A year ago, almost to the day, I bought myself a Lenovo Legion GO. I had a Steam Deck but it did not have enough power to run Euro Truck Simulator 2 to my required standard so I upgraded. I then realised that SteamOS is so much nicer than Windows that I almost sold it and went back to the Steam Deck. Thankfully, before doing that, I discovered BazziteOS and as such I have been dual-booting between Bazzite and Windows since. I mainly use BazziteOS but sometimes resort to Windows for some cloud gaming or Blizzard goodness.

As it has been a while since the device was launched, I will not do a review. There’s plenty available online in all shapes and formats. However, I will go over the steps required to set it up how I like it. This post is a compilation of information that can be disjointly found online put in an easy-to-follow format.

It would be an oversight on my part to mention that this tutorial wouldn’t be of concern if you haven’t already upgraded the storage available on the device. There are plenty of tutorials covering that on the internet and the parts are now readily available. I have a 2TB SSD installed but I would assume anything 1TB or larger would make it practical to dual boot on the device. It can be done within the constraints of the original 512GB SSD but both OSes would be very limited in space. The SD-Card, unfortunately, cannot be used to boot from and as such any storage in that form can only be used from either Windows or Bazzite, not both, unless special partitions are set up on it.

To follow through I recommend you have ready the following bits of kit:

• Some type of USB-C HUB with at least two USB ports
• One, preferably two, 16 GB, or larger, USB stick
• USB Keyboard
• Charging cable and brick (keep the device plugged in throughout)
• Device Serial Number
• Windows computer

YOUR ONE AND ONLY WARNING: THIS TUTORIAL WILL WIPE ALL DATA FROM THE DEVICE

The annoying bit

The most annoying part of this endeavour is getting the image required from Lenovo’s website and setting up the USB stick. I have a 32GB SanDisk USB stick that I have dedicated the life of to holding a copy of said image due to how much of a headache it is to get it and set it up. That being said, here’s how to deal with it:

1. On your computer, not the Legion Go, go to Lenovo Support.
2. Enter your device’s serial number in the required field.
3. Choose the required operating system language, I went with plain old English.
4. Accept the terms and click “Next”.
5. Create an account or log in. If you need to create an account, once that’s sorted, you will have to go back to step 1.
6. Fill in the customer information and click “Submit”.
7. Click the blue “Digital Download” button.
8. Insert your USB stick into your computer. Please do not use a hub for this step and insert the stick directly into your computer.
9. Open the EXE you’ve downloaded in step 7.
10. Follow the instructions in the application up to the download bit. When you get to that step, choose a different folder that you know where it is and is relatively easily accessible. If things go wrong, which they are likely to, you will need to delete that folder and try again by restarting the app.
11. Once the slow download is complete, select your USB stick and proceed with creating the recovery drive. This might take a while, in my case it took about two hours, and is where things usually fail. It took me four attempts to complete whilst writing this tutorial. Should anything go wrong:
    • Delete the folder created in step 10.
    • Restart from step 9.
    • Profit?!
12. After the USB is created successfully, delete the recovery files when prompted.
13. Make sure to eject the USB before removing it from the computer as things tend to go wrong if you don’t. At least in my experience.
14. Assuming you have managed to create the USB correctly, you are now ready for the next stage.

Setting up the device

If your device is working and has Windows installed, I recommend you apply all available updates to the drivers and Windows, especially any available BIOS updates, before proceeding.

Not a lot needs to be done. Technically, only the ones in red are required but here are the things I recommend you change in the BIOS before proceeding:

• Under Configuration:
  • UMA Frame Buffer Size set to 4G for the duration of the tutorial. It can then be changed to your preference.
  • AMD V(TM) Technology should be disabled.
  • BIOS Back Flash should be disabled.
  • Thermal Mode should be set to Performance for the duration of the tutorial. It can then be changed to your preference.
  • BIOS Self-Healing should be enabled.
• Under Security:
  • AMD Platform Security should be enabled.
  • Device Guard should be disabled
  • Secure Boot should be disabled
• Under Boot:
  • USB Boot should be enabled.
  • PXE Boot to LAN should be disabled.

Installing Windows

First things first, we need Windows installed on the device. Connect your Legion Go to the USB hub, connect a keyboard and the aforementioned USB Stick and power it on. Whilst doing so, make sure to boot from the USB Stick.

The setup procedure is relatively smooth from here on out, follow the on-screen instructions. It should take about an hour to complete the procedure. Once the installation is complete, apply all available updates. This can be done from the Windows settings page and the Legion Space app.

