I haven't had the best of luck with Bazzite in the past, but I've been giving it another go on a Legion Go this time, and it's been fantastic. Everything is snappy, whether in gaming mode or on the Gnome desktop, but there's one thing I didn't expect. That's games loading faster, from the time I press play in Steam.

I'm not quite sure why, either. It's the same SSD that had Windows 11 installed on, the same games, and the same Steam account. Then again, Windows 11 is known for being full of junk that slows it down. Will I go back to Windows 11? Not likely, especially with how slow Lenovo has been with updating the most important driver on this handheld, the graphics one.

Sometimes it's not the hardware's fault

Windows 11 is a hefty task for desktop processors

The AMD Z1 Extreme inside the Legion Go isn't the snappiest of APUs, and this handheld doesn't have the 24GB of shared RAM that the ROG Ally X leverages to such great effect. But it does have a fantastic screen with a fast refresh rate, accurate colors, and plenty of brightness when gaming.

The one thing holding it back has always been Windows 11. Okay, maybe two things, because Legion Space is not good software, and having to swap between multiple dashboard-like apps is not my idea of a good time. I'm not sure it's anybody's.

Just look at how many system resources Windows takes up. I'm already using 30% of my available RAM on a desktop with 96GB of it. On the Legion Go, it wasn't quite as high a percentage, but then it only had 16GB to play with. Everything was sluggish, from opening apps to browsing menus, and of course, loading games.

Linux OSes are handheld gaming's future

I'm not sure the Year of the Linux Desktop will ever happen, but the Year of the Linux Handheld already has. And keeps on happening, as SteamOS goes from strength to strength, Bazzite branches out to cover more devices, and other distros pop up. I'm using Bazzite, partly because I didn't like getting beaten by my ROG Ally X, which refused to boot with it installed, but also because I should have one machine running it for ongoing testing.

Bazzite has made my Legion Go playable again

Gaming has never felt as snappy and the desktop mode is fluid

I'm still not 100% sold on immutable OSes, but I can't deny that Bazzite has turned my Legion Go from a slug into a race car. I'm also not a fan of Gnome, but I went with that instead of KDE because I wanted to rule out variables from my last failed attempts, and I have to say it's growing on me. The cartoonish, oversized icons work on a handheld's smaller screen, and I like the visual reminder that I'm not using SteamOS.

I'm also not fond of hyperbole, but holy cow is it faster now. Even downloading games over Wi-Fi is faster, not by much, but enough to be noticeable. Moving through Steam's gaming mode is smooth and fluid, and I no longer have to click the play button more than once to get games to load, they just work.

I could point fingers at Lenovo's shovelware and Windows 11's bloat, but I'm in too good of a mood to do that. What I will say is I don't know why I had the Legion Go languishing in a cupboard all this time, when it could have been used. Time to relinquish my Steam Deck to the kiddo, and use the higher-powered hardware I have been neglecting.

I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was

When we had access to two Legion Go S handhelds, we ran a head-to-head comparison between Windows 11 and SteamOS. Not a single game running on Windows 11 came anywhere close to the FPS in the SteamOS tests, and it wasn't even close. Like, embarrassingly so.

Anywhere up to 75% faster, which is staggering to think about when all you're changing is the software the game is running on. That's before considering that SteamOS and any other Linux distro aren't even running the game natively and have to translate Windows API calls into ones that can be used by the Linux kernel.

Windows 11 is still the thing slowing down PC gaming handhelds

Even with the new handheld mode in Windows 11, it's still sluggish compared to Linux-based handheld OSes. The only reason I'd keep Windows on a handheld is for the few multiplayer games that have Windows-only anti-cheat software, and to play the Game Pass Ultimate games that I still haven't finished on PC. Whether it's Bazzite, Nobara, or SteamOS, the gaming experience is just better on handhelds when you go open-source, and I'm not sure Windows can catch up.