Is Bazzite the right fit for me?
I've read that -deck may include packages that help with HDR? Does it even make sense to use -deck on a PC which is used for gaming, but not for the most part?
Would you say Bazzite is right for me:
- Usage: Everyday stuff, Programming, 4k Streaming and Gaming with HDR (at least in the near future), Android Emulation?
- Should have a big community, so problems can be googled, or I can get user to user help. Exception: distros that are closely related to a big community, in a way that doesn't hinder support options for me
- Should be very stable: Won't break if I leave it sitting for a few months or if I do a reasonable mistake. And as no OS never breaks, it should be designed to be fixable: Atomic, or A/B or other systems to easily restore an OS. This does not mean I want packages that are outdated for months.
- GNOME (like it ships with Fedora. This means no ancient version or any version of it that thinks a taskbar belongs in gnome)
- Should have one great main packet-manager. If the OS has multiple, it shouldn't be annoying or a compromise, but because it provides an advantage
- Updates of components like the DE or Wayland shouldn't lack behind much
- Should be modern. And by modern, I mean having features that became a norm. This also means that the Distro should be evolving, getting regularly new features
Don't care about:
- Nvidia driver issues
- Ideology (Like Ubuntu bad cause snaps are partly closed source)
66 Replies
* You can try the deck image, if you don't like it just rebase to the desktop image. No re-install needed. Also Blufin-dx might be more suited for you than Bazzite.
* Community: decent size of the age of the project 11k people here and 5.5k on the subreddit
* Stable: I still have my first install of Bazzite from February 2024, there are bad updates sometimes but the rollback feature works well
* Latest Gnome: Bazzite usually ships with the latest Gnome on the same week as Fedora does
* Package Manager: Bazzite prefers you to use flatpaks >> distrobox >> rpm-ostree for installing software in that order. You can typically install almost anything that you want with Distrobox
* Updates: Bazzite stable builds vary anywhere between twice a week and once every 2 weeks. Follows the same updates as Fedora, so it's not bleeding edge but it's updated rapidly
* Should be modern: Tend to just get the features from Silverblue and the maintainers add a lot of their own stuff on top of that. They always doing improvements
A note on Snaps, if you try and install Snapd via rpm-ostree it's one of the few things that will brick an atomic desktop. Not sure if that's fixed or not.
Looks pretty good. Are there any non deck focused advantage of the -deck versions? (like better hdr support) if not its probably just annoying
Why Bluefin-dx?
I personally use Jetbrains IDEs and I do not understand how an OS can help with programming.
Should I ever decide to ditch Bazzite for Silverblue, would I need a reinstall can I just move?
You can rebase between Bazzite Gnome, Silverblue or Bluefin-dx. As long as you stay with the same DE
If you planning on going with devcontainers bluefin-dx is already set up for that.
no, use arch
didnt read teh following messages
or stock fedora
silverblue aint that good
and doesnt have codecs
Why?
Cant be added? or why are they missing?
1) no codecs, 2) doesnt have a benefit over workstation really
if you can handle fedora migrations you can handle that
the benefit is that I cant break my system that easily?
if your list was generated by chatgpt
then use bazzite
huhh, how does it read like that
the good thing about bazzite is that it doesnt break and if it does you have a 3+ month backlog of versions to go back to
just makes it a bit harder to dev
but there is no package manager, you can layer fedora packages for now but we discourage it
it makes updates a lot slower and requires manual intervention every few months
brew is decent for development
as for community we're getting there and becoming comparable to other distros, if you have a problem it has already been answered
How does flatpak + brew limit me?
i cant answer that for you
if it doesnt and you game a lot you cant do better than bazzite
just takes a lot of the pain away from managing your system
but if you can manage your system just use fedora, I cant tell at what point you are
worst case i rebase over to bluefin-dx, no?
bluefin-dx has some extra packages but the same limitations. Depends on how much you game vs dev
they have docker and vs code predominantly i think
not every gui application has a flatpak (this is why we have distrobox)
not every cli application has a brew package (this is why we have distrobox)
distrobox has access to all packages from the distro container you use (but if the application requires tight host integration like VPN clients then it has to be layered, but most applications will just work)
if you ask me I tried distrobox and i cant get the hang of it
Whats the idea behind so many software sources?
i think brew distrobox and flatpak are a nice trio
brew is for dev tools, flatpak is for desktop apps, and distrobox is for niche things that dont do either
Ive used Fedora for a while (not right now) and I liked it for the most part. The main reason I am interested in Silverback is so I dont have to stress about breaking anything and the main reason I am interested in bazzite is HDR and slimmer odds of games breaking
sorry to disappoint with hdr but i think wine games under kde dont do it, you have to do funny stuff with gamescope
or use the -deck image
as for the -deck image, it has no lockscreen and boots into gamemode, so you wont like that either
its on my list to change that and bring back sddm
kde? I am only interested in gnome
i think gnome is worse in that regard
i daily drive bazzite for all my devices at this point:
bazzite desktop on my main machine for light gaming and development (.NET, C/C++, Go, Rust, etc.) The only challenging part is getting your environment right, you will find yourself having to use containerization to get around it. I personally just install all my toolchains to /opt
bazzite-deck on both my HTPC in the living room and steam deck, pretty much gives me console experience, and i don't need to tinker with them, just install games and play. Just make sure you use displayport-to-hdmi due to the annoyances with the HDMI forum
i don't think im going to distrohop ever again. I was an Arch guy for like a couple of years, and I just don't have it in me to babysit my computer and tear things apart to figure out why things went wrong and fix them. I don't have that kind of time anymore.
