Generated via https://github.com/ublue-os/countme
10k added users since last post. Here are upstream Fedora numbers only
Go Bazzite, there has been a lot of talk about Bazzite lately, also on YouTube many have been reviewing it, like JayzTwoCents had a feature about it, which probably helped.
I haven’t tried it myself, but it’s great to see that it’s still possible to shake up the Linux community with a new approach.
Congratulations and best of wishes. 👍 🎈I will hypothesize why:
Bazzite is the Trendy Distro Of The Month, like Peppermint or Endeavor or Nobara or a frillion others. CachyOS is apparently next. Nearly constantly, you’ll hear about some trendy new distro which is a fork of Ubuntu or Fedora or Arch that has a feature or two targeted at newcomers or gamers, and for awhile it gets heavily recommended on Reddit or Lemmy, then you stop hearing about it forever as the rest of the ecosystem adopts that feature or fixes the thing that feature was meant to be worked around, and then the cycle repeats.
Bazzite is targeted toward gamers, it emphasizes a solid onboarding experience with a configurator to choose/build your install media based on what you want to do with it, do you want a handheld or home theater experience or a keyboard and mouse desktop? Do you want it to boot to SteamOS or to a DE? Which DE? What hardware do you have? So their gimmick is to steer users through the initital config and setup process. Which as gimmicks go, that one is pretty solid.
MEANWHILE
Fedora’s Atomic editions have no gimmicks at all. You have to independently learn that immutable distros exist, independently decide you want that, and then go hunting on their website through their godforsaken marketing wank to find it.
Fedora likes their bullshit branding. You go to their website, and there are big buttons for Fedora Workstation right next to Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop. “Workstation” does not mention that it’s just the Gnome version. You have to stroll further down, past server, IoT and “Core” versions, to a section that looks visually different labeled “More Fedora Options” including Atomic and Spins. You’re a new Linux user, you’ve just used the OS that came with your computer your whole life, explain to me what the difference between Core and Atomic is and why you should choose one over the other?
The Atomic versions, which is kind of a synonym for “immutable”, you click on that, and you’re presented with five options: Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, Fedora Sway Atomic, Fedora Budgie Atomic, and Fedora Cosmic Atomic Nowhere in its name or description does Silverblue mention that it’s the Gnome desktop one. Kinoite starts with a K and also mentions in the description it’s the KDE atomic version. Also, “kinoite” is a godawful word, they should have gone with Kyanite instead, which is a different blue crystal. Or they should have just called it KDE Atomic or Plasma Atomic. The others just put the DE’s name in the title LIKE A NORMAL PERSON, ROWAN.
That’s a really dismissive way to say “It’s an OS built to fit a demand that wasn’t being met by the other distros”.
CachyOS is apparently next.
I’d argue that this is already the current trend. I can’t count the number of random Indian youtubers I recently got recommended to watch as they glaze CachyOS as the second coming of christ.
I am wary about invoking Apple here, but say what you will about the company, there’s a lot of value in a braindead setup process. Many, many users just want something that just works - it was literally something I asked for when Linux was recommended to me (knowing some hate Ubuntu, I’ll out myself: using Ubuntu Budgie - setup was super simple. I guess there must be demand for that niche in the broader Linux community, so that’s a very smart move by Bazzite.
Hey, I’m one of those! Started using Bazzite in July, have absolutely fallen in love. My whole gaming library is available, which has been a real first for me with Linux.
I am a container evangelist, I find excuses to convert my jobs into Kubernetes workloads, and I frequently use the likes of podman for one off apps/processes and development. I use Flatpak frequently to isolate dependencies for the likes of Steam and Heroic.
I really wanted to like Bazzite or Bluefin, but I can’t deal with the overhead from the rpm os-tree updates. I would frequently notice hitches for my use case (sunshine streaming), and the hoops I had to do to configure Nvidia drivers (for it to then not work as good as other distros) was tiresome.
I went back to Arch (EndeavourOS), and I improved sunshine performance and had a driver that worked with less fiddling.
I’m saying all this because, while I’m glad to see any Linux distro grow, I hope it starts delivering what it says on the tin eventually without compromises that I experienced. Markering on it being immutable and container focused is true, but I dont see the benefit (aside from more stability which as others pointed out, is already stable is most cases)?. Right now, its a simple to configure (assuming most defaults work for your setup) distro that is finding a growing niche amongst some users (obviously by the data shown). And thats good enough for now at least.
Bazzite just works when it’s a regular desktop. The HTPC (with steam game mode) one has a major issue that I don’t see them even addressing, it doesn’t suspend. It goes into a permanent black screen and the PC is still running. Nothing revives it beside a forced reboot. I reported it to their GitHub and got nothing really. I thought it was my hardware, but I had a friend of mine bring his whole tower to my house, we installed bazzite and it did the same thing. His tower has all new AMD hardware. On my laptop, bazzite is solid as hell. Works with zero issues.
Lots of shit-talking Bazzite…
I don’t game much but when I do it’s on Fedora.
What distro do you all recommend for my Windows buddy looking to switch to gaming on Linux?
