In case, like me, you hadn't heard of Bazzite before:
Bazzite is an OCI image that serves as an alternative operating system for the Steam Deck, and a ready-to-game SteamOS-like for desktop computers, handheld PCs, and living room home theater PCs.
It's basically Nobara, but properly done. (If you choose the desktop version)
It gets updates automatically (max one day after upstream Fedora), has everything you want ootb in the first start wizard, is more secure, and much more.
I was very sceptical at first, but after trying it out, I really noticed some minor performance improvements in games and many QoL improvements, e.g. the preinstalled LACT, which allows me to set up fan curves and over-/ underclock my GPU.
Setting up my new PC took me about half an hour maximum.
9/10, I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a smooth gaming experience.
I am intrigued. Presently using Nobara right now, and I've been running into strange issues, like the whole system suddenly becoming unwritable and Firefox crashing out of the blue and needing an entire system reboot.
/etc is completely writeable. This is why we don't use the term "immutable distros" because Bazzite and the rest of universal blue are neither immutable nor distros.
Yes, I don't know all of the details, but most of the system config files like fstab and such are modifiable. I automount my NAS by putting a command in fstab.
I've never looked into it hard core but at some point I will go into all the stuff Jorge and the rest have uploaded and teach myself, but currently I don't need to I've not touched the OStree on any installation so far.
Bazzite is my first true experience with an immutable distro, and wow, what a magical moment it was.
I've been eyeing on fedora 40's release for some time now because it fixes all the Wayland problems for Nvidia cards. One night my grandma needed some help, so I walked away from my PC, it automatically suspended, came back 30 or so minutes later, and when I logged in I was just automatically on KDE 6 with fedora 40, didn't even reboot.
unless maybe it automatically restarted and put all my applications back on screen that I had running, not sure. but I know it didn't shut down since I literally hit the power button and it was immediately on, it was asleep.
https://bazzite.gg/ If anyones interested scroll to the bottom and there's a little wizard to select the right image for your needs, don't worry too much you can always rebase :)
The download tends to fail for me. Have to constantly restart it and pray it finishes. Then the installer seems to be error-prone. I actually have to reinstall it today because, somehow, simply restarting my PC results in a slideshow from the boot screen onwards. I always seem to have issues with the installer Fedora-based distros use.
Bazzite also has the backing of a bigger group of developers and community. Whereas Nobara is developed by a solo (kudos to him). But I would say Bazzite differs quite a bit too with its immutability, automatic updates, and thanks to libostree technology, after every update the previous version of the operating system is retained on your machine. This means, should an update cause any issues, you can select the previous image at boot. Additionally, it has support for gamescope, meaning Steam can boot straight into Big Screen mode, which is very handy for gaming pcs and steam decks etc.. Can read the rest of the details over at bazzite.gg, if you're not convince :P
Would you have any idea why bazzite.gg is consistently crashing android firefox? Trying to scroll past "waydroid" makes the app reload and is taking some of my services with it, which is really weird.
Hey! Would you happen to know the keyboard command to bring up the side panels when in a game in game mode? I know ctrl-1 and ctrl-2 work when outside the game but they don't appear to work when in a game.
I'm running Fedora 40 on my PC and my laptop. Now, having read how much most of you like the experience, I guess I'm moving my laptop to Bazzite. I did install Bazzite on my Steam Deck, but the experience was worse than with SteamOS for the Stadia controllers, which is what I use (not that the experience is stellar or anything on SteamOS, but Bazzite never once reconnected without having to re-pair, SteamOS at least does like 60% of the times.)
It is true that Bazzite had some bluetooth issues, if that's what you're referring too. Personally, got hit by this too, but can warmly say that none of those issues remain on their latest 3.0 version. PM me if you need help setting it up or have any questions :)
Thanks for letting me know. I installed Bazzite on my laptop last night like 5 minutes after I read this thread. I guess it's the Steam Deck's turn to give it another shot.
If you are like myself and use your PC mainly for gaming, and your laptop just for casual use (watching videos, writing notes, etc.), then you can also take a look at Bluefin (Gnome) or Aurora (KDE).
It's a "replacement" for the stock Fedora Silverblue/ Kinoite with QoL stuff and on the spectrum between Bazzite ("bloated") and the uBlue base image (extremely lean, missing a few standard apps by default) and gives you the choice between "I'm a casual user" (-> only what you need) and the "developer edition", which includes some IDEs and stuff.
I like it a lot and think of it as "Bazzite, without gaming stuff". Maybe you'll like it too!
My case is the opposite. I game on my laptop or my Steam Deck, and work on my PC. I installed Bazzite on my laptop yesterday right after going over this thread.
On my PC I also tinker quite a bit, so I just have plain Fedora Gnome on it.
I'm going to spin a VM with Bluefin to play with it a bit. Thanks for the tip.
One thing that could be an issue with Bluefin, and maybe you can enlighten me here, is that according to this video on their site, they have done away with OS-tree? Because that would make this entirely based on FlatPaks and no other options, which is a huge block for me.
I've had a lot of experience with Linux and I use Nobara currently. My only catch with Bazzite is that I didn't know the first thing to do. It somehow felt as if most of my experience in Linux was just useless.
Not saying it's a bad thing, I just decided I'd stick to Nobara for now and try learning Bazzite in the future to give it a fair shake.
I'm also a tweaker. I like to play with ZRam and add other things to the OS, like a custom kernel with BCacheFS-Git to support my gaming darastores. I suspect some of my creature comforts may be harder to get.
It won't transform the old device into a gaming beast, but if you do some lighter gaming with it, why not just try it? :)
If you don't like it or want something more vanilla/ general purpose, you can always rebase to other Fedora Atomic variants, e.g. Silverblue, Kinoite, uBlue community images (Secureblue, Deepin, etc.) anytime you want! This changes the "flavor" (basically like switching from Linux Mint to Kubuntu by reinstall) without loosing any data or settings with one command. It's so fucking great!
I'm running Bazzite on desktop cpu to use with steam link and do self hosting. Docker stuff was pain but it saved me a lot of pain by having gaming work out of the box.
I do have a request for help with Bazzite. In all my Gnomes I've always used dash-to-dock with intellihide. With Bazzite, I for some reason I just can't understand, when I move the pointer to the bottom to have the dock come up, bazzite opens the workspaces view.
Is there a way to disable this?
Other than that, Bazzite has been rock solid and super customizable on my Gazelle 16.
I've never personally used Gnome so fotm know how to navigate it. But I am sure this is something you should be able to do disable. I'd look either in shortcuts, workspace or gesture settings maybe?
Thanks, but I toured the whole settings yesterday, together with Gnome Tweaks, Dconf and the dock-to-dash settings and didn't find anything. Granted, I don't have a great handle of Dconf, so there are things I didn't touch to avoid messing everything else up.
This seems to be exclusive to Bazzite Gnome. I've used Gnome with absolutely every distro and this has never happened before. It's not a bug, it's a feature I don't like, lol.
I guess I'll take my chances on breaking it all and roll back if needed.
Yeah, but I toured the whole settings yesterday, together with Gnome Tweaks, Dconf and the dock-to-dash settings and didn't find anything. Granted, I don't have a great handle of Dconf, so there are things I didn't touch to avoid messing everything else up.
This seems to be exclusive to Bazzite Gnome. I've used Gnome with absolutely every distro and this has never happened before.
I guess I'll take my chances on breaking it all and roll back if needed.