Hello gamers! It’s that time again – We’ve got a packed update with the introduction of Bazaar, kernel 6.15, Z13 goodies, a new WiFi daemon to improve game streaming, and some interviews you can binge on.
But first, let’s talk about Fedora 32-bit libraries.
Fedora 32-bit Libraries
You might have seen some news regarding Fedora wanting to drop 32-bit libraries in the distant future. This is no longer the case as the proposal has been rescinded without a vote.
This is the beauty of being part in an open source community such as Fedora, where one can raise their concerns and give feedback. In this case, we were able to communicate that dropping 32-bit libraries currently would harm gaming in the broader Fedora ecosystem during a pivotal moment driving Linux adoption.
Moving forward, some members of the Bazzite team will be more active in Fedora conversations, particularly in a proposed Gaming SIG, to better represent gamers and gaming under Fedora as a whole and hopefully prevent future avoidable PR disasters. Antheas is also looking into how to improve the Steam Flatpak experience as a long term goal, which will also benefit the Lutris and Heroic flatpaks, as they currently have deficiencies compared to their rpm variants. We’ll share an issue tracker for these changes soon. Making this work will require collaboration between multiple projects.
If you’re interested in the full story, you can check out some of the coverage this got over the last few weeks, and the interview with Gardiner (link at the end of this post).
(Happy Birthday GamingOnLinux!)
Feature Updates
Bazaar
Bazaar is now the default flatpak store for Universal Blue and all images of Bazzite!
This is a brand new store with an important core objective: encourage developers to ship and maintain their applications for Linux themselves, while receiving support for this work.
This is done by placing a focus on flatpaks and Flathub as the source of applications. There is no RPM here! Important for cases where those are not supported, such as Bazzite.
It also allows distributions and images to curate application recommendations. As you can see above, in Bazzite, we make recommendations for the best gaming apps, and if you scroll down, you can find communication apps such as Discord and others.
It features prominent donation links to encourage you to support your favorite creators and we hope to be able to do more in that regard in the future.
And of course, another big focus was performance. Right away you can expect a more fluid update/install/uninstall process without the constant loading bars that plague other stores, within a more focused experience.
Lastly it’s allowed us to fix some footguns. Steam and Lutris Flatpaks are no longer listed or installable in the store, meaning users can no longer accidentally downgrade their experience or end up with a copy of Steam or Lutris that doesn’t contain their library.
Bazzite Portal Restored
The Bazzite Portal has finally returned! In this completely new version, made by contributors Cilantro Limewire and Zeglius, you can find all the goodies from the previous one, with nice big buttons and progress indicators this time.
Since Bazaar will be providing curated application recommendations moving forward, it no longer includes flatpaks. Instead, treat this as a helpful GUI for our various optional ujust commands.
Extended Device Support
Asus Z13 2025
This update also brings full support for the ROG Z13 2025. It is no longer beta!
Additions include full RGB support for both the Lightbar and Keyboard. This implements the Asus Aura protocol, and we hope to expand it on more Asus laptops soon (with your help!).
The fan key now works for cycling TDP modes as well, with the RGB of the device changing to reflect the new mode.
And finally, the Armoury button now opens Handheld Daemon now and is partly remappable, instead of controlling the WIFI.
The Handheld Daemon integration is currently preinstalled only on deck images, but you can also install it from the Github install script for desktop images and it will work the same way.
By the way, the Steam version shown in the videos above is using Flatpak Steam. We’ll continue investigating it as a possible option for the future.
ONEXPLAYER X1 Mini Pro
This release also adds support for the ONEXPLAYER X1 Mini (Pro/AMD AI 370) which is now coming out.
New Kernel Version
This release comes out with kernel 6.15.4, with kernel 6.15 being quite uneventful, which is both a bad thing (no new goodies) and a good thing (it works quite well). There were a few regressions with this one that we have backported fixes for so you should be good. Our patchset was also updated for the Z13 (for the side button to work) and for the X1 Mini Pro (for the display orientation and turbo button).
IWD
Or “iNet Wireless Daemon” if you’re some kind of nerd is a new WIFI service written by Intel that is now included in all images.
This new daemon can resolve the streaming issues faced with wpa_supplicant. Specifically:
- Periodic WIFI scanning causing latency jumps/freezes while streaming games (e.g., Sunshine)
- Slower WIFI compared to Windows on mesh networks
- Network dropouts in busy areas or under dense mesh networks
It is currently not enabled by default as it has some issues with enterprise networks and ehm the Intel MSI Claw. You can toggle it via ujust toggle-iwd to give it a try.
Note: that toggling it will remove your saved wifi networks.
Do let us know what you think if you choose to give it a try!
Topgrade changes
Our Topgrade updater will no longer perform Distrobox updates. This removes some non-fatal errors that confused users and speeds up updates quite substantially. Moving forward, we recommend using BoxBuddy or DistroShelf to update your Distrobox containers. DistroShelf is now shipped by default in all new installs as well.
Bazzite News
Steam Hardware Survey
Bazzite is now visible in the Steam Hardware Survey for the very first time! It is only the KDE variant, but we plan to change the image name with the Fedora 43 update to unify our images in stat trackers like this.
General Growth
We have also now crossed 20,000 weekly active users!
Universal Blue Discord is now above 18,000 members, the Bazzite Subreddit is now above 15,000 members, and Bazzite as a project is now reaching 403,000 unique monthly visitors with 763 terrabytes of ISOs delivered in just the last 30 days.
None of this would be possible without each and every one of you and it’s an incredible honor and privilege, from all of us, to be able to serve you this experience
Please keep sending us feedback, every bit helps!
Stop Killing Games initiative
If you’re in the EU or the UK, please consider signing the Stop Killing Games petition. This will go a long way toward protecting your ability to play the games you’ve bought well into the future, and we thank you for it!
Videos to keep you busy
These are all the updates! Here are some links to interviews I did over the last three weeks. The first one is with Brodie Robertson on Tech Over Tea and the second one with Gardiner Bryant, where we also touch on the Fedora 32 bit support proposal.
