I haven’t used bazzite before but was looking into handhelds for my spouse and was curious if anyone has installed bazzite on a GPD Win 4, I heard some kinks hadn’t been worked out with SteamOS on that hardware so I was curious about people’s experiences. Or rather is that hardware more than needed? Would she be better off with a unit that comes with SteamOS for cheaper as it runs everything you have thrown at it?
FYI, Bazzite has an image specifically made for GPD handheld PCs, just select it from the download list. I don’t have a GPD device to test it on, but their flavor for ASUS has the ASUS specific utilities installed and already set up, so I imagine the GPD image is the same.
What Asus one do you use? Anything you like about it or would rather see better done?
I have the ROG Strix G614. I can’t really say I’m missing anything, because the ROGCC app which replaces Armoury Crate or whatever it’s called on Windows covers all the usual stuff, and there was no install procedure because it’s already hooked up with the things it needs to work.
In your case, the utility you would be using for GPD is Handheld Daemon.
I don’t have any experience running Bazzite on a GPD device, but I know with my original Legion Go that everything except the microphone works and is supported to an OEM-level. As for if the hardware is worth it, it all comes down to the games she’s wanting to play. If you get a refurbished 2023 model with the 7840U, that’s the exact same silicon as the Z1 Extreme that’s in the legion go, but it has double the RAM at 32GB. Handy because system memory is shared with the GPU and the 16GB of the legion is the biggest thing holding it back. That chip will play Baldur’s Gate 3 at 1080p30 on medium settings just fine on Bazzite. If she’s not playing anything too taxing then the newer models with the 8840U are gonna be overkill for her.
That said, if she doesn’t need the hardware keyboard for anything, then the original Legion Go is a great device, works fantastic on Bazzite and can be had for pretty cheap these days.
I found these two pages by the way. They seem to say that the 7840U/8840U Win 4s have a suspend/resume bug but that everything else is solid:
https://docs.bazzite.gg/Handheld_and_HTPC_edition/Handheld_Wiki/GPD_Handhelds/
https://github.com/aarron-lee/gpd-win-tricks
I used the aarron-lee git page on the Legion to make my purchasing decision so his info is really reliable and up-to-date from what I know.
Edit: I should have added, the Legion Go S with SteamOS looks alright, but I would strongly recommend the Z1 Extreme edition at a minimum. That said, I wouldn’t go for it because the trackpad looks pathetically small and I use it heaps. The Steam Deck’s chip is also just horribly outdated at this point compared to its competition. My rec is the original Legion Go w/ Bazzite.
Yeah I was thinking the 32gb of ram would future proof it a bit with a good GPU/CPU because idk what games she’ll want to play 2-3 years from now that come out, and I’m not one to continuously swap out devices. Thanks for the advice, I’ll look into those sites. When you say you use your track pad a lot, what do you mostly use it for? Are you having to lift your finger and keep going back to scroll across the screen size?
Also if you don’t mind me asking have you have any issues with the immutable part? Should I just set her up with network storage coming from one of my media servers? Or have you not run into reboots losing data you needed? I don’t really want to set up her up with a need to use a corporate drive service. (She might not need it because normal personal data shouldn’t wipe, just system files right?)
I use it for kb+m games where I have the keyboard set up on the controller, I use the scrollwheel on the back heaps when that’s faster than whatever that control is bound too normally, and I just use it a lot in desktop mode when I’m setting up non-steam games. I’m not sure what you mean by lifting my finger but I only very rarely use the touchscreen, it’s honestly leas important to me personally than the trackpad.
None at all. I think you’re confusing immutable with a non-persistent OS like Tails. No files at all wipe at any point. The /home folder is a normal read/write partition that works just like on a non-immutable distro, and that’s where Steam installs your games. The system files are in a read-only partition that you can’t modify directly. They aren’t modified in normal operations, so they don’t need to be wiped. The biggest benefit to this is that the system keeps itself in a “known-good state” so it’s always ready to play games.
Ah I just meant if you were trying to move the cursor across the screen when doing something like installing non-steam games or just doing w.e else in the OS outside cursor locked gaming, if that was when you found the pad to small. Can’t imagine she will do much else other than email, web searches, and maybe ebooks? I wonder if the 2 hand design makes it decent for that maybe. Otherwise I assume it’d be 90% games for her
I haven’t used a Legion Go S, just my original Go, which has a roomy enough trackpad. The Go S looks like it’s barely the size of the top part of my thumb and review have widely panned it as useless. I do have to lift my thumb still to mouse entirely across the screen, so I can’t imagine what that’s like with the smaller trackpad.
Yeah, when I hook a PS5 controller up to Mint for games I’ve tried to use the touchpad for scrolling and it leaves me grabbing my mouse instead until I launch the game. I still prefer keyboard mouse for most games, but there have been a couple I like the controller for