Bazzite is the option for Windows converts that want a gaming focused Linux desktop. A lot of people are going to nitpick it to death, because they want “Literally Windows but without Microsoft”. Which isn’t happening while Linux has the market share it has. You either accept a few annoyances (while advocating for those annoyances to be fixed), or go back to Windows and accept Microsoft’s authoritarian control of your computer.
Bazzite is a solid desktop that’s going to be really hard for a regular user to break, comes with Steam, Lutris, and Heroic built in, proprietary nvidia drivers installed, and is based on Fedora (Modern, stable, well supported).
The only downside is KDE can be really easy to break if you’re a new user unfamiliar with how customizing it works, but if you leave it default you’re fine.
Just in the name of completeness, I wouldn’t say that’s the only downside. I definitely have some stability issues with Bazzite, only when gaming though. But game crashes, occasional OS crashes, that hasn’t been exactly rare for me. But I will say, gaming is about the one thing in my life I’m almost unwilling to troubleshoot these days. Could be something specific to my setup that is uncommon for others, making my data point unhelpful.
And by and large, I’d absolutely recommend it for any Windows user who wants an easily transferable user experience and broadly fantastic gaming support with minimal fuss.
People just don’t like it because it’s different and uses new tech
PopOS/Cosmis has native Nvidia support, works perfectly out of the box
I use Aurora DX for my work box! But yeah all my personal PCs run Bazzite now.
Neat!
I’ve been running Garuda on my main rig for a minute. I thought all would be good but some of my music production stuff has been a bit slow to catch up as far as updates in the AUR vs the official .deb releases (and I haven’t tinkered enough to just make that work myself).
Being able to install .deb otb seems nice; I was planning on running a new framework 12 laptop on it (which I dream of getting for a new performance rig for my music) but I may install it on my current performance rig to see how it runs.
How well does it play with nvidia? If it’s all good and I eventually switch on my main rig I’d love to be able to run a local GPU supported AI. I know that for nvidia I have to have drivers that support cuda stuff.
You might want to check out distrobox. Nice way to access apps for other distros or package managers like they’re native.
I’m also on Garuda for my main box (Bazzite on the framework 13), and I have an Ubuntu distrobox for dev work with one dev project, another for general tools that are only released as .debs, one running fedora for things that “only support RHEL”, etc.
I’ll give it distrobox a shot. On the main box using Garuda I’ve been trying the dragonized version and had a lot of “odd” graphical issues with the DE.
these weren’t present when I was using plasma with Debian ( which only was smooth once I switched it to be used by the GPU as well). This is another reason why I’ve been considering the switch.
Nvidia open source drivers are working pretty good, I have no complaints. Local AI stuff can be a little annoying to setup as a beginner I bet, but if you run it through llama.cpp its smooth sailing. I recommend something like StabilityMatrix (app image) if you have no clue whats going on
I’ve done a fair bit of tinkering so I’m sure I can get it to work.
I’m using it with a 5070 ti and everything is smooth. I have been using ComfyUI to restore old photos so the AI aspect works well too
awesome, that’s good to know.
Ubuntu used to be one of the best gaming desktops that was still very stable and usable for everything else, but Canonical has been ruining it to make it more aimed at business and making more ways to profit, so Fedora has been filling the gap IMHO. Still some better dedicated gaming build distros, but Bazzite is good at being a gaming distro that works well as a productivity desktop too.
I don’t think Ubuntu is ruined so much as that Bazzite is very focused on the gaming use case and is a better choice if that’s what you want to do. I use Ubuntu and have tried Bazzite (in a VM with an Nvidia GPU pass thru). Bazzite made the Nvidia based install incredibly easy, and is a particularly good choice for VFIO. I personally use Ubuntu specifically because it’s the same OS as my cloud servers. They solve real problems in that space.
Ubuntu literally has never in it’s history been a good gaming distro. It use to just be a popular one. But all of the Deb/apt distros have never been “good choices”
Arch and Gentoo were always the better options. And it’s really only recently that the rest become reasonable options.
Gaming has historically been best on absolutely bleeding edge distros with a bunch of hacky community patches and fixes.
As I said, it was a good distro that could do gaming and still be used as a stable daily driver workstation without needing to dual boot.
I am interested in Bazzite, but am unsure about its compatibility with NVIDIA GPUs. Had anyone here had experience with this?
Works fine with the nvidia open drivers, what gpu you got
Geforce GTX 1080
I’m rolling a 1080 on Bazzite and it’s worked great for me, as well as NVIDIA does on Linux generally. Which is to say, much better than it was 2+ years ago but still could do with some improvements.
Same here also on a 1080, but with the closed-source drivers. There’s some issue they’ve had for at least the 6ish months I’ve been using it where with my dual screen setup sometimes hangs. Apparently it’s a known bug and they haven’t fixed it. It hits me about once every couple of weeks these days. Other than that it has run every game I’ve tried as well as Windows.
Ah yeah, I know the one you mean. It seems to be intermittently fixed but I’ve just rolled-back when it causes issues.
