Bazzite ships 44.20261023 as its weekly build keeps rolling, two new handhelds join the testing pool

The Linux gaming distro maintains its update cadence and opens community testing for the ROG Xbox Ally X20 and Acer Predator Atlas 8.

Bazzite has pushed a fresh stable image to its users. It is tagged 44.20261023, built October 23, and it landed right on time for a project that hasn't missed a weekly build in months.

The same day it published the stable build, Bazzite also opened public testing for two handhelds: the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X20 and the Acer Predator Atlas 8. If you own one of those machines, expect to sort through bug reports alongside the developers before official support arrives.

For context, Bazzite is a community-driven, immutable image built on Fedora Atomic Desktops by the Universal Blue organization. Kyle Gospodnetich, who goes by KyleGospo online, started the project in December 2022. Wikipedia summarizes its ethos as being "born out of love for Linux and love for gaming," and the goal was simple: fix the two things that annoy people most about Valve's SteamOS, which are stale packages and a missing package manager.

It's the open-source answer for anyone who wants a SteamOS-like, controller-first experience on hardware Valve doesn't officially support.

What's actually in 44.20261023

The stable build jumps from 44.20261012.1, so we're looking at about two weeks of work. Bazzite's model lists one package per version, so the changelog reflects the newest version of each bumped component rather than a complete diff.

The gaming stack moved forward a fair amount. Gamescope (Valve's compositor, the heart of Steam Gaming Mode) is at 3.16.31^6. You're also getting InputPlumber bumped to 0.83.0, and a fresh UMU Launcher to route non-Steam titles through the right Proton layer.

Beyond the plain version bumps, a few code changes shaped the build. Gospodnetich flipped several components to the "terra" build tree, swapping in upstream-repackaged versions of packages like xwayland, upower, and vpower. It continues a trend from recent releases in which Bazzite trades its own forks for shared builds to cut internal duplication.

Two back-to-back fixes by Timothy Small also repaired the broken libextest download, the Steam Input ext support layer. And while we're here, the name Bazzite comes from a mineral. Fedora Atomic Desktops used a mineral-based naming scheme, and Bazzite is arguably rarer than any of its relatives, which makes it no more useful in any practical sense.

The usual batch of security and maintenance packages advanced as well. That means updates for ca-certificates, curl, ffmpeg, the nss and nspr TLS stack, systemd, podman, and tailscale. VR users get an openxr bump, and the Intel GPU compute stack got refreshed. One package dropped: kmod-nct6687d, a kernel module that had shown up in a recent cycle.

Not cheap to call, but this is exactly the velocity Bazzite sells. You get much newer kernels and drivers than SteamOS offers, on a stable base. Immobility aside, most of it happens under the hood via rpm-ostree, so the churn stays invisible unless you poke at it.

Two new handhelds enter testing

The bigger story here probably isn't the version numbers. It's that Bazzite opened public testing for the ROG Xbox Ally X20 and the Acer Predator Atlas 8 right alongside the stable build.

Developer Andy East (Andy10115) laid out the progress on the Universal Blue Discourse forum, and the Ally X20 is already well past proof-of-concept. Display works with full VRR and HDR, TDP control is present though custom TDP values are still under investigation, and back buttons are fully mappable. Sleep/wake works, but East is asking testers to capture logs on edge cases. RGB lighting and fan control are still pending, with the OGUI plugin "Panel de Control" offered as a stopgap.

The Atlas 8 is actually further along. Initial button mapping lets it run games, and you hold Guide + QAM/Predator to reach the side menus. Tap functionality, the M1/M2 buttons, and the gyroscope don't work yet, so this one is really for people who enjoy filing detailed bug reports. Bazzite recommends pinning your current deployment before switching channels, though pinning keeps a fallback image without automatically booting into it.

To understand why any of this matters, it helps to remember that 44.20261023 sits inside the Bazzite 44 cycle. The team called that release its biggest update in August 2026, a rework of the handheld images that pulled in over 700 commits. InputPlumber replaced Handheld Daemon, SteamOS-Manager now handles session switching and TDP control inside Steam, and the Deck images were realigned to track Valve's SteamOS stack more closely.

How to update

Existing users have a rollback helper. Run bazzite-rollback-helper rebase stable to jump to the latest stable on your branch, or point it at 44.20261023 for this exact image. You can also rebase through the Bazzite Portal GUI or straight through rpm-ostree. Images are cosign-signed, so verify them against the repo's cosign.pub key before booting. Images get retained for 90 days, so older builds stay within reach if something breaks.

Head here to download the new image. Keep in mind that the testing-branch handheld support is unofficial, so treat it as a playground rather than a daily driver for now.