I installed a SteamOS clone on a Windows gaming laptop, and it's actually pretty good.

Key points

• You can (sort of) install SteamOS on a Windows gaming laptop.
• Bazzite delivers an enhanced gaming experience with high performance and customized power profiles.
• The user interface and overall experience on Bazzite looks better than on Windows, with potential for future improvements.

When it comes to portable gaming devices, it’s clear that while there’s a huge variety of devices in the Windows space — and more powerful ones at that — the Steam Deck still reigns supreme due to its price and the ease of use of SteamOS compared to Windows. Well, if you’re deep into this ecosystem, you probably already know that you can put SteamOS on a Windows PC thanks to HoloISO, a SteamOS clone that tries to retain most of the same features. But there’s another, more recent option called Bazzite.

There is clearly interest in putting a SteamOS-like experience on portable gaming devices, so I had to see what it would be like for myself. To be perfectly clear, this is not a review and does not necessarily reflect the quality of the project itself. It is simply a portrayal of my experience with a particular portable device and as someone who doesn’t really use Linux otherwise. It should be noted that these projects can only do so much when there are so many portable devices out there. The portable device I used was the ONEXPLAYER X1 Mini, which is probably one of the newer and lesser-known options, so any potential issues are likely to be exacerbated in this particular scenario.

HoloISO or Bazzite?

Easy choice

Until I started researching this article, I had only heard of HoloISO, but a close friend told me about Bazzite, a sort of spiritual successor to that original project. HoloISO went on hiatus for a while there, though the project appears to have been revived in a different GitHub repository. The main differences on paper seem to be that HoloISO tries to replicate the entire Steam Deck experience more closely, while Bazzite goes the extra mile to provide a better experience. You can choose between a KDE or GNOME desktop, for example.

I wanted to try HoloISO, but after a couple of attempts to install, I realized that for some reason, I couldn’t get into desktop mode and was constantly seeing a black screen. The Steam UI worked, but it was upside down and there was no way to fix it. So, I tried Bazzite, and thankfully, things were much smoother. So, that’s the basis of my tests, and if you have the same PC, that’s my recommendation. However, your results will definitely vary.

The setup was complicated.

This mobile device is not designed for this purpose.

Here’s a fun fact: Many portable gaming consoles from smaller brands tend to use displays designed for tablets or smartphones, which have a native vertical aspect ratio. ONEXPLAYER does a good job of hiding this in Windows, but that was the first hurdle when it came to setting up Bazzite or HoloISO. Everything displays in a vertical orientation, which is still usable, but it’s definitely not the most comfortable experience while connecting controllers.

But it gets worse when you load the Steam UI, because Steam tries to fix this by rotating the screen… except in the case of this laptop, the screen rotates in the wrong direction, so everything is upside down. Now, in desktop mode, you can change the screen orientation fairly easily (which is why HoloISO was unusable for me without a desktop environment), but there's another problem: this doesn't affect gaming mode. It's still upside down.

I was very lucky to have a good friend who was more experienced with this sort of thing than I was. So, by entering a certain command into a Linux terminal, I was able to fix the screen orientation for Steam’s gaming mode, and we were off to work. Here’s the thing, in case you run into similar issues:

sudo rpm-ostree kargs --append-if-missing video=eDP-1:panel_orientation=left_side_up

I did run into a few other issues during setup, though. I had to reinstall Bazzite three times because I was never forced to create a sudo password and didn’t realize I was missing an important step. So during the setup process, I was repeatedly asked to enter a password I didn’t know. But I finally figured it out. Another oddity is that there’s a helpful setup window when you first get to the desktop, which helps you install some software to get you set up, including EmuDeck. However, you’re never prompted to connect to the internet before that, so this process didn’t work for me very well. Just something to keep in mind before you get started.

However, this setup window makes things a lot easier. In a flash, you can have all sorts of emulators if you’re a fan of them, and there’s plenty of other software you can choose to install as well. All of this is completely optional, but it’s clear that this is an experience that wants to make things as easy as possible for users, although there are some drawbacks.

performance

It's very good.

I didn't spend enough time gaming on this laptop to make a scientific comparison between running games on Windows or Linux, but I did try out all the usual games I play for a few minutes. shadow of the tomb raider, Forza Horizon 5and Eldin Ring All the games were perfectly playable at the same settings I was playing on Windows on the same laptop. In fact, they ran better overall, with higher frame rates when power consumption was set to the same level. That's pretty impressive.

