Bazzite “Convergence” art
This week, Valve took another step towards the ultimate SteamOS game. After Lenovo unveiled the SteamOS-powered Legion Go S, Valve clearly signaled its intention to officially expand SteamOS to other PC devices beyond the Steam Deck and Legion Go. All of this is incredible and welcome news. And all of this leads to an uncomfortable but inevitable question: What happens to Bazzite now?
As you may or may not know, Bazzite is the Linux darling of the handheld gaming space. Because while SteamOS provides that smooth, responsive and elegant experience on Steam Deck, Bazzite currently brings it to many other devices. From a variety of GPD and OneXPlayer units, to Legion Go and ROG Ally X.
Calling it a SteamOS clone doesn’t do it remotely justice, but that’s a more approachable way to describe it. In reality, Bazzite includes top projects like Fedora and GloriousEggroll’s Nobara (various game and performance tweaks), Chimera (Gamescope implementation), and other gaming-focused Linux distributions. In turn, Bazzite contributes its own improvements to the rest of the Linux ecosystem. That’s the beauty of open source.
I would argue that Bazzite has played a critical role in driving demand for SteamOS to appear on other devices. Of course, Steam Deck does imagine how SteamOS might feel on Windows-based devices. But Bazzite tells you how sublime a device like the Legion Go or ROG Ally becomes when it replaces Windows 11 with a user-friendly interface actually optimized for gaming.
Sites like The Verge, Ars Technica, and Eurogamer have all praised Bazzite, and popular YouTube channels like Linus Tech Tips and Digital Foundry have shown off its smooth, console-like experience in action.
The future of Bazzite in a post-SteamOS future
Despite all the attention Bazzite has been getting lately, there are fears that it will disappear after the recent announcements from Valve and Lenovo. Bazzite creator Kyle Gospodnetich has been getting a lot of questions about the future of the project, and he wants to assure you that Bazzite isn’t going anywhere.
In a PSA this week, Gospodnetich wrote:
“The Bazzite team is extremely excited about the upcoming extended launch of Steam OS. Of course, none of us would be here if Valve didn’t light the way. That said, we strongly believe that Bazzite has an ongoing role to fill in a post-Steam operating system future. A desktop release of Steam OS still seems a long way off, and handheld support will almost certainly focus on partner devices first and foremost rather than the breadth of devices we support today.”
This is an excellent point. We all know that Valve’s approach to software development can be notoriously slow. And it may never officially support the plethora of SKUs from GPD, OneXPlayer and Ayaneo. Or more obscure ones like Ayn Loki. But Bazzite supports many of them today.
The PSA continues:
“Bazzite was born from user support with Steam OS on the Steam Deck Discord and is designed to compensate for some of the shortcomings of Steam OS, such as immutability that prevents packages from being installed when needed, lack of printing, lack of secure boot , lack of disk encryption, and so on. We also ship a number of helpers and add-on packages to make non-Steam gaming easier and faster to get up and running, and we’re able to work faster with the community on improvements – all of which will continue distinguish us.”
I learned today that SteamOS doesn’t actually have any printer support, which means one less possible reason to use its desktop side as a daily driver!
However, cutting through the rather technical language above, one simple truth emerges: Bazzite has an appealing tone for power users. It might help to picture it as a sort of “modified” version of SteamOS, with more features and functionality. Plus, as Gospodenitich mentions, Bazzite’s team is more nimble and can implement these things quickly.
He concluded the PSA by saying “We will continue to build Bazzite long into the future.”
You can learn more about Bazzite and join its developer and gaming community on Discord.
