As you might've heard by now, Windows 10 has officially lost support, and Microsoft is pushing people to upgrade to Windows 11. On my main PC, I did this a while ago, but my spare PC has still been rocking Windows 10, and I don't have any intention of upgrading.
Bazzite works perfectly fine with a regular 16:9 display, and your experience will probably be better.
Once it was installed, I was shocked by how intuitive everything was. I had my computer boot directly into a version of what's essentially the Steam Deck UI, only on a desktop, so I didn't have to use a mouse and keyboard. If you've used Steam's Big Picture mode at any point, this will feel right at home. Even if you haven't, I don't think you'll have any trouble getting the hang of things after spending a few minutes with the interface. Eventually, I got curious and decided to plug in a mouse and keyboard to explore the main desktop.
There are a lot of similarities with Windows
It feels intuitive, and I can easily navigate it
I won't pretend that I know every in and out of Bazzite, especially since I stay in Steam for the majority of my time, but the time I did spend on the desktop felt natural. The Bazzite desktop is a lot like the Windows desktop at first glance, and I found that I really don't have to go there all that often to do what I want to do.
The thing with Bazzite is that there are many different ways to do the same thing. For example, installing Chrome on Windows is as basic as it gets, but it's not quite the same thing on Bazzite. The easiest way to do this is to open the Bazaar app on your desktop, but I took the route of installing it on Steam. That's right -- I launch Google Chrome through a Steam icon. Now, it doesn't fit correctly on my screen, and that likely comes down to me using a 5:4 aspect ratio monitor.
I can't do a lot of experimentation since I am sharing a 500 GB hard drive with Windows on this particular machine, so I don't want to go wild trying to install anything and eat up what little space I have. I can tell you that none of the Adobe suite works with Bazzite, so if you need that for any reason, I hope you have another computer handy. I'm sure there's a ton more I can do with this OS, but with something I installed to play Steam games, I'm perfectly happy. At its core, this is a gaming-centric OS, and I'm sure there are other versions of Linux that replicate a Windows desktop experience a lot better.
It has some drawbacks, even for gaming
It can't outright replace Windows for me yet
While gaming prowess is one of Bazzite's selling points -- it even runs better than Windows in some cases -- I can't outright recommend you ditch Windows for strictly gaming reasons just yet. The big reason is that Xbox Game Pass won't work with Bazzite whatsoever, so you need to keep Windows around for that. Fortunately, I dual-boot Windows and Bazzite, and that's what I'd recommend you do if you want to keep all of your options open. I can switch to Windows directly from Steam, so it's not like I have to dig into the BIOS or change my boot drive for this.
Other storefronts, such as GOG and Epic Games, also don't work out of the box. The good thing is that both of those libraries can be accessed through the Heroic Launcher, so you have a workaround available that's not there for Xbox. If you're fine with just playing Steam games, you don't have to do anything at all. There are still more limitations for games that have anti-cheat systems that don't work with Linux. This means playing Battlefield 6 is out of the question.
However, if you mostly play single-player games on Steam, then this is a great option that's worth considering.
One final thing is that your NVIDIA GPU might not work the best with Bazzite. Many people recommend using an AMD GPU for better support. The computer I'm using has an RX 480 installed, so it's not like I expect it to be a powerhouse by any means. If you like to stay up to date with the latest releases, NVIDIA driver support isn't as quick as it is with AMD.
Some of this might be things you're already aware of, since people who install operating systems like this tend to be enthusiasts already. I wasn't looking for an outright Windows replacement since this was just a fun side project for me. If you are looking for a complete Windows replacement, I don't think Bazzite is there just yet. However, if you mostly play single-player games on Steam, then this is a great option that's worth considering. It's all I want from this computer, and aside from being unable to access to Xbox games library, I don't have much else to complain about.