Thousands of gamers are installing Bazzite instead of sticking with Windows — and the reasons behind the shift are surprisingly compelling

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Bazzite is a Linux operating system created for gamers, much like Valve’s SteamOS. It’s designed to feel more like a gaming console than a typical computer operating system, and works especially well with the Steam game store.

The Bazzite X (formerly Twitter) account has recently posted updated user numbers, and the timing is interesting. Since Windows 10 is no longer supported, the project appears to be gaining new users.

While it doesn’t pose a major challenge to Microsoft, this is a noteworthy achievement for an independent Linux distribution created without corporate support. Bazzite isn’t owned by Valve or an official version of SteamOS, but it’s built using similar technology to offer a streamlined gaming experience.

Bazzite recently shared on X that its user base has been growing by about 25% each week for the past month. While that might not seem like a huge jump, it’s a significant increase for a specialized operating system. Let’s break down what that 1.25x growth actually means.

Linux gaming is finally viable, but there are still hard limits

The recent increase in interest isn’t surprising. With Proton, about 90% of Windows games are now playable on Linux. However, some popular games – including Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Battlefield 6, Rainbow Six Siege, and Valorant – still can’t run on Linux because of anti-cheat software that works at a very low level within the operating system.

It’s not just gaming that poses a challenge for Linux. It also doesn’t natively work with popular professional tools like Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Office, and many specialized 3D modeling programs, though there are alternative options available.

Even with some downsides, Bazzite is attracting about 50,000 users each week, and that number is still growing quickly—it’s increased by 25% recently. In total, users have installed the operating system over 2 petabytes of data. To put that in perspective, a petabyte is a massive amount of storage—it’s equal to 1,000 terabytes, and each terabyte has 1,000 gigabytes.

As of November 2025, around 3.2% of Steam players use Linux, while the vast majority – 94.79% – use Windows.

While there’s still a significant difference, it used to seem impossible to get past the 3% mark. Now, the experience of using Bazzite or SteamOS compared to Windows, particularly if you’re aiming for a console-like feel, is dramatically better in my view.

Beyond that, Linux can actually boost gaming performance on devices like the Xbox Ally and other Windows-based handheld gaming PCs, and it can also make them feel more like standard gaming consoles.

This progress actually shows just how much Linux has improved. Hopefully, it will encourage Microsoft to speed up its development process, instead of being held back by the challenges of being a large organization where changes and new features take a long time to implement.

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2025-12-21 18:39