In a not-so-scientific benchmark conducted by YouTuber Cyber Dopamine, the Rog Xbox Ally managed to perform better without Windows, the operating system it ships with out of the box. Cyber installed Bazzite, a popular Linux distro for handhelds built specifically to offer that console-esque, seamless experience. Visually, Bazzite looks identical to SteamOS because it uses Steam’s Big Picture Mode as its main launcher. It also behaves similarly, but has its own custom menus and settings for customizing things like power profiles (which override Asus’ built-in ones).
When testing Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Cyber noticed a shockingly significant jump in FPS, with Linux generating ~32% more FPS compared to Windows. This trend follows at lower wattages, albeit with less noticeable differences, and the delta actually plateaus in Hogwarts Legacy to the point that both Bazzite and the Xbox FSE offer the same FPS at 13W. That being said, those frame rates are much more consistent on Linux, according to Cyber, who shows that the FPS graph on Windows fluctuates regularly, while staying mostly flat on Bazzite.
Pretty hilarious if after years of being the scourge of Linux and FOSS advocates, complaining how they could never leave Windows because they need it to play, gamers become our greatest allies, switching in droves to get more out of their hardware and games.
Really, this isn’t entirely new, I remember some games were known to run better on Wine than Windows years ago already (Soldier of Fortune comes to mind).
Year of Linux on the…handtop?
This will become more and more true in more and more cases as time goes on.
Linux is built on a far more efficient kernel, and the culture of Linux development is very much the same.
Meanwhile Microsoft will continue to enshitify its projects, shove more AI garbage onto its users, and prioritize profits over everything else.
Linux has been the standard OS for decades in the low power computing space, Microsoft can’t compete.
Nope this is purely from a broken test. Watch the video and you’ll see that its not testing with the same power limits.
17w tests are actually 16w vs 20w+ and 35w test is 25w vs 35w
This leads to drastically higher clock speeds on both cpu and gpu as seen in the video and thus higher fps (and power draw, so lower battery life)
That’ll be hilarious when everyone buys the flagship Xbox branded handheld only to install a Steam variant on it.
Everyone who’s ever used a Steam Deck or gamed on Linux in general are like “yeah no shit”
Me and my Steam Deck approve.
All positive publicity is good, the more people outside our little niche bubble are exposed to it the better.
Killing Windows influence in gaming wherever possible is an improvement.
I’ve been trying out Bazzite with an Nvidia GPU and performance is slightly better but the overall experience is significantly improved over windows.
Is the performance slightly better compared to windows or earlier versions of Bazzite?
Compared to Windows. To be clear I’m just basing that on vibes, and I haven’t done any 1:1 testing, but it’s absolutely not any worse than Windows with everything I’ve tried. But also, even if it was slightly worse, the benefit of almost never needing a mouse/keyboard still would make it worth it.
The Nvidia GPU in my laptop was the reason to install Bazzite; haven’t looked back since.
I’ve been thinking of switching my framework 13 laptop over to bazzite as a toe dip into the Linux world (other than steam deck) if it’s not too bad I might try dual booting my big desktop gaming PC
Honestly, I like Bazzite because it’s very controller and gaming friendly and you won’t be disappointed with it. That said, for a daily driver workstation computer you might want to try Fedora Kinoite which is very similar but focused towards desktop use.
Also it doesn’t hurt to try both as I said they’re very similar! Would love to hear a follow up on your experience.
Instead of Kinoite, I’d suggest either Bluefin or Aurora. They’re made by the same group as Bazzite.
One caveat. If you have racing wheels or HOTAS you should check if Bazzite supports them. I ran into that issue with my Thrustmaster T300 where the right kernel module isn’t packaged with Bazzite and adding the module to Bazzite… Well, let’s just say it’s easier to reinstall a different OS than it is to add a custom kernel module to Bazzite.
I know. I found that issue when I was looking into how to get my T300 to work and it’s because of that issue that I’m raising the awareness because that issue has been open for over a year and the last maintainer activity there was months ago.
