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Bazzite – a SteamOS-like OCI image for desktop, living room, and handheld PCs
- evolve2k 3y agoWhat’s the motivation for the creators of this? And who’s backing it? Doesn’t feel like a weekend hobby project but rather a strategic open source play of some sort. Maybe something Nvidia related?
- brirec 3y agoIt’s a variant of Universal Blue (https://universal-blue.org https://universal-blue.org)
- KyleGospo 3y agoHi, I'm the original creator of this project. I'm happy to say the motivation is purely organic, we've no backing and have never received donations of any kind, project is totally out of pocket. Originally I wanted something akin to SteamOS that allowed packages to be installed and maintained through updates, and knew Fedora could offer that after using Silverblue for about a year, and it just kept evolving and growing from there. We just launched HDR in testing, and are working on custom kernel signing so we can move that to stable without breaking secure boot support. If you want to support us for the time being, all I can ask is that you give it a try and report any bugs you may find to us. The more users the better!
- janice1999 3y agoWhen you say "we" do you mean other members of the Fedora community? Do any of you work at RedHat? Just wondering how you got a complex project like this up and running.
- KyleGospo 3y ago"We" is myself and two others that call ourselves maintainers, and the group at Universal Blue who brought us into their circle and shared knowledge. My personal repo at https://GitHub.com/KyleGospo/Bazzite https://GitHub.com/KyleGospo/Bazzite is a time capsule of the project at it's beginning when it was only me. Universal blue has a ton of different people contributing to it, but there's no corporate backing there either.
- janice1999 3y agoThanks for the info. Looks really interesting.
- bsimpson 3y agoThat explains why the name seems so off brand for Universal Blue.
- ParetoOptimal 3y agoDo you know of NixOS and jovian NixOS? Did you consider either of those? I may compare them in detail in the future, any thoughts on how they compare?
- aliasxneo 3y agoSimilar premise, but not as technically reproducible. You can create and manage your own custom images using the blue-os build systems, it's dead simple. Basically you're just writing a Dockerfile. Most of the filesystem is read-only like NixOS, but it acts like a traditional Linux system with FHS support. It's that last part that made me switch to it from NixOS. I was tired of random things not working because of Nix's opinions on how things should work. I run Bluefin Linux with Fleek and get all the benefits I liked about Nix with none of the nonsense.
- ParetoOptimal 3y agoThanks for the detailed response. I'll have to take a look.
- KyleGospo 3y agoI'm not well versed in NixOS, but the team over at Jovian are all very helpful and are running a great project.
- ParetoOptimal 3y agoNo problem, thanks for the response! You have a very impressive project as well. Even if I don't switch there is a ton of generally useful things to learn from.
- attentive 3y agoHi, it's probably not your focus, but since you have Nvidia specific flavors, it would be great if browsers had hardware video decoding working. Either Firefox or chromium/brave. I did a fair bit of distrohopping and yet to find a distro doing that easily for nvidia native drivers.
- KyleGospo 3y agoThis should be working on AMD, Nvidia, and Intel. At most you may need to make minor configuration changes which we document in our wiki.
- attentive 3y agoThat was my hope but it doesn't work on bazzite-gnome-nvidia. I believe I tried bazzite-nvidia as well but it's been a while. Mind pointing me to a relevant doc? - it's not googleable.
- KyleGospo 3y agohttps://universal-blue.org/images/nvidia/#video-playback https://universal-blue.org/images/nvidia/#video-playback
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- T3RMINATED 3y ago[dead]
- cassianoleal 3y agoI tried this months ago when I was building a gaming rig as it looked like a very interesting option. I ran into a bunch of problems and after maybe 6 or 7 failed attempts I gave up and now I’ve settled with Debian on it (https://blog.c10l.cc/09122023-debian-gaming https://blog.c10l.cc/09122023-debian-gaming). I’d be willing to give Bazzite another go and see if it has fixed whatever many issues I had though. There used to be one showstopper limitation (for me): it didn’t support dual/multi-booting. Does anyone know if that’s changed?
- brirec 3y agoWhat’s with the 0 in the title?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- freetonik 3y agoSlightly related, but just today I discovered this SteamOS redistribution for generic machines (as long as they don’t have Nvidia graphics): https://github.com/HoloISO/holoiso https://github.com/HoloISO/holoiso
- dicknuckle 3y agohttps://chimeraos.org/ https://chimeraos.org/ I've been using this one, it updates the system atomically.
- 542458 3y agoOkay, so I read that page and I understand that nvidia graphics are very much a no-go for that distribution. I’m just wondering why? Full disclosure, I know very little about the finer points of GPU compatibility on Linux, but why isn’t it just a matter of installing nvidia’s closed source packages?
