Been keeping a keen eye on Bazzite as it seems like a good distro for people like myself who mainly use the desktop pc to play games on. But it doesn’t seem like a “typical” distro for a daily driver? How does Bazzite for example differ from Nobara which is another gaming-oriented distro? I’m just curious as I keep hearing good things about Bazzite, and wondering if there would be any benefit as to someone who is using Tumbleweed, to switch to Bazzite right now.
So, if you are a Bazzite user, or have experience: let me know how it went, and if you could daily drive it!
Edit: I guess the same could be asked for ChimeraOS?
I am! I run it both on my gaming PC and laptop.
But it doesn’t seem like a “typical” distro for a daily driver? How does Bazzite for example differ from Nobara which is another gaming-oriented distro?
Well, for starters, if you get the Bazzite-deck edition, your PC boots straight into Steam’s game mode - in this mode, everything runs thru gamescope so you get all the awesome benefits like being able to use FSR even with games that don’t support it, HDR and more. You get a console-like experience on PC, and it’s awesome.
Another cool thing about this mode is that all your updates - including OS, Flatpak, firmware/BIOS, container, Nix, pip etc - all of it is presented as if it’s a Steam update like in SteamOS - and it’s automatic too, and it doesn’t interrupt your gaming experience. Basically a unified update backend and frontend, which is awesome.
Compared to Fedora/Nobara, one advantage this has is that the updates are image based and atomic, so when you reboot, the new update goes live instantly so there’s no wait-time. Another advantage is that your previous image is available in the GRUB menu, so in case the update broke something, you can always boot from the previous image - no need to even restore anything, no need to edit your fstab etc (unlike btrfs snapshot restores where the subvolid changes). And you can also pin “good” images to your GRUB menu (and I highly recommend doing that), so you can always fall back to a known good version. This came in handy on my laptop recently where after one of the Feb updates I was experiencing some weird graphics corruption in game mode, but thanks to image pinning I always had a working image to fall back to. Also, the rebase feature allows you to go back and forth between 90 days of images (stored on github), so it’s easy to switch between various versions for testing. The rebase is also interesting because with just a single command you can switch between any other Fedora Atomic distro, so if you’re bored of Bazzite or you want to try out a new DE, it’s just one command to switch. And with pinning, you can always switch back instantly.
Finally, there’s the whole immutability aspect. Personally I’m ambivalent on this, but the fact that it allows image/atomic updates (with easy rollbacks/rebases), I think of it more as a convenience - especially on a gaming-oriented machine, where I just wanna jump straight into my games without worrying about updates and broken systems.
So having used Fedora, Nobara, and finally Bazzite, I can highly recommend Bazzite as a daily driver - and it’s 100% worth switching. AMA.
Wow thanks for detailed answer, much appreciated, I’ll defo give this a try 😊
Yes, and I love it.
I only use my PC for gaming and web browsing. I mainly stuck with Fedora, but also used Tumbleweed and Nobara. Regardless of which distro I used I was never fully satisfied with the initial setup or upkeep.
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Fedora was great, but I was hopping around often and there was always a setup process to get Steam and what not installed and set up.
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Nobara is a great option with gaming tools installed and setup for you. However, it’s maintained by a single (awesome) dude and major upgrades often require some manual work arounds.
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Tumbleweed was great until there were updates. More times than not, updates failed due to repo or dependency issues.
Bazzite, however, is the first (and only, so far) distro where I quite literally install, reboot, launch and log into Steam, start playing games. No other setup steps were required as everything I need is baked into the image. And with the automatic updates there’s been no upkeep.
Since installing Bazzite I’ve had no desire to try anything else, which is great. More time for gaming. 🎮
Thanks for the answer, sounds exactly like the boat I am in. I will try it!
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Bazzite is a good HTPC or living room gaming distro. It is not an ideal all purpose desktop distro, just like a Steam Deck is not an ideal all purpose desktop system.
If you want a Bazzite-like experience that is better suited for the desktop then use Fedora Silverblue, which is what Bazzite/ublue builds upon.