I get that they’re doing it out of their free time and they probably have more important things to do so I’m not faulting them for not being faster with it, but from the end user perspective you’re just going to fiddle your thumbs until something gets done because doing it yourself has the immutable OS getting in the way and it also defeats the purpose of having an immutable OS.
Meanwhile getting the wheel to work on Nobara went, relatively speaking, so smoothly I don’t even remember what I did to get it working.
Ah, but then how will I use Microsoft Teams?
And more importantly, where’s the IA?
I’ve recently started to have to use Teams at work and wow it’s awful. In subtle and overt ways.
I know someone who was working on the Teams codebase. Even they don’t like using Teams (it wouldn’t open properly on Ubuntu for some reason).
my favorite least favorite thing about teams is anything that happens when you right click anywhere on anything.
What happens?
Good news, you can download and run Microsoft Teams in Linux. I have no clue why you would want to do this, but you can!
Unfortunately it’s the primary communication method for my work. I just use it in the browser.
Portal for Microsoft Teams works surprisingly well. Its basically a web wrapper, but its very convenient.
How is it convenient? Why would I use that instead of just my browser or a PWA?
There’s an unofficial client. It works really well. I mean, as well as this piece of shit software generally works.
Teams actually works just fine. I’m my case installed from the AUR using the electron already present anyways. Zero issues. More specifically zero additional issues compared to Windows.
I’ve taken calls on my pinephone and postmarketos phones (pixel 3a / oneplus 6). Twas fine… actually i have used it to make a clear calls in a pinch.
(pls donate to pmos)
Better let live at least at flatpak container to give it less permission cause 0 trust to this app
Oop, went thread!
Slap the name Xbox on it, and call it a day. The Microsoft strategy “everything is a Xbox”.
Honestly everyone keeps saying it’s not an XBOX but I think they’re just missing that the XBOX as they know it is dead and it has just transitioned to “Microsoft gaming”.
Feels like this is so when they announce that there won’t be a successor to the Xbox Series X/S they can say “Xbox is t going away, it’s evolving, everything is an Xbox now etc”
ROG Xbox Ally is a good example of how superficial this promise it.
Year of the Linux… xbox?
LinuXbox?
I think maybe take a look at the performance and power seen during the video, things don’t seem to line up correctly.
That said, Linux is generally slightly more performant in handheld devices and I think that will continue to hold true despite Microsoft’s recent opts.
That’s awesome. I’m almost ready to switch to Linux, but I hop around to many different games and not all run on Linux.
Don’t look back. Those games are dead to you now
i stopped dual booting many many years ago with destiny 2. I killed it. Never looked back thank goodness and never got tempted again
Unironically, yes. Keep the kernel-level anti-cheat shit off my computer.
^this
It’s mostly kernel level AC and super ancient stuff that doesn’t run. I play the former on console (if any), and the latter can be emulated
GOG is doing wonders for the later as well. Just recently enjoyed a run of Breath of Fire IV. :)
You shouldn’t be playing any game that requires kernel level access to your PC.
Do you trust every employee at EA, Riot, Activision with your credit card details, social security number, bank accounts, home address, etc.?
Because that’s what kernel level access grants them, and more.
On top of that, a hacker could potentially exploit it to gain access too.
It’s not a theoretical situation :)
This was a genuine concern to me before my switch. I game a lot and this was a main thing keeping me back.
I eventually decided, well I’ll at least dual boot and can just switch to Windows if I want to play a game there.
But that kinda turned out to be a pain in the ass. Things like Bluetooth devices would need to be switched each time (I know there are ways around this, don’t @ me), and more.
So… I just stopped using Windows to avoid that annoyance. And it turns out I don’t miss the games I could only play on Windows that much, because I haven’t booted into Windows in months. I’m fact I’m not really sure why I still have the partition.
Tl:dr just do it.
The only one I have run into that doesn’t work is pubg. What are you trying to run?
