Hi all,
I’m traveling for a few months so I picked up a used gaming laptop from one of those trading sites. It’s an ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2024.
I initially went with Windows because I wanted to game. I was gonna miss my terminal for dev and a bunch of other things but I thought compatibility and not dealing with hassle was more important for now. The thing is, for some reason, the laptop would be running really hot all the time … even when idling.
I got fed up and I put Pop OS! loaded steam with the compatibility stuff and ran a few games really well. My only issue so far was that the laptop keyboard didn’t work during installation but after an update it was fine. The laptop obviously gets hot when running games but when idling it runs really cool.
This is now making me feel like I can convert my gaming desktop over as well!
I was considering Bazzite too? Anyone know if it’s worth it?
Although it’s certainly a popular distribution, my understanding is that Bazzite’s future is currently uncertain due to Fedora’s decision to remove certain 32-bit libraries in future and the folks behind Bazzite saying they may need to end the project because of it.
I don’t know the details, and it’s possible that Fedora will reconsider, someone may make those libraries available downstream, or the Bazzite folks may have been hyperbolic, but it’s worth looking for the details and potential impacts. (Don’t take my reply as an accurate assessment).
As an alternative, I can recommend an excellent game-friendly distro: EndeavourOS. It’s based on Arch, rather than Fedora. I use it on my gaming PC and my general use laptop. I’m approaching the 2 year mark with this distro.
My understanding is that they already walked that back due to overwhelmingly negative community reception.
It’s one of those changes that will happen sooner or later, bazzite and steam need to figure out a solution because fedora, and other modern distros can’t and won’t keep dragging around 32 bit libraries forever.
It isn’t just Steam, but gaming in general. Dropping 32bit support would kill a huge swath of gaming and game preservation. Work is being done on tools like WoW64 but it’s slow going. No distro should even talk about dropping 32b until the rest of the ecosystem can pick up the slack. If Fedora wants to accelerate that, they should contribute to the projects that aim to provide backwards compatibility instead of scaring the whole Linux community with destructive and shortsighted proposals.
At some point you need start cutting stuff or nothing happens and you’re the one still maintaining the 32 bit packages 15 years later.
Isn’t it possible to use flatpak? Then Steam would come with all its required 32 bit libraries in the flatpak.
No. At least not for projects like Bazzite, where Steam features like Big Picture / SteamOS mode can’t work as a flatpak for technical reasons. There are also major problems running games that way, too. The technical details are being heatedly discussed in the Fedora community if your interested in the nitty-gritties.
There’s plenty of different solutions, but anything that isn’t what people already have is gonna upset.