- SushiHippie 3y agoIIUC As the SteamDeck does only use AMD GPUs they have no incentive to support their UI on Nvidia GPUs.
- scheeseman486 3y agoGamescope leans on Wayland features that the Nvidia proprietary driver either doesn't have support for or only preliminary support. It's on Nvidia to catch up. It's not about incentives for Valve, they can't change the driver themselves. Proton has received patches for Nvidia support in particular, some from Nvidia themselves.
- cassianoleal 3y ago> s not about incentives for Valve, they can't change the driver themselves. Sure they can. Perhaps not the proprietary drivers but they could contribute to the open source ones and bring them up to speed. I bet they won’t do that though. It’s probably a massive amount of work and they have no … incentives to do it.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> Bazzite is an OCI image that serves as an alternative operating system for the Steam Deck I'm not quite following - this is a host OS that runs things in containers, or the OS inside a container?
- jcastro 3y agoThe OS is delivered to you via a container (via the github registry), but can also run things in containers. The OS itself is run on the bare metal.
- gclawes 3y agoFedora's OSTree recently-ish started supporting using OCI containers as the content-addressed image backend in addition to their original git-like one: https://coreos.github.io/rpm-ostree/container/ https://coreos.github.io/rpm-ostree/container/ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/OstreeNativeContainerStable https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/OstreeNativeContainer...
- curt15 3y agoAre OCI images content-addressed?
- justincormack 3y agoYes
- pixelatedindex 3y agoWhat does content-addressed mean?
- gclawes 3y agoThe identifier for the content (image layers + manifest) is the hash of the content, and the has serves as an "address", the registry repo + tag is basically a pointer to a hash.
- sapphicsnail 3y agoI'm competing with this for the attention of my girlfriend and losing.
- johnchristopher 3y agoOooh, looks cool ! I was just googling for something like "pc with steamdeck like specs" because I don't need the portability, I can't stand fan noise but I'd like Steam's ease of use. Now there is a path to a "normal"/quiet/dedicated PC to easily run games. But I suppose there won't be optimizations for any combinations of GPU/CPU/RAM like Valve and AMD do for the Steamdeck ? Also: > - Comes with patches from SteamOS BTRFS for full BTRFS support for the SD card by default. Interesting, what advantages does BTRFS bring in gaming/steamdeck scenarios ? edit: juste read on https://gitlab.com/popsulfr/steamos-btrfs https://gitlab.com/popsulfr/steamos-btrfs: > Btrfs with its transparent compression and deduplication capabilities can achieve impressive storage gains but also improve loading times because of less data being read. It also supports instant snapshotting which is very useful to roll back to a previous state. I guess it's for easier rollbacks on the system and maybe rollback different versions of the same game ?
- KyleGospo 3y agoFedora actually defaults to BTRFS, in the case of SteamOS the system is BTRFS out of the box, and only home and the SD card are ext4. Main benefits are compression, and increased read speeds from compressed drives, especially from the MicroSD. BTRFS de-duplication also solves the issue of wine prefixes with similar dependencies taking up more space than needed.
- xvector 3y agoWhy is it not the default? Compatibility issues with Windows games somehow?
- xyproto 3y agoBTRFS is probably mature and stable by now, but it's been a rocky road with several premature declarations of maturity.
- KyleGospo 3y agoI can only speculate Valve's reasoning, but there are a very select few games that require actual case folding and not the simulated case folding that wine offers. I know of literally only one.
- freedomben 3y agoGlad to see this finally up here. I posted it a couple weeks ago and was shocked that I hadn't heard of it sooner. I expected it to rocket to the top, but instead it just languished (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38642298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38642298). I've been blown away by Bazzite. I haven't yet (so far at least) run into any downsides of being on Bazzite instead of SteamOS, yet have had numerous upsides. I've wanted my Decks to be on my tailnet for a long time, but that was not an easy proposition. There's numerous packages that don't flatpak well that I've wanted to install into my base OS but haven't been able to until now! An example, I use Remote Play to run the games on my beastly desktop while viewing them on my TV. Something I routinely do is SSH into the host machine and run htop in one tmux pane and nvtop (for my AMD card, yes it works great with AMD now!) in another pane. To me this feels like the difference between driving with a speedometer and tachometer vs. driving without. Such a simple thing, so hard to do with Steam OS, yet so easy with Bazzite.
- ParetoOptimal 3y agoI also have my steam deck on my tailnet via `services.tailscale.enable = true` on NixOS. I might have to do a comparison of NixOS and bazzite since bazzite has me curious.
