Practical Usability

Bazzite is definitely usable, but it has some rough edges. It is to be expected, because the distribution is young, but it has a lot of room for improvement, nevertheless.

I moved my testing computer to the living room in order to check how good of an experience Bazzite would offer as an HTPC (an unfair test, considering Steam Gaming Mode does not work on the hardware). I found that installing KDE Connect on my smartphone and pairing it with Bazzite gave very good results, allowing me to use the smartphone as a combination of mouse and keyboard from the couch. Unfortunately, KDE Connect only pairs once the desktop session is started, which means it is not available in the login screen before KDE Plasma is launched. A regular keyboard and mouse are therefore necessary to log in, which is not ideal for a living room setup.

Due to an upstream bug, KDE Plasma failed to identify my cheap Gembird gamepad. Still, individual games and applications with gamepad support either picked it up right away or could be configured to use it. Someone suggested installing and using AntiMicroX in order to map mouse functionality to my gamepad, to move the cursor from the couch using the controller. However, I find KDE Connect is a better solution, because it integrates with KDE Plasma seamlessly and also doubles as a keyboard.

It is worth mentioning that I found Bazzite slower to boot than expected. The boot time is bearable, but surprising, considering the distribution is not running too many services. Maybe I am spoiled by lightweight distributions, desktops, and window managers. In any case, once the KDE Plasma session was launched, Bazzite was quite responsive – or at least as responsive as you should expect from old hardware. If I wanted a long-term solution for an old machine, I would definitely consider a regular distribution such as Devuan, with a lightweight desktop environment. The Steam client, Lutris, or Heroic Games Launcher could be bolted on to Devuan afterwards.

If you are interested in running Bazzite on a real Steam Deck, keep in mind the Steam Deck LCD 64GB is not supported because of what appears to be a kernel bug. Replacing the storage of this unit solves the issue.

Conclusion

While I cannot consider Bazzite an out-of-the-box solution for Linux gaming, it is definitely a step in the right direction, and it will eventually get there.

Bazzite is obviously intended for serious gaming rigs, but it seems to work fine enough on budget second-hand hardware. If you want a set-and-forget solution on which to run your Steam and GOG library, Bazzite is a viable choice. It has the advantage of being an actual Linux distribution. Consequently, it can be used for general tasks (such as browsing the web, checking emails, or writing Linux Magazine articles). Notice, however, that being viable might not suffice. If your hardware is old, you will get more mileage by installing a lightweight operating system and setting your games manually instead.

The Author

Rubén Llorente is a mechanical engineer whose job is to ensure that the security measures of the IT infrastructure of a small clinic are both law compliant and safe. In addition, he is an OpenBSD enthusiast and a weapons collector.