Three years ago I built a computer for couch gaming. The build was straightforward, largely comprised of the last bits of now discounted but very performant hardware as AMD moved off of the AM4 socket and DDR4 memory, and I installed ChimeraOS on it based upon an anecdote about it I had heard on a certain wonderfully nerdy podcast¹.

Since then, the machine has just kept working and updating itself. I say that not as a brag, but to highlight how far Linux has come as a platform. I loathe faffing with computers to get them to work. In spite of appearances, I switched to Linux roughly a decade ago precisely because I found I spent less time screwing with the computer to make it work when running Linux than when running MacOS or Windows. ChimeraOS has been a clear example of where this extends not just to my personal/technical needs for a computer, but also to a computer as a box for entertainment.

All of this is to say there hasn’t been zero fiddling, but it has been very small. For anyone considering setting up a console-style PC, ChimeraOS is a viable and my recommended option. I haven’t bothered to try another system such as Bazzite, but that’s largely because ChimeraOS has just worked, and I haven’t wanted to screw around with the setup again.

Things That Work

• Graphics acceleration (AMD-based)
  • I knew that AMD has had better support on Linux, and opted to pickup a used 6000-series AMD GPU when I built the machine. It just worked. No special driver setup, no fiddling, nothing. I later upgraded to a 7900XTX, which also worked without any changes on my part.
• HDMI audio
• Wireless Controllers
  • both Bluetooth based (various 8BitDo), as well as Microsoft’s Xbox controller with the Microsoft-specific USB dongle.
  • Again, no faffing, no drivers, just worked.
• VR Gaming from Steam
  • Yep. This too. The only rub is SteamVR doesn’t work in Steam Big-Picture mode, so launching VR games involves first switching to desktop mode, then launching SteamVR. This isn’t a Linux limitation though, simply a Steam limitation.

Required Fiddling

• Desktop switching impacting audio sink numbering
  • One area that cropped up for a few months in late 2024, was that switching from Big Picture to Desktop mode and back would re-number audio outputs in a strange way, resulting in the system putting out audio via the analog ports on the computer rather than the HDMI ports. I ended up solving this with a minor configuration setting to set the default audio output, but it was so simple I forgot how and haven’t had to touch it since.
• Non-SteamVR VR Gaming
  • When I started using VR earlier this year, Steam shipped with a bug that didn’t properly let OpenXR games use SteamVR due to some improperly setup file associations. Ultimately adding the .desktop files from this Github bug (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux/issues/457) fixed the problem for me. It may be fixed out of the box now, as I saw some comments about this a few weeks back in one of the SteamVR changelog posts.

What Doesn’t Work

• Sleep. I cannot figure out why, but the system tries to go to sleep, but will immediately wake itself back up. I don’t really need it, but it clearly doesn’t work.

And that’s it. My hope in highlighting all this is that I’ve been able to just use the system without messing with it. It isn’t perfect, but I’m pretty happy with only having one paper-cut to deal with. I used this machine to play a substantial amount of The Witcher 3 after many years, beat Chronos in Hades II while it was in early access, watch movies via the Jellyfin Flatpak easily installed via the ChimeraOS web interface, and finally sink some time into trying out a host of games I never got around to playing while they were relevant from my years in graduate school.

I don’t think most outsiders would see the discourse that dominated Linux when I first started using it in 2006 and could even imagine Linux reaching the level of polish that’s around today. I would encourage anyone wanting this type of setup to simply give it a try, because its probably less painful and less opinionated than the kids running around web-forums would have you otherwise believe.

Last modified on 2025-11-26