Bazzite Buzz #5

This newsletter was originally released on October 5, 2023.

Bazzite Buzz No. 5


IMPORTANT: MANUAL INTERVENTION REQUIRED

If you installed a Bazzite image on any device before September 22, 2023 or used the older offline ISO then open a host terminal and enter rpm-ostree update, and wait for it to upgrade to the latest build. Reboot your device after it has finished. More information on this here.


Welcome to Bazzite Buzz #5!

Bazzite is a custom image of Fedora 38 designed to being the best in Linux gaming to your PCs, including the Steam Deck. This newsletter highlights all the work we have been doing to bring gamers the best goodies for their PCs and handheld gaming devices.

If you are new to a Universal Blue project then here’s how they work then here’s how they work. They follow the continuous delivery methodology of development. That means we’re constantly adding new things, so let’s get started!

We have been preparing for the stable release of Fedora 39 and will plan to switch builds over there within the next two weeks. Nvidia images for ASUS and Microsoft Surface hardware is now available. We also added dependencies needed for the DaVinci Resolve video editor in case you wanted that. The unrar library is included in the image which should resolve issues users may experience with certain compressed file formats.

Bazzite Portal has new additions

Bazzite Portal now features more software including the Brew package manager, OpenTabletDriver, and Wootility. It also features the unofficial Final Fantasy XIV launcher since it works better for Linux than the default method.

Steam Deck images now include a ton of performance optimizations taken from this Medium article. These tweaks in theory should give a slight performance increase versus stock SteamOS, but we never attempted benchmarks yet to actually confirm this. Maybe for a later time unless someone out there wants to volunteer and benchmark both operating systems.

Waydroid support has also been both streamlined and improved tremendously. Controllers should work well with it now. Steam Deck images should have a working quick access menu with it and plus the addition of the framerate limiter working with Android applications to our surprise.

Waydroid on the Steam Deck running in Game Mode

Open a host terminal and enter just init-waydroid and it should setup Waydroid for you. Keep in mind you may need to set SELinux to permissive, but there has been conflicting reports on this. If you are experiencing issues then enter sudoedit /etc/selinux/config and changing SELINUX=enforcing to SELINUX=permissive. If you want extra goodies to Waydroid like ARM translation then enter just configure-waydroid.

We are now focusing on having an extremely stable and consistent experience across different hardware. We are also planning on proper support for the ASUS ROG Ally and other handheld PCs, and have already accomplished some of the ground work necessary. We still consider both the ROG Ally and other handheld PCs as an alpha at this moment, and users will encounter major issues until they are resolved.

As always, we’d like to thank all of our contributors and those who are helping us troubleshoot any issues in our newer builds. The next Bazzite Buzz will focus on the transition from Fedora 38 to Fedora 39, so stay tuned for that.

Features

  • Nvidia support for ASUS and Microsoft Surface images.
    • Not available on the current ISO. Until new ones are released, you could still rebase to these. Start with a bazzite-nvidia installation and rebase:
      • ASUS Nvidia: rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-asus-nvidia:latest
      • Surface Nvidia: rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-surface-nvidia:latest
  • Streamlined Waydroid by adding Weston launcher using polkit to start and stop the service.
  • Added controller support to Waydroid.
  • The frame limiter in Game Mode now works for Android games in Waydroid.
  • Added dependencies required by DaVinci Resolve
  • Added the unrar library.
  • Added Brew package manager to Bazzite Portal
    • If you opt to use Brew, it will also auto-update those packages as needed.
  • OpenTabletDriver has been added to Bazzite Portal
  • Added XIV Launcher to Bazzite Portal.
  • Added option to download Wootility to Bazzite Portal.
  • Added option to force Discover Overlay to launch on GNOME Wayland.
  • Added a just command to enable virtualization and vfio for desktop images.
  • Upgraded Discover Overlay to version 0.6.9
  • Upgraded Greenlight to 2.0.0-beta14 in Bazzite Portal. Keep in mind Gear Lever constantly allows this and other AppImages to get updated post-installation.
  • Advanced users can change Flatpak files if desired now since they moved from /usr/etc to /etc/.
  • Updated Mesa to version 23.2.1.
  • Updated boot menu for new images and simplified it.
  • Waydroid now has the required properties for Steam Deck images. No need to add ro.sf.lcd_density=215 manually.
  • Steam Deck images have a longer progress bar length.
  • A few preliminary ASUS ROG Ally additions.
  • Steam Deck images now use steam-patch which is especially useful for the ASUS ROG Ally and other handheld PCs.
    • Enabled TDP control on non-deck hardware covered by steam-patch too.
  • Steam Deck images are now using some of the peformance tweaks from this Medium article.
    • Kyber I/O scheduling from BFQ
    • Disable watchdog
    • Raise memlock limit
      • Fedora already includes the 1000hz tick for the kernel & MGLRU.
      • Once Valve solves their issue with CPPC in the Steam deck’s firmware the Bazzite can also utilize amd-pstate to save on battery.

Fixes

  • Fixed handygccs not working on other hardware outside of the Steam Deck.
  • Fixed Steam not opening after entering sleep mode.
  • Corrected issue with updater run from systemd.
  • Call daemon-reload when installing OpenTabletDriver & Resilio Sync.
  • Correct typo that caused issues in Bazzite Portal.
  • Fixed Nvidia images losing kernel arguments by having them checked on every boot.
  • If hostname is too long for Distrobox to function properly, it will reset to “bazzite”.

Full changelog here.