I do all my Linux kernel development, and especially compilation, on my steam deck.
Why is it not ideal as an all purpose desktop distro? I’m using it over ublue/Fedora for the convenience of being able to be play many games without tinkering, but I seldom play, I mostly work as a web developer. Bazzite has been great for me, so I’m wondering why you say this.
Bazzite, as a gaming-first distribution, makes some choices that are acceptable for such a platform, but that I believe are unacceptable in a secure development environment. This is why I wrote “not ideal” instead of “bad”. If you don’t care about security then it’s perfectly cromulent. But I value security, so I would not recommend it.
Fair enough! I don’t know enough to judge that. I’m learning each day, though :) are these choices bazzite or do they come from ublue?
I’m using it for work/gaming/general use and I don’t think I have issues that aren’t present on silverblue. Steam deck is definitely limited (AFAIK, it’s not possible to print and can have persistent layers), so it’s definitely a bigger issue
I’ve been using bazzite for a chunk of time now on my steam deck and on my Thinkpad. You can generally do most things. Gaming obviously works fine though the Thinkpad with it’s old CPU and incomplete vulkan support can’t launch a lot of games but that’s not a distro thing. I have been able to sideload apps onto a quest VR headset with it after some tinkering with udev rules and distrobox. I couldn’t figure out how to flash the firmware of my pinecil soldering iron though. I also do all my 3d printing stuff on bazzite.
Most of the time you should be able to use distrobox to install stuff that doesn’t exist elsewhere. Several things I have used an arch box to install off the aur using the included helper paru, even though flatpaks and appimage may be available. From in the distrobox, distrobox-export is available to make the software available to bazzite as if it were native.
I use endevour on my main PC but bazzite in the laptop, which I barely use, so I wanted something that didn’t mind not updating for a month and be fine, and bazzite nails that. I use distrobox for terminal things and vpn software for work is layered. No issues so far and very tempted to run it in my main PC, probably would do that if when arch breaks.
Glad to hear about your experience, and love how you write “when arch brakes” as you know it’s gonna happen hahaha
I am not a fan because they install all that WINE stuff on the system level which is a huge security degradation.
Running WINE through Bottles with the latest protonGE through PupGUI works on all distros.
If they removed that I would consider it.
Also they remove Firefox and Flatpak Firefox can only use seccomp filters, not sandboxes, which less secure. And due to an rpm-ostree issue those removed packages are never reinstallable.
I am not a fan because they install all that WINE stuff on the system level which is a huge security degradation.
I disagree with this. Sure, it could be made more secure, but Wine, on it’s own isn’t, any greater security risk compared to any other scripting runtime such as say Python, which is also installed at the system level. Ultimately it’s up to the user to get their executables from trustworthy sources - and whether it’s a random bash script or an exe, doesn’t really make a difference.
As for Firefox, if you’re truly concerned about security then you wouldn’t be using it in the first place, you’d be using Librewolf, which you can install without any issues.
Haven’t you heard? Anything that isn’t flatpak is completely insecure and will end in your computer being hacked. It will also break the next time you update your computer.
/s
Dont know where you get your games from 😉🐧☠️
Firefox + Arkenfox.js is arguably better for security than any FF fork, such as Librewolf.
There’s also Mercury, which is Librewolf + Arkenfox + more.
Interesting project and very curious how they even get it to build. They use Firefox ESR and compile it with lots of optimizations and maaaany redundant configs. I chatted with developers in the FF Matrix about that, they build firefox with 2 arguments or so, build browser, use official branding.
Many things are duplicate and mercury may be unstable because of that.
The biggest problem is that it doesnt use a CI/CD workflow, so that dude does the builds manually and you can hope to get them in time. And them they are distributed as Appimages, which is a different set of problems
Yes, but Arkenfox is also a bit of a mess. Their tooling is very overcomplex with the updater and all. I went through the entire thing and created this helper project which is also pretty hacky but nearly complete.
