TLDR: You should use Bazzite (https://bazzite.gg/) if you want to move away from Windows and keep gaming in a mostly-seamless manner.

The Need to Move Away From Windows

When Microsoft announced that they would end-of-life Windows 10 my gaming inner circle convened an emergency meeting. Our frustration with the platform had been building for some time: The continued anti-consumer actions of “mother” Microsoft, the increased bloat of unwanted applications (the recall fiasco being the most egregious — we are mostly privacy and security professionals), the forced resets of settings when there was an update, and the fact that a significant amount of Windows 11 is simply Windows 10 with a face-lift … that seems to have been done by an intern and not a UX team, it seems that Microsoft has turned away from anything that could be considered innovative if it wasn’t “AI” based.

And this is ignoring the current political goings-on within the United States, and the more recent revelations that, even though they promised it and it is in contract, Microsoft admitted in a sworn testimony that they can not stop US authorities from accessing EU data for snooping in July of 2025.

This time we called for action — and it centred around one question: Is there a viable gaming alternative to the Windows platform that is easy to use?

We ended up settling on Bazzite, and, after a year of dedicated gaming on it, I am reporting back to help anyone who may be considering the same.

The Search

Our sights quickly fell to some Linux alternatives. The problem was that most of them tried to “bolt on” the capability for gaming, and many of them required a pretty good working knowledge of Linux and its systems to get started. Now, we were all coming from a Computer Science background, so Linux was not a barrier to us, but we wanted to find a solution that we could recommend to others if the need should arise.

These requirements; The need to find a Windows alternative to gaming, the need for it to be a relatively gaming seamless experience, and the ability to be recommended to less-technical people, landed us on Bazzite.

Bazzite

Bazzite is a Linux (Fedora) variant that comes pre-packaged with Steam and everything you need to game like you do on Windows. It also includes integrations (currently via Lutris) with XBox Game Pass, EA, Epic Game Store, GOG, itch, Rockstar, and Ubisoft — it seemed to have all the things we wanted from a ‘capability’ perspective.

Bazzite is a full operating system so from an installation perspective you will need a bootable USB to boot up and run the installer. A special note on this is that Windows does not play nice with other operating systems and so I installed Bazzite on another hard drive and the two operating systems don’t know anything about each other. If you do this (install on a completely separate drive) you will have FAR fewer issues.

The Test

I installed Bazzite on a separate disk and made it my primary operating system in July of 2024. I wanted to specifically focus on the question, “Can I use this as my primary operating system AND for gaming?” The answer was a resounding “yes”.

In over a year, the only reason I had to boot back into my Windows OS was to use Photoshop and play PubG (Notorious for how many anti-cheat programs it has and basically wreaks havoc on your kernel). I did not miss it. From a usability perspective, things ran faster and I wasn’t annoyed by any features that, say, kept popping up and intruding on my user experience. It was a refreshing change from Windows.

From someone who likes to pop a terminal every once in a while, or write some python code, Bazzite — being Linux — made that simple. There just was no reason (other to make cheeky memes in Photoshop) to boot into Windows.

There ARE pros and cons to using Bazzite. Here are the main ones that I found.

Pros

• Well integrated gaming with multiple launches and Steam.
• Creates a very “Windows-Like” user experience so less technically-inclined users won’t have as much difficulty
• Auto updates with a nice update manager
• A nice app installer to manage and update Apps
• Stability
• Both Linux Tech Tips and GamerNexus have added Bazzite to their benchmark runs — which means they think its here to stay, it will get a LOT more exposure, and, I suspect, a the remaining compatability issues will be ironed out as it gains popularity: It’s on the up-swing.

Cons

• It’s a new OS — there will always be SOME learning curve with that.
• You will need to install an entirely new operating system … though the goal was to get off of Windows so this seems like an obvious point.
• Some games that may not natively support Linux will have to be configured to run in ‘Compatibility Mode’ in Steam. This isn’t an issue, but it is an extra step that you will have to take if you see the grayed-out ‘install’ button in Steam. Sadly, for me, this means my Civ 5 install has the occasional issue — but not always.
• Some games have issues on Linux still. There aren’t that many, but older games are usually the culprit. You can check game compatability at ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com/

Summary

All in all, I now run exclusively on Bazzite and will be killing my Windows disk so that I can use it for more Bazzite space. Finding a Photoshop alternative is currently in the works.