I also tried Summit LegendsThis was the first game I had any real problems with. Loading this game for the first time is a pain—or at least it feels like it—with Steam taking over an hour to compile the Vulkan shaders. To be fair, even on Windows, it takes a while to compile shaders on this type of hardware, but it was clearly worse here. Still, I was able to skip the shader compilation process and the game seemed to run fine. It was pretty much seamless, on par with what I got on Windows, if not a little better. Rocket League It also ran almost as efficiently as Windows, though it seemed a bit slower than the numbers I got when I reviewed the mobile device.

I've also tried some emulators, starting with melonDS. I've tried running a hacked ROM. Pokemon The title's resolution has been improved to 5x the original resolution, and of course, it ran without any problems, just like it did on Windows. In fact, it might have been even more noticeable on Bazzite. However, melonDS isn't really optimized for portable Steam mode, so all the menus are designed for mouse use. But once you've got the emulator set up, you can play just fine with just controllers and a touchscreen.

My other test was to simulate the switch, and Breeze of the Wild The game performed as well as it did on a single Windows system, perhaps a little better. Visual issues were still a lot, but the frame rate seemed a little higher when rendering at double the native resolution. Again, the emulator's UI isn't designed for gaming if you're trying to access menus, but once the game is up and running, it works perfectly fine.

And if you’re thinking about performance tuning, Bazzite has you covered, even better than ONEXPLAYER. If you’re willing to dig deeper, you can enable a tool called HHD, which lets you customize power profiles for each game in your library. On Windows, it’s up to each manufacturer to offer different power settings, and ONEXPLAYER has a generic TDP setting in its overlay. But HHD actually lets you set power profiles for each game, so if you’re playing Elden Ring and need all the performance you can get, you can do that. But then if you’re playing a Game Boy game in emulation, you can probably get by with 10W or less, so you can make each app have a different power profile.

Is Bazzite better for mobile devices?

It's a mixed bag.

The big question at the end of the day is, would I prefer this OS on my portable gaming device over Windows? Honestly, I’d say yes. Of course, the Steam UI is almost perfect for controllers and touchscreens, so that’s a big plus, but you can also emulate that on Windows using Big Picture mode. However, using the proper Game Mode on Bazzite gives you a few more options, with a decent performance overlay and some additional settings available. There’s also a handy management window where you can pause and close any game at any time from the Steam UI, which I think is lacking on Windows.

I had a major issue, probably specific to my device. The left trigger didn't register the same range of motion as the right, and in fact, wasn't enough to trigger much action in games. I couldn't aim at shadow of the tomb raider Or believe in Eldin RingIf I pressed really hard, I could kind of trigger it, but not consistently. This is something I’ve never seen on Windows, and it happened with two of the same controllers, so it seems like some sort of software issue. Even weirder is that while the analog sticks worked as expected in games, when I went to set up the inputs in Steam, the left analog stick didn’t register any movement other than moving to the left. Again, somewhat odd stuff but I feel like it might be a compatibility issue with this particular device on Linux.

In desktop mode, the KDE-based desktop looks very similar to Windows in concept, but there’s something about it that feels smoother and more responsive. The touch keyboard appears and disappears much more quickly, and all the animations feel smoother and more designed for touch. That might sound strange, but think about it. Most animations in Windows seem designed for people who move a mouse around, which takes much longer than just tapping something on the screen. On a smartphone, things are generally more responsive to touch, and this seems to replicate that feeling somewhat. It’s hard to describe with meaning, but there’s something about it that just feels better. The one exception, oddly enough, was Steam in desktop mode, which refused to bring up the keyboard to let me log in.

As I mentioned before, Bazzite also helps you with the setup process, so I had a bunch of emulators available to me right from the start without having to open a browser and search for them. It was really nice, honestly.

I keep a bag

I admit I’m not a PC gamer, and this was a relatively short experience. But despite that, I think Bazzite is a great solution. The controller issues I ran into are definitely a big deal, but since I don’t play much on my PC, I’m interested in keeping this device just to see how it evolves. The UI and overall experience on Bazzite looks better, and I want to see it improve a lot on this portable device. If you have a Windows gaming portable, I think Bazzite is definitely worth a try, as long as you know how to switch back to Windows if you end up regretting it.