I guess random Windows programs are even safer as they may not really work on the host OS.
But still, Bottles is top tier, it works great and is perfectly packaged as a flatpak (no permissions, portal use etc) and pupgui allows to use the latest protonge.
To Librewolf, that is hosted on their own repo, using their own build system. So it could be considered as less trusted than upstream firefox managed by fedora, especially in terms of timely updates. You could also use the Firefox binary, which is very quick (did a benchmark) but you need to do the desktop entry yourself.
Also Librewolf is not security hardened afaik, maybe a few checks are also for security but it should be the same as Firefox. It is privacy optimized. Disadvantage here again is, that if you need a vanilla profile for shitty websites etc, that doesnt exist.
I opted for Lutris because Bottles has issues that make it unrecommendable and unsupportable by us.
Because it’s only shipped as a flatpak (They bullied the Fedora packager until they quit) it doesn’t support the frame limiter built into gamescope on the deck images (Requires a patch in Mesa).
As a contributor to the Northstar mod for Titanfall 2, we originally wanted to recommend it as the default Linux install path due to it’s friendly UI, but found because it avoids using winetricks it’s missing required dependencies. Despite us trying to work with them and contributing code, to this day it still doesn’t work, and recent discussions about this problem were extremely abrasive from their side, much like the above linked issue.
Ultimately Lutris provides a more consistent experience for gamers that are already used to Steam - with the same tools working for both. That’s my reasoning anyway.
As far as wine, we only install wine-core and not the entire stack, that’s purely for Lutris dependency reasons and isn’t intended to be used by the end user. Wine-ZGUI for instance is a Flatpak, and Lutris will install its own copy of wine - most likely Wine-GE or a derivative.
If you need RPM Firefox, my recommendation is that you install it with Distrobox. This also solves the security issue that we remove upstream Firefox over - update frequency.
You don’t want Firefox to only update when your operating system image does. As far as I’m concerned the bug preventing Firefox from being re-added is a feature.
No that is definetly a bug, as it spits out strange error messages.
I dont think Firefox running through Podman in rootless mode can create user namespaces? But not sure, will check that.
I have auto updates enabled and I reboot daily. This is not an issue especially on ublue where they are on by default.
We build twice a week, that’s not frequent enough for a web browser.
Ultimately it’s saving you from yourself, if this bug gets fixed and there’s a way I can unfix it, I will do so.
Oh okay, didnt know Bazzite builds slower than the other images.
Instead of blocking users, education is the way better option. Flatpak Firefox does not have user namespace sandbox support, which is a pretty big deal.
Should you post those concerns into their github? Maybe they don’t know?
I think they know both, and the rpm-ostree issue is reported.
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No thats the point. They remove it using
rpm-ostree override removeduring the Github build process, and is not detected as removed on the device (rpm-ostree resetwill not bring it back) but can also not be installed due toalready fulfilled. Its a reported bug but that could need more attention.Couldn’t find the bug, is it on Bazzite, u blue or some other upstream? Do you have the link?
I run bazzite on my steam deck and gaming pc. It’s honestly just silverblue with gaming specific options, so it’s extremely solid. Coupled with the ability to have the steam deck game mode it beats out all the competition in my eyes. Specifically I would take it over nobara having used both as nobara had some very serious stability issues over time as well as just general package drift. Bazzite has none of that.
Do you come into issues using it on the steamdeck when it comes to saving games on the micro sd
I haven’t so far, but I did the 1tb ssd upgrade so I haven’t had to use microsd very much. From my experience it works the same as steamos if you had done the btrfs file system change.
Cool, thanks for insights 👍
I’ve been running it on my steam deck (LCD) for a while and it’s great. Nearly undistinguishable from SteamOS but with neat extras. If I had an AMD GPU in my gaming PC, I’d try it out there as well to see how the SteamOS experience holds up on a desktop.
Nice to hear! Yeah I just switched away from Nvidia to a new AMD card, happy to be on the bright side! Will also get a steam deck eventually, so might put bazzite on that too.
