this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
220 points (85.3% liked)
Linux Gaming
20625 readers
284 users here now
Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
This page can be subscribed to via RSS.
Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.
No memes/shitposts/low-effort posts, please.
Resources
WWW:
Discord:
IRC:
Matrix:
Telegram:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's not an unreasonable to think that a backup os is a good thing to have, even if in this case it's the one (most likely) being the reason Bazzite broke.
Now, I did listen to the video on my way to work, so I might have missed some details, but after checking the comments it seems like Jay's performance wasn't really where it should have been. Got to wonder if there's some funky gotcha with the gpu module or proton settings.
Also, does Bazzite default to xorg or wayland? I honestly have no idea.
It's Wayland only, I'm pretty sure.
Wayland
You can just have a thumbdrive with another linux distro and live boot with that. There really isn't a need to have another os permanently installed.
The reason he's actually giving to keep Windows is software compatibility for multiplayer games and other unsupported things. Using it as a fallback is just another reason he adds at the end when troubleshooting his broken bootloader.
He's not wrong about any of it, although for recovery you'll likely have a harder time accessing the Linux FS from Windows than the other way around, so having a recovery Linux on an external drive is good advice regardless.
Jay you mean? I replied to a comment, not the video, and the comment only said "backup os".
Still, I admittedly did not watch the video because I've stopped watching that guy years ago. He's one of the least knowledgeable "techtubers" I know. The only thing he was good at was custom watercooling stuff, but I don't know if he still does that stuff.
Lastly, while it does suck to not be able to play a game due to anticheat, the best way to solve that issue is to not play those games. The devs will propmtly find a way to make an anticheat that works on linux too if their playerbase demands it.
Going by the Steam survey Linux is like 2-3% of Steam's userbase. Not even allowing for how many of those people do have a Windows PC on the side, it's gonna be a while before you convince devs to stop having Anticheat for the sake of that market segment specifically. If they were going to balk at the losses they would have added support in the first place. Being maximalist about it is fine as a principled stance, but you don't have enough of a wallet to vote with it on this one.
The comment said "backup OS" because the video ends on a complaint that GRUB got pretty badly broken, presumably by the way they set up their Windows dualboot. I was clarifying for the record that he also suggested dualbooting for other reasons, mainly software compatibility, before things get to that point.
Again, he's not wrong on either count.
You have to start somewhere my man. Also, not trying to "convince" devs to remove anti-cheat. The point would be to have a linux compatible solution.
Again, it's not relevant that relevant how the video ends because the comment did not specifically made a reference to the video and I didn't either. You're adding context that you imagine OP was referring to but nothing of the sort was explicitly said.
The OP's comment does specifically make a reference to the video. That's all he's talking about:
I mean, it doesn't matter, he's obviously referencing things in it, if you watch the video this is obvious. He's directly responding to things said in it.
I have lots of caveats to "you have to start somewhere". You're either trying to accomplish something or you aren't. If you want to fix the compatibility issues you can either do something that works or do something that doesn't work. Doing many things that don't work doesn't necessarily get you any closer to doing a thing that does work. Instead of making an empty gesture I'd rather find an actual solution. It's not useful to take a principled stance that is not a solution to make myself feel like I'm doing something or to cope with the inconvenience.
"The best thing you can do about games not working is decide not to play those games" is great for you as a way to feel that you're not playing the games that don't work on purpose, but it won't fix the problem for people who migrate and it will do nothing to get more people to migrate despite the issue. I'm not particularly interested in posturing for the sake of it.
Depends. I'm still keeping win10 (but haven't booted into it in months), just in case when on a game night something refuses to work on linux and I can just boot to windows and game with my friends. I'm not going to start troubleshooting then and there, doubly because in general alcohol is involved during those friday night gaming sessions.
The day for repurposing those partitions is coming closer though.
It sucks that you have to maintain it though. If you don't update from time to time, you'll have to update windows, steam, the game and probably thr gpu drivers as well.
I sincerely hope that Linux becomes at least mainstream enough to not have compatibility issues. It's still not something I would recommend to people that don't know how (or don't want) to troubleshoot issues. If installed linux on my mom's laptop she'd be constantly reaching out to figure out how to do/solve stuff.
If only we could keep windows on a thumb drive instead
You kind of can? If you want to have an OS that you will actually use (instead of just a backup to fix your actual os) on a thumb drive, buy a usb-c m.2 enclosure, put the cheapest ssd that meets your needs in there and just install windows there.
I didn't want to commit more than a cheap flash drive. However I tried what you said since I had a m.2 enclousure laying around. I did all of this through virt-manager by passing the external device through. The installer complained when I passed the device as a usb device. I solved it by just passing device path of the external drive to the vm and the installer didn't know any better.
I don't see any other reason why this would not work for any usb device. usb flash drives as well. I might try this at some point.
The problem with normal flash drives is longevity. The OS will probably wear it out pretty quickly. As an inexpensive and/or disposable solution I guess it's fine, but it's not reliable.