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Games: Bazzite, CachyOS, and Why GNU/Linux Outperforms Windows
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Make Use Of ☛ Bazzite has a feature that makes switching from Windows feel much easier
After teasing myself with the idea of finally making the switch to Linux, I made it happen. My Windows 11 partition is no more, and I'm fully invested in the Bazzite train. Surprisingly, it hasn't been as complicated as I originally expected. While I'm still leaning on Claude and other assistants to help me with the Terminal when I'm struggling, it's been smooth sailing otherwise. One thing in particular really helped bridge the gap between Windows and Bazzite, primarily when it comes to installing new applications on this new OS.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Bazaar was a thing on the KDE version of Bazzite that I installed. I expected that I was going to be living in the Terminal, but this makes it a more friendly, less bloated app store that puts the Windows Store to shame.
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XDA ☛ Linux gaming is almost there, but 3 missing pieces keep me booting into Windows
I have always been a Windows guy ever since I started using Windows 98 back in 2000. I didn't even know Linux was a thing when I was a kid. Even when I found out about gaming on Linux, its reputation for being too technical and niche kept me safely in the arms of Microsoft's walled garden. Fast-forward to 2026, and I was finally looking for a replacement for Windows 10. I didn't want to jump to Windows 11, so I began the search for a Linux distro that I could use every day. I liked a lot of things about Bazzite, but it only got me to around 80–90% of the way. I still found myself keeping my Windows installation alive for times when Bazzite underperformed, didn't support the title I wanted to play, or threw a tantrum that I was too tired to address. Linux gaming is in a golden era right now, but it's still not ready to welcome the average gamer who doesn't want to think about their OS at all.
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XDA ☛ CachyOS skipped the Open Gaming Collective, and gamers rewarded it by making it the top Linux distro on Steam
At the start of 2026, the team behind Bazzite — one of the more popular Linux distros for gaming, specifically on handhelds — announced the Open Gaming Collective (OGC), an initiative bringing together developers from various projects to improve gaming across the board. Aside from Bazzite, the project was joined by the teams at Nobara, ChimeraOS, ASUS Linux, and more.
But one big distro with a focus on gaming was not part of that: CachyOS. The Arch-based distribution was notably missing from the list of partners, and not too long after the initiative was revealed, the team confirmed its intentions to stay out of this project. That may sound like a problem, but CachyOS seems to be fine with the current setup.
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XDA ☛ Linux gaming is getting faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features
In March 2026, Linux crossed five percent of Steam's user base for the first time, an all-time high for an operating system that spent two decades as a novelty when it came to any kind of gaming. Microsoft's end-of-support deadline for Windows 10 last October pushed many users to look at alternatives, and the Steam Deck has quietly turned millions of people into Linux gamers without them really thinking about it, leading to more widespread adoption on desktop machines.
Most of that progress used to happen inside a piece of software called Wine, the translation layer that convinces Windows games they're running on Windows. Valve's tuned version of Wine, called Proton, is what makes Steam Play and the Steam Deck work. For years, every meaningful improvement to Linux gaming came from changes to Wine and Proton themselves. That's still true, but increasingly the most important changes are happening one layer deeper, inside the Linux kernel. The latest example of that is something called NTSYNC, a kernel-level driver that has offered great performance gains over previous versions of Wine, and is loaded by default on every Steam Deck that's up-to-date.