apart from bazzite I am betting on the planned full support of HDR in gnome in like 3 months
no
wine does not support the protocol
gamescope-session has an inherent dependency on sddm for the steamos-session manager, so you get that on the deck image no matter the DE
so you need to bridge it over gamescope for kde to work
probably gnome will be the same
so dont expect it
essentially you are in the first situation here
and containerization makes it difficult to debug
and get around
debug what?
then -deck image no lock screen
the program
so youre in an edge case where ah your mileage may vary
hmmm not sure what you mean, containers for me is just one more step to get to compile my program and work, its otherwise been seamless
do you use a debugger for your programs?
yes
several
isnt it a pain for compiled stuff
if you route through the container
only if you don't know how to expose things
i think i know what you mean
ok spend3weeksfiguringitout challenge, which port is required for which debugger
so jetbrains has some tricks up its sleeve to get around some of those annoyances, and its a bit clunky, this is why i started resorting to installing toolchains locally
so you catch my drift, you stopped using containers for it
i think they have things called "remote debugger" things you need to deploy to the container and you can debug from the host
yea
yea no i use vs code none of that is happening
it has remote debuggers too and container support
devcontainers are getting more popular, and those have native vscode support btw
i know, still not the same though
the whole point of those is to have a full development environment be portable
(HDR) I didnt really understand yet how the deck image differs from non desk and why its not just on the normal image
Or what steps I need to take to use HDR
another plus point for bazzite for me is native support for android apps via google play and f droid, which when I tried setting it up on fedora a good while ago was very annoying
hdr is only supported for wine under gamescope
deck uses gamescope
desktop is gnome/kde so hdr only works if you run gamescope in them
which is a royal pain
cause gamestop is designed for the gaming mode part of the DE?
Is modifing deck in a way it doesnt annoy me while I dont game possible?
in what way, you can just switch to desktop mode
in the absolute worse case scenario that nothing seems to work properly: no extra packages needed for any virtual machine, just virt-manager flatpak and some kernel arguments (that are added with a simple command)
if you really need to do some dev work in windows, you can fire up a vm without having to reboot constantly
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Having no Security, starting in game mode every time i start up
1:1 with steamOS
if you want to change it, make a custom image and delete the steamos.conf from
/etc/sddm.conf.d at build time, deleting it on an already installed system will just make it get restored because it is now "missing"
its literally 2-3 lines in a text file on github, and you still auto get all updates from us
or you can just enable the lockscreen in gamemode uijust remove the file then follow steps at https://github.com/einekratzekatze/bazzite?tab=readme-ov-file#build-your-own ?
pretty much, you just use the containerfile to remove it though
if you also want to remove the touch keyboard from sddm then you need
rm /etc/sddm.conf.d/virtualkbd.conf
replace ungabungadeck with the image name for your bazzite image
its a nice carrot to teach people how to make their own image 😛dont fork it, use the image template
GitHub
GitHub - ublue-os/image-template: Build your own custom Universal B...
Build your own custom Universal Blue Image! Contribute to ublue-os/image-template development by creating an account on GitHub.
jorge even has a literal example
https://github.com/castrojo/bazzite-cosmic
GitHub
GitHub - castrojo/bazzite-cosmic: bootc base image from Centos Stre...
bootc base image from Centos Stream10. Contribute to castrojo/bazzite-cosmic development by creating an account on GitHub.
if you fork bazzite then you have to do all the maintenance of updating bazzite
https://github.com/einekratzekatze/image-template/blob/main/Containerfile
I even first opened that github page, but for some reason I decided it was wrong
think that will work if not then the bootc container lint needs to be in its own run line
just need to enable your build workflow and make it build if you have added a cosign key
and make the image registry public once you have an image
then you can rebase to it 🙂
on the main repo bootc... also follows ostree...
i barely touch the container file myself hence why i was unsure
https://github.com/einekratzekatze/image-template/actions/runs/12623590395
any idea?
changed Containerfile, added repository secret, commited public key
try just remove
AS image-template from the containerfile
might not be required these days from the looks of itthought I tried that
yeah, same error
hmm not sure since it looks ok for me
but i havent used the image-template myself so never worked with it, it didnt exist when i made my own image with blue-build which is more declarative with yaml
how about you try it first
an image might be more than you bargained for
correct, we are learning to ride a bike before we take our first steps here
closing this help thread
open a new one if needed