It seems better now than it was a few months ago. Back then it actually locked up my machine if I triggered the bug. Now it just temporarily slows things down.
But, I haven’t gambled on running a few apps that would regularly trigger it just in case. What’s funny is that modern Steam games are no problem, but it’s running emulated games using Emulation Station that causes problems. Games from 2024, no problem. Games from 1984? Hey, that’s pushing it.
Emulation is a hell of a drug…
That’s promising to hear! For the drivers are you using Open GPU?
I still have to look into the 1080s compatibility with this. Thanks OP for mentioning it.
Turing or newer. 20XX or 16XX and newer.
Like the other poster said, the open drivers aren’t for the 10-series and earlier. It’s because the microcode that NVIDIA wants to keep proprietary is within the GPU on later series, rather than the driver.
Bazzite has a build for the older proprietary nvidia drivers, I’m pretty sure 1080s dont get the open source variant of the driver unfortunately 😔
https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules
https://download.bazzite.gg/bazzite-nvidia-stable-amd64.iso this is the download for the proprietary nvidia kde iso
https://download.bazzite.gg/bazzite-gnome-nvidia-stable-amd64.iso this one is for gnome
I don’t know how well the proprietary driver runs, I assume if you got it running on another linux distro this will work fine
Thanks! I am still very new to Linux and have been learning the OS through OpenSUSE on an old laptop. Still debating which Linux distro to switch to for the windows desktop (the one with the 1080)
Could try dual booting to see how your hardware works
The open drivers ? You mean the ones without 3d acceleration support ?
That’s not the case for the newer open source drivers from nvidia. They’re only compatible with the last few generations of cards but they’re performant and the only feature they lack is CUDA to my knowledge. Not talking nouveau here
cuda works fine on 4070 right now, though iirc certain specific things dont run well and are a little funky in comparison. i think it was ollama? but llama.cpp seems to work fine, same with things like comfyui
Oh ok, that’s pretty good then.
But I do hope we’ll get an open cuda replacement soon and some sort of gpu partitionning/ vgpu capabilityIntel Arc Pro is the only GPU attainable to normal people that supports SR-IOV. in general using a couple cheap cards is more reasonable than one expensive card that handles all those functions.
🤷♀️ I don’t know much about that, cyberpunk runs perfect on my 4070 idk what else you could want
Then you are surely running the proprietary nvidia drivers, not the open source “nouveau” nvidia drivers ?
No it’s definitely the open drivers
I use a Fedora variant called Nobara with my 4080. Driver management has been great.
Works fine, but there are a few issues with game mode specifically.
20XX onwards in desktop version is fine. I’ve only heard issues when using gaming mode on the HTPC version, and even then i think it’s just inside the gamescope steam menu it’s shit, in games it’s just fine, no difference.
Worked great in VM with Nvidia A4000. Zero problems, just a learning curve to use
rpm-ostreeandbrewinstead ofdnf.You should not be using rpm-os tree as a replacement for DNF. Their docs have a software installation section that specifically state it should be avoided.
Thanks for the advice but unfortunately I don’t read documentation.
Yeah, you should be using flatpak wherever possible. I currently have only gnome-tweaks and zsh as layered packages. Everything else is a flatpak, brew or lives in a distrobox.
They make dedicated Nvidia images and I’ve heard good things. It’s supposed to be one of the distros to pick if you want a good out of the box experience with Nvidia. Only used the Amd/Intel image myself though.
Bazzite community really deserves tbe credit. Lots of work and great vibes all around!
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Surprised to see it at the bottom of the graph, but for anyone with a homelab uCore is a present from the
heavenscloud!Feel like saying more about what ya like?
Just installed it at the start of the month on an older PC for a console-like experience in my living room. Only 2 issues really have me disappointed (and I’m not sure there’s much Bazzite can do about them)
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No HDMI 2.1 support from my AMD card (like seriously, wtf? Had I known that I probably would have dropped a 9060 XT in instead of a 9070XT)
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No real wake in controller support for my FlyDigi or Xbox Series controllers. I’ve messed around in udev and found no solutions.
If they can figure those things out, I’d be much more impressed with the experience…. For now it just feels like another FOSS compromise to the product you actually want (PS5 Pro)
Unfortunately, the former is not possible due to asinine requirements by the HDMI Forum: https://www.phoronix.com/news/HDMI-2.1-OSS-Rejected The only option is to use DisplayPort instead (or perhaps an adapter).
Unfortunately, my living room TV has only HDMI in, no DP. I tried the adaptor route, but it was horribly unstable… sometimes providing perfect signal, sometimes cutting to a black screen for a second or 2, every 5-10 seconds. Either way, VRR is wholly unsupported by the adaptor.
Unfortunately nothing that can be done about it unless someome creates an “illegal” kernel module which supports HDMI 2.1 despite the lack of license. That’s basically the only hope right now (and I’m all for it).
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Call me a Luddite, but I want to retain control over my updates and upgrades. I fear the day that Fedora becomes all atomic, all the time, which I can’t help but think is in the cards
What’s stopping you from turning updates off?
Then what would be the point of using an atomic version?
