Stevie Bonifield is a news writer covering all things consumer tech. Stevie started out at Laptop Mag writing news and reviews on hardware, gaming, and AI.

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.

Having 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.”

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• Stevie Bonifield