Bazzite: The Gaming OS Microsoft Doesn't Want You To Know About
https://www.pcbway.com - PCB fabrication, assembly, 3D printing, CNC machining & more! It seems like just a short few years ago, "Linux Gaming" was something of a punchline - but not any longer...
Hmm, interesting. Is there perhaps one weird trick to using it?
You wouldn't believe it!
Paragraph 3 will shock you!
I think it's a great OS and it's absolutely amazing how far Linux Gaming has come even in the last few years. Personally, I have to say I'm not a huge fan of Bazzite's immutability-based design. I know there are pros and cons, and they just don't balance for me. I'm a tinkerer, I like to play with the OS internals and have full control of them. Sometimes that causes problems, but it also causes learning, and I like to learn how the OS works and what it's doing "under the hood" and in my mind Linux is great for that and that's part of the appeal. For a lot of people, an immutable OS is probably the right way to go, it's much safer, and stabler, and I know most people don't care. But I do think it's worth considering that Linux is not one-size-fits-all and while Bazzite might be best for some people it's not best for everyone.
As soon as you start getting into more customization, if you find annoyances you want to fix, sometimes it's much easier when you're on a traditional, non-immutable distro, and I consider it an important bonus that this will help you learn. You do have to be more careful, and more respectful about running shell commands freely that might destroy your system, but I think that's good experience to have.
Personally I run PikaOS (debian-based) with KDE Plasma 6 and it's been an absolute pleasure. I have found some of the above mentioned annoyances, but I've fixed them to my satisfaction and I'm extremely happy with the result. I have yet to find any game that is difficult to get running, I have yet to find anything that is difficult at all really. It's been straightforward and rock solid stable. I give a lot of credit to not just the distros but also to projects like KDE, Wine, Proton, Lutris, etc. which are building this incredible gaming ecosystem on Linux. It couldn't be a better time to dump Windows, and soon we'll be at the point where no one will mourn it.
Personally I think the immutability is amazing precisely because it lets me tinker. Being able to layer packages and roll back if it’s not happy finally lets me try out different development setups
The way I see it, an os is just a set of fixed versions. I might as well treat it like a git checked requirements.txt or package.lock.json
Nix is also nice for that but that’s just a straight up config file nothing else.
Bazzite at least comes with preloaded options and wizards to choose other things
That's totally legit. I prefer having my primary machine immutable so I can't break things. I have a mini PC that's my tinker platform. I have kubuntu on there now but may have to give PikaOS a try.
For what it's worth, Nobara's another good option and being Fedora-based might be more familiar if you're coming from Bazzite. I think the developers of PikaOS and Nobara are the same, or at least I think the projects share some history and some effort. Either way both are great distros depending on which flavor of package management you prefer. I'm definitely "an apt person" so Pika birb OS is the one for me, also it's got a pretty cute art theme.
I'm a new Bazzite (nvidia) user, but I use Linux in various flavors for self-hosting already so I'm not a complete newbie.
I'm personally ok with the immutability of the os on my desktop, I'd rather be more free to break things in my homelab environment than lose an OS install on my desktop because I flew too close to the sun.
I 100% understand the appeal though.
Ok. I'm not trying it. I mess with everything.
In a similar theme, I don't like the latest TrueNAS because if you want to mess with the OS, you gotta force it. Annoying as hell. I built my own nas instead.
People who say Bazzite isn't for tinkerers just misunderstand it. It's extremely tinker friendly, just not in the ways people are used to.
I'd say it's actually a lot more tinker friendly because it's super easy to revert changes.
Garuda had the same gaming focus as Bazzite without the immutability.
This UGLY son of a bitch is playing SUPER FUN games and basically, YOU ARE FUCKING STUPID
How? ...Just install this Linux distro >
I moved from win10 to PikaOS, after misunderstanding why linux mint installed on a USB was unusably slow. It's fine, but some weird problems. I think Mint can get closed source Nvidia drivers easily enough. The open drivers are fine enough.
is Bazite better than Pika? is fedora base better than Debian/Arch base?
is fedora base better than Debian/Arch base?
unfortunately yes. driver support for any redhat derived Linux is amazing compared to Debian or Arch.
I stopped using redhat anything after IBM fucked everything up, but it's still true today.
Debian could be amazing if it weren't for the devout "it's not free, it's not for me" evangelicals. I mean, I get it, but there is a cost they just don't concern themselves with and the distro suffers because of it.
I'm hijacking this thread to ask a question:
Bazzite latest MESA how?
I can see that the driver released on the 18th is available on Fedora Rawhide, but it may contain the fix I need that removes graphical artefacting in Unreal Engine 5 games like Oblivion Remastered, Avowed, and Dune Awakening (checking the MESA developer forums shows that they've identified the problem. Checking their git shows they've found a fix to the problem, hence why I'm expecting the fix to be in the version release of the 18th).
I wonder what is the otigin of that name?
Answered here: https://docs.bazzite.gg/General/FAQ/
Why is it called Bazzite?
Fedora Linux's Atomic Desktops originally followed a naming scheme based on minerals. Bazzite is a mineral that is known for being strong, lightweight, and is colored blue.
