Bazzite 44 shipped on August 20, completing the immutable gaming distribution’s transition to Fedora 44. The project describes it as the biggest update in Bazzite’s history, and the changes back that up.

The custom kernel is gone

Bazzite has retired its own kernel. Every image now uses the kernel maintained by the Open Gaming Collective, currently Linux 7.2.

Maintaining a custom kernel is an enormous ongoing cost for a small project: every upstream release means rebasing patches, and every patch you carry is one you have to justify keeping. Consolidating onto a shared gaming-focused kernel is the same move Garuda made last week when it dropped linux-zen for a CachyOS-derived kernel.

Two of the more prominent gaming-oriented distributions independently deciding they would rather share kernel engineering than duplicate it is a healthy signal.

Graphics stack

Bazzite 44 ships Mesa 26.2.1 alongside the kernel’s VRAM overcommit and dmem cgroup functionality.

VRAM overcommit matters specifically for handhelds. Devices like the Steam Deck have limited video memory, and games that exceed it have historically hitched or crashed rather than degrading gracefully. Being able to overcommit changes the failure mode from “game dies” to “game slows down.”

A graphical updater

The release adds a GUI updater, plus a redesigned Portal.

This sounds mundane and is not. Bazzite’s audience includes people who bought a handheld and want it to work like a console, and telling them to run rpm-ostree upgrade in a terminal was always a mismatch between the product and its users. An immutable OS with atomic updates and rollback is exactly the kind of system where a graphical updater is safe to give people, because the worst case is booting the previous image.

Hardware

Bazzite supports the Steam Deck, ASUS ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and MSI Claw, along with conventional desktops and HTPCs. It positions itself as a SteamOS-compatible alternative for hardware Valve does not officially support.

That positioning got more interesting this week, with initial kernel driver support for the 2026 Steam Controller landing in Linux 7.3.

# Existing Bazzite users
ujust update

# Or check what image you are on
rpm-ostree status