It has never been a better time to be a Linux gamer. With Proton making good headway, we're seeing gaming-oriented distros spring up in the wake of SteamOS to capitalize on the wave of titles Linux can now run. This includes Bazzite, which has posted some excellent performance demonstrations over the past few months, including that one time it outperformed Windows on Microsoft's branded handheld console.

Well, a new version of Bazzite has just hit the testing branch, and the team has managed to shave off an impressive 1GB from the image size. However, while the space savings are impressive, it wasn't 'free,' and people who are interested in what got cut may be interested in swapping to Bazzite's alternative system soon.

Bazzite's April 2026 update moves QEMU and ROCM to the Bazzite-DX image

The image is getting 1GB smaller

As announced on the Bazzite forums, the April 2026 update is now available in the testing branch. The update includes several interesting tweaks, such as moving to the 6.19.10 OGC Kernel, updating Mesa to 26.0.4, and improving steering wheel support. However, one change that everyone will notice is this one:

Images reduced by 1GB thanks to moving in-image QEMU and ROCM to Bazzite-DX for users who need them.

If you're not sure what those are, QEMU is for running VMs, while ROCM is AMD's open compute platform that kicks in when people use GPU-accelerated workloads, such as AI work. As such, these features aren't nothing, and some users who got use of them in Bazzite will need to hop over to Bazzite-DX to continue using the tools. However, for people who don't use them, they get a tidy 1GB of extra space on their devices at no cost.

If you're unsure as to what Bazzite-DX is, it's a special variant of Bazzite that focuses on development. You can rebase your existing Bazzite install to Bazzite-DX in the terminal, so if you'll miss QEMU or ROCM in the upcoming stable April 2026 update, follow the instructions on the Bazzite-DX website to get the exact command you need to rebase your install.