Leave it up to my favorite gaming distro, ChimeraOS, to continue with its trend of being more awesome as the months go by.

First thing’s up, the distro now resorts to the new Big Picture Mode as the default interface (the devs are sad about old BPM going away). But this is good timing, as fortunately the beta desktop Steam client just got updated with improved NVIDIA GPU support. So hopefully NVIDIA users won’t have a sluggish experience navigating through the menus. ChimeraOS 39 also comes with a new splash animation on boot.

What’s nice is, system updates are fully integrated in the new BPM. How the ChimeraOS team figured that out is beyond me, but I tip my hat to them. That probably wasn’t an easy task.

Other features are as follows:

  • Nintendo DS support was added
  • the install media has been updated with new system repair/recovery functionality
  • improved Intel GPU support
  • stability improvements to Hogwarts Legacy and “possibly other games”

Animation design is brought to you by Mark Tolle

Package updates:

  • kernel: 6.1.11
  • Mesa: 22.3.4
  • NVIDIA driver: 525.89.02 (adds a fix for banding/flickering of color gradients on DisplayPort monitors)

Fixes:

  • custom launch options/Steam Input settings should now be properly applied
  • improved Flatpak desktop integration
  • certain Intel/NVIDIA combos should no longer have a boot failure
  • overheating issues on some handhelds (particularly with Ryzen processors) has been resolved by having their “T-junction” temperature set to 95 degrees C automatically

Other changes:

  • non-Steam shortcuts that weren’t created with the Chimera web app should be preserved
  • “improved stuttering” for gyro controls and swapped default button mappings for QAM and Guide buttons on OneXPlayer and AOKZOE devices via HandyGCCS (Handheld Game Console Controller Support for Linux)
  • removable media gets checked for compatibility when formatting
  • the split_lock_detect kernel parameter is now set to off by default

Pretty exciting release! You should really give it a try. Patch notes available on GitHub.