I’m gonna OGC right now.
Gaming on Linux has already come a long way over recent years, with improvements to Valve’s Proton and more gamers switching to Linux, but the newly-formed Open Gaming Collective (OGC) is aiming to take it even further.
Universal Blue, developer of the gaming-focused Linux distribution Bazzite, announced on Wednesday that its helping to form the OGC with several other groups, which will collaborate on improvements to the Linux gaming ecosystem and “centralize efforts around critical components like kernel patches, input tooling, and essential gaming packages such as gamescope.”
The other founding members of the OGC include Nobara, ChimeraOS, Playtron, Fyra Labs, PikaOS, ShadowBlip, and Asus Linux. Related
I replaced Windows with Linux and everything’s going great I spent a year on Linux and forgot to miss WindowsHaving a wide range of distros to choose from is one of the best parts of using Linux, but shared efforts around important gaming components should improve the experience across the board, resulting in “better hardware compatibility, fewer duplicated efforts, and a more unified Linux gaming experience.” As Bazzite’s announcement post puts it, “a win for one project becomes a win for everyone.”
It’s worth noting that this will mean some changes to Bazzite, which is switching to the OGC kernel, replacing HHD with InputPlumber as its input framework, and integrating features like RGB and fan control into the Steam UI. Bazzite also added that, “We’ll be sharing patches we’ve made to various Valve packages with the OGC and attempting to upstream everything we can."
Wonder why CachyOS isn’t in the group.
Edit: wonder no more. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/01/cachyos-founder-explains-why-they-didn-t-join-the-new-open-gaming-collective-ogc/
I’m surprised Valve isn’t a member either
They don’t need to be imo. They can still cooperate and have discourse but Valve should be the pace setter while they have this momentum. Should at anytime Valve ever choose the dark side there can be an alternative that’s hopefully keeping up ala this.
Valve has done more for Linux gaming than all of these people put together.
“These people who just got together to build something built less than a billion dollar company”
How unexpected !
They are a billion dollar company because they made decisions like these over the last several decades. They could have gone the easy route and make decisions that fuck over the consumer, and make billions of dollars in more insidious ways, but they didn’t.
Steam Deck and their commitment to Proton are the reason why we can even have a conversation like this, talking about the rise of Linux Gaming in the year of our lord 2026. Without those two components, we would still be talking about how Windows 11 is fucking us over (while still using it), how nobody likes to switch to Linux because they still want to play games, how the whole “Year of the Linux Desktop” is the same tired fucking joke it’s been for the last 30 years.
Instead, we’re in the timeline where we have enough Linux gaming developers to form their own fucking collective! Because of Valve!
Oh, i’m not shitting on valve, they did great things for linux. I’m simply saying that it’s a bit early to criticize the OGC ;)
Isn’t Cachy a more general distribution?
But luckily everything they do is in the open and can be utilised by everyone.
Looks like they answered why already!
They’re an “optimized for gaming and high speed workloads” distribution as far as I understand. Lots of customizations to GPU drivers and what not for games.
Sure, you could say that, but Windows is also a general distribution. Much as people say they’d like a “Gaming OS”, it should be usable for everything else too. Bazzite wasn’t necessarily “incapable” of the other things I tried to do with it, but the UI remained a bit obtuse.
