On windows it just runs first try. Sad but its my experience.

[–] IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.wtf -1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Agreed. We're close to "use Linux, it just works" but the closer it gets the more glaring the remaining issues become.

I recently dumped Win 11 for gaming and decided to try Steam OS, it wouldn't get past the install because it couldn't get a network connection. Next I tried CachyOS. It mostly works but the WiFI/BT support isn't there, I had to track down a project that is working on drivers for the chipset in my Strix X870E-E motherboard which mostly fixed WiFi but I can't get an Xbox controller to stay connected. Also networking can be patchy, and the PIA VPN client is just broken. All of these things worked fine in Windows.

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

We're close to "use Linux, it just works" but the closer it gets the more glaring the remaining issues become.

Yeah I totally feel that. For basic PC stuff like web browsing it's already there and that's part of what makes gaming so annoying. You can tell that everything else is designed with flexibility and the user experience in mind so when a game just refuses to boot it feels more disappointing. I want it to be ready for everyone to use and it just isn't.

[–] Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If you have the dongle from Xbox theres a GitHub repository called like xbone that works really well on my machine, I am on mainline Arch btw. I noticed xbone only sucks when you first connect a controller, so there is a downside that sucks pretty bad.

[–] IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.wtf 0 points 2 days ago

Thanks for the tip, I'll just stick with a long cable for now and order a Steam Controller next week.

[–] bblkargonaut@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

The power of bazzite for me is that I have it running on a bc250 as my media center pc. My Linux illiterate wife can play Stardew valley and toggle the vpn on and off to watch track and field.

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Is the OGC Kernel similar to the one on CachyOS?

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

I'm so tempted to rebase from bazzite-deck to bazzite-desktop. But I fear stuff will break when I rebase back.