IN DEPTH Steam Deck

John Knight tries one of several SteamOS imitations and is overwhelmed by the future possibilities for Linux PC gaming.

Lhe Linux-based Steam Deck has revolutionised PC gaming with a consolelike experience in handheld form. Valve has been promising to release SteamOS for general PCs – beyond just the Deck – for ages now, but some folks have got tired of waiting and have decided to take matters into their own hands.

Whether you can’t afford a Steam Deck or you just want SteamOS on another device, maybe one of these SteamOS imitators is just what you’re looking for.

There’s a number of competing gaming distros now, several of which are SteamOS imitations. Right now, your choices are HoloISO, ChimeraOS and Bazzite. All three are worthy of your attention but we have chosen Bazzite because it supports the broadest range of hardware and form factors.

Unlike HoloISO and ChimeraOS, which attempt to replicate the Steam Deck’s Arch-based underpinnings as closely as possible, Bazzite is based on Universal Blue, a set of OS images based on Fedora Atomic, itself a respin of Fedora, based around an almost-immutable atomic system. A word of warning: it’s still early days for these distros, and Bazzite still a bit of a buggy beta. But it’s worth persevering nonetheless!

Bazzite (https://bazzite.gg) has minimum requirements for its Deck-like gaming mode but provides separate desktop-only images for legacy hardware. We will be focusing on the full-fat gaming version in this article but will touch on the legacy desktop edition later.

According to the documentation, the main prerequisite is “a graphics card that can utilise Vulkan 1.3+”. For AMD GPUs, that means a Radeon RX 400 (2016) series or newer. For Nvidia users, it’s an RTX Series or GTX 16x0 (2018). Intel graphics users need an Arc GPU, otherwise you will be stuck with desktop-only mode.

To get started, head to the Bazzite website and click the Download Bazzite button in the top-right corner. Look for What Hardware Are You Using? and click Select Your Hardware. This gives a list of different form factors, including laptops, handhelds and desktop PCs – we went with the home theatre PC option.