When Microsoft announced that Windows 10 was finished, it was death sentence for my custom gaming PC. My 2018 gaming rig, an Intel Core i9-9900K with 64 gigabytes of RAM, an RTX 5070, and a Samsung 980 SSD was still highly capable of clicking heads. But according to Microsoft, it wasn’t “compatible” with Windows 11.
Funny enough, I am also incompatible with Windows 11. And buying new hardware just to meet Windows demands felt wrong to me. But how would I play PC games without a Windows PC?
Linux to the rescue! Bazzite Linux, a distribution designed for gaming. Word on the street was that it worked pretty well too.
Phase 1: Clearing Space and Clearing Doubt
I began by deleting old games and forgotten files until I had roughly 740 gigabytes free on my 2-terabyte drive. Windows still refused to give up more than 150 gigabytes for a new partition, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me. I wanted Linux, and I was going to make room for it one way or another.
Phase 2: The USB Pilgrimage
Next, I downloaded the latest Bazzite AMD64 ISO and burned it onto a USB stick with Balena Etcher. I chose the stable version because I was seeking clarity, not chaos.
Then I entered BIOS, changed the boot order, and took a long, steady breath—the kind you take before doing something mildly irreversible.
Phase 3: The Great Installation
The installer greeted me like a friendly mechanic. I chose the Samsung SSD, told it to shrink the Windows volume by about 730 gigabytes, and skipped encryption because it’s not worth the hassle for this device.
Fifteen minutes later, it was done. I rebooted and found myself looking at GRUB 2.12, offering both Bazzite and Windows as equals.
Phase 4: The First Boot
Bazzite started quietly and confidently. No pop-ups, no sales pitches, no cheery reminders that my data was being harvested “for my convenience.”
I connected to the internet under Wi-Fi and Networking, ran updates with a tool called Topgrade, and everything just worked. I set my wallpaper, installed my password manager, logged into Steam, and felt strangely peaceful.
Phase 5: The Gaming Test
I started with Dirt Rally 2.0. It installed fine, but none of my controllers wanted to cooperate. Rather than wrestle with it, I switched to Portal 2, wired up my Xbox One controller, and everything came alive.
Controller works great. Smooth frame rate. Perfect sound. No crashes. I was playing a Windows game on Linux, and it felt effortless.
Phase 6: The Quiet Victory
After years of fighting Windows updates, advertising, and the slow creep of unwanted features, Bazzite felt like opening a window in a stuffy room.
Some games need tweaking, and some drivers take patience, but overall, this system turned my “obsolete” PC into something new again. I didn’t buy new parts. I didn’t give up control.
Now when I press the power button, there’s no corporate chime, no pop-up telling me to sync my life to the cloud. There’s just silence, a soft boot menu, and a faint sense of calm that feels like freedom.
