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Hardware Compatibility for Gaming

General Hardware

Note

Most x86_64 PCs from the last decade should run Bazzite.

Minimum System Requirements

  • Architecture: x86_64
  • Firmware: UEFI (CSM Support should be disabled if available)
  • Processor (CPU) : 2GHz quad core processor or better
  • System Memory (RAM): 4GB
  • Graphics: A graphics card that can utilize Vulkan 1.3 or higher, modern AMD GPUs work the best
  • Storage: 64GB free on an internal solid-state drive
  • Network: Stable internet connection with no bandwidth caps
  • Additional Notes: Certain drivers are not compatible with Bazzite

The Hardware for Linux website is a good indicator for how well OEM hardware is supported on the Linux desktop.

Steam Gaming Mode Requirements

Note

These specific requirements only apply to Bazzite-Deck images

  • AMD GPU
    • Modern AMD GPUs
      • RX 4xx series and up
      • 600M/700M integrated GPUs are also supported
  • Intel Arc GPUs are supported with minor caveats compared to AMD hardware
  • Nvidia GPU support is currently in beta with major caveats compared to AMD hardware
  • A Steam account

Compatible Handhelds

The Handheld Wiki lists tested handhelds with proper support for the Steam Deck, ASUS ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and a handful of other handhelds.

Vulkan Compatible GPU

Attention

Linux gaming is heavily dependent on having compatible hardware with Vulkan.

Viewing Your GPU's Vulkan Version

If you're using a device with an older or weaker GPU that does not support Vulkan 1.3 or later, then you need to use older Proton and Wine builds like Proton/WINE 6 or earlier. Check which Vulkan version your GPU uses, enter this in the terminal:

vulkaninfo | grep 'Instance Version'
  • If it outputs less than 1.3 in the Vulkan Instance Version: or does not work at all, then you will run into issues including unplayable games and worse performance.
  • Really old devices may need to resort to OpenGL translation which performs worse, has graphical issues, etc.

Vulkan Command

Try using Proton-Sarek if your have hardware that can utilize Vulkan 1.1, but not newer Vulkan versions. It can be installed using ProtonUp-Qt or ProtonPlus.

GPUs Without Vulkan Support

However if your GPU does not support Vulkan at all then you must use an older Proton version (Proton 3, 4, or 5) and use this launch option for most Steam games:

PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%

This will use the OpenGL translation as opposed to Vulkan.

Storage Filesystems

Note

Bazzite will automatically mount secondary drives that are formatted as Ext4 or BTRFS by default.

BTRFS is the default and recommended filesystem for Bazzite. Any secondary drives that you plan to play video games on should be backed up and reformatted to either Ext4 or BTRFS, however the drive will lose all of the data when performing this operation. You can use GNOME Disks to format the drives appropriately at your own risk.

Unsupported Filesystems for Secondary Drives

Warning

You will lose all of your data reformatting secondary internal/external drives.

NTFS

If you are coming from Windows and plan to game on a secondary drive with games already installed on it, then we regret to inform you that the NTFS filesystem is unsupported for PC gaming on Bazzite.

exFAT and FAT32

FAT32 and exFAT are unsupported. Both filesystems do not support symbolic links which is required for Proton prefixes to work properly. However, there are scenarios where a microSD card is formatted to exFAT may work in some cases, but this method is unsupported as something the Bazzite maintainers do not plan to accommodate.

Sharing Games with a Windows Dual-Boot

Install the unofficial WinBtrfs driver on your Windows installation at your own risk. Please make sure to read any documentation associated with this project before installing the driver on Windows.

Video Tutorial

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