The less annoying bit

Whilst Windows is installing, if you have two USB sticks available, or whilst the Windows updates are installing if you do not, you can create the Bazzite OS installer. This is a lot easier and less prone to hour-consuming issues coming out of the blue. Essentially, you need to download this ISO from Bazzite’s Website and then burn it to the USB using Balena Etcher or Rufus.

How to do so should be self-evident so I will not go into more details about this part.

Resizing Windows

Now that Windows is fully installed, we need to resize its partition to make room for Bazzite and the Boot Manager. I have a 2TB SSD and I would like Windows to have about 750GB of that but, as long as you allocate 250GB to Windows and leave at least 150GB free, any other combination should work.

To achieve this, open up Disk Manager on your Legion Go, right-click the Windows-SSD partition and select “Shrink Volume”. Fill in the numbers accordingly so that the Windows partition has the required size. It’s a bit weird since you can only enter the amount to shrink by, and not the size of the resulting partition but a calculator can help with that math. If you somehow shrink the partition too much, you can right-click on it again and choose “Extend” this time to increase the allocated space.

Make sure the partition is the right size before proceeding as we will be using all the unallocated space in the next steps.

Installing Bazzite

Once the space has been created, we need to go through and install Bazzite on the same drive as Windows. If you prefer to follow this in video format, you can follow this link.

If you prefer the long form written format, steps are outlined below:

1. Boot from your Bazzite USB Drive (Power + Volume UP).
2. Select the first option: “Install Bazzite”.
3. Select the appropriate language per your preference.
4. Configure network access.
5. ONLY WITH PHYSICAL KEYBOARD: Configure the user
   • Username: bazzite
   • Password: bazzite
   • Press “Done” twice to confirm user
6. Select “Installation Destination”:
   • Select the local disk
   • Storage configuration should be set to “Custom”
   • Click “Done” at the top
   • Click “Create them automatically” in the menu on the left.
   • Click “Done” at the top again
   • Click “Accept changes”
7. Begin installation – this should take about an hour to complete.
8. Once the installation completes, go to the BIOS Setup and make the Bazzite OS the default boot option.
9. Reboot the device and select “Continue Boot” when prompted.
10. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Ready to desk top

Once booted back into Bazzite, you’ll be prompted to login using your Steam account. Proceed.

Once logged in, open the side menu and select “Switch to Desktop”. You will be greeted by a welcome screen. Select “Next” then chose to install “Decky Loader” and “Install”. When prompted, use classic KDE wallet service and set the password to “bazzite”.

Chose “Next” and then install the first three applications, as selected by default.

Configure the boot manager

Now that both systems are installed, we need to configure the boot manager. This will make it a lot easier to switch between the OSes. The boot manager covered is refind. To make things easier, you should open this post on your Legion GO using Firefox.

The instructions required to set up ReFind can be found here: aarron-lee/legion-go-tricks. This link also has a lot of other useful instructions related to setting up, customising and using the Legion GO.

First, you will need to download this file. Once downloaded, you will need to open up a console “Terminal” and run the following commands:

cd ~/Downloads/
sudo rpm-ostree install refind-*.rpm

When prompted for the password, input “bazzite”. After the installation is complete, reboot and go back into desktop mode. Reopen the terminal and run the commands below:

sudo refind-install

With that done, download the custom theme from here by clicking download all at the top right. Once downloaded, right-click and select “Extract here and delete archive”. Then, run the command below:

sudo sh -c 'mkdir /boot/efi/EFI/refind/themes/ ; set -euo pipefail'
sudo sh -c 'cp -r rEFInd-Minimalist-LGO_Bazzite/ /boot/efi/EFI/refind/themes/'
sudo sh -c 'grep -qFx "include themes/rEFInd-Minimalist-LGO_Bazzite/theme.conf" "/boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf" || echo "include themes/rEFInd-Minimalist-LGO_Bazzite/theme.conf" >> /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf'

With that done we only need some final changes to the config file and a BIOS setting change and we’re done. First, open nano to edit the refind.conf file by running the command below:

sudo nano /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf

Scroll down and edit the following lines:

• add the following after the existing resolutions: “resolution 2560 1600”.
• Remove the “#” before “enable_touch”.
• Remove the “#” before “enable_mouse”.
• Press Ctrl + X to exit the file and confirm saving changes.

Reboot the device and boot into BIOS Settings and make sure the first boot option is “rEFInd Boot Manager”.

Closing words

That’s it. The system now provides you with an easy way to switch between Windows and Bazzite. Moreover, the boot manager will remember the last selected OS so you only need to do anything if you want to change the system you’re booting into. This will also help with applying the restart heavy updates Windows still rolls out in [insert current year].