- Cloudef 3y agoHere is my "steamdeck os" https://github.com/Cloudef/nixos-flake/blob/master/modules/steamdeck-experience.nix https://github.com/Cloudef/nixos-flake/blob/master/modules/s...
- bsimpson 3y agoextest is in a nixpkgs PR and SteamOS is packaged by Jovian. Any reason you're doing it all manually?
- sweeter 3y agoJovianOS is also similar to Bazzite, ChimeraOS and SteamOS but its based on Nix.
- westurner 3y agoTIL about various things for rpm-ostree distros: gnome-randr-rust: https://github.com/maxwellainatchi/gnome-randr-rust https://github.com/maxwellainatchi/gnome-randr-rust : > `xrandr` for Gnome/wayland, on distros that don't support `wlr-randr` Kernel-fsync: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/sentry/kernel-fsync/ https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/sentry/kernel-fsync/ gnome-vrr: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/kylegospo/gnome-vrr/ https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/kylegospo/gnome-vrr/ : gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['variable-refresh-rate']" obs-vkcapture: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/kylegospo/obs-vkcapture/ https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/kylegospo/obs-vkcapt... system76-scheduler: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/kylegospo/system76-scheduler/ https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/kylegospo/system76-s...
- sebazzz 3y agoHow does this compare to Winesapos?
- attentive 3y ago10Gb of "everything is a Flatpak" isn't exciting.
- KyleGospo 3y agoThe only flatpaks here are ones installed by the user after setup, or ones installed by Fedora (Firefox for instance, you don't want your browser updating only when your OS does). Steam, gamescope, and nearly every other listed feature are native packages.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- attentive 3y agoBrand new first boot Bazzite Gnome. That's 7Gb of flatpaks. $ flatpak list --columns=size,name | grep MB| grep -Po '\d+\.\d+'| paste -sd+ | bc 7025.2 $ flatpak list --columns=size,name | wc -l 54 $ df -h / Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda3 232G 15G 214G 7% /
- nicknamename 3y agoThe GNOME images have more Flatpaks preinstalled than the KDE Plasma images currently. KDE image Flatpaks: https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/blob/main/system_files/desktop/kinoite/usr/share/ublue-os/bazzite/flatpak/install https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/blob/main/system_files/d... vs. GNOME image Flatpaks: https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/blob/main/system_files/desktop/silverblue/usr/share/ublue-os/bazzite/flatpak/install https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/blob/main/system_files/d... If you're looking to save a few gigabytes, then I suggest using the KDE variants.
- westurner 3y agoWhat could be merged into Fedora and e.g. Gnome?
- stavros 3y agoThis looks interesting, but what do I lose by switching to it? Does the Steam interface still work? The hardware? The games?
- JustinGarrison 3y agoYep! Everything works as it does with SteamOS but better (more fixes) and a better desktop environment. Installation is pretty quick too! Here’s a video I made showing the process https://youtu.be/doQW1FyAISQ https://youtu.be/doQW1FyAISQ
- stavros 3y agoThis is great, thank you!
- tavavex 3y agoMakes me wonder - how viable is it to install actual SteamOS on devices that aren't the Steam Deck (and use the Deck UI and all)? Are there any mods or something to make that work?
- bsimpson 3y agoThe Deck UI is two parts: the Steam client in Big Picture Mode (which is most of the Steam Deck UI and runs on Mac and Windows as well), and the gamescope compositor. Gamescope is open source and Steam is available for download on Linux. You could run any of the replacement Steam Deck OSes (Jovian/NixOS, Bazzite, Chimera...) and get a UI that's identical to what's on the Steam Deck, down to the "Deck Verified" badges and sidebar sliders that may not work on your machine. They're all essentially running the Steam Deck UI atop whatever distribution each one chose. I'm not sure you'd want the literal Steam Deck image on your machine. It's an older kernel with a bunch of patches that expect the SD's hardware. But if you want to explore that more, there was an excellent article on the front page this morning about building your own clone of Steam OS.
- cyanwave 3y agoYou seem knowledgeable, so a casual question. I installed bazzite :testing fork on the steamdeck oled and wifi speeds were absolutely terrible. Like 100mbit max where as I see 500-600 on stock. Do you have a perspective on the driver layer here? I’m assuming bazzite is using something out dated or maybe didn’t have hardware acceleration on wifi packets etc
- erulabs 3y agoLove it! Living-room media servers will be the Trojan horse that brings self-hosting back into existence, and will inevitably transform the internet back into a more peer-to-peer oriented existence. Once most folks have symmetrical connections and powerful Linux systems, it’s only a software problem keeping people from using the internet as it was intended, equally publishers as they are consumers.
- heyoni 3y agoI love this take and absolutely hate what the centralized internet has become. My god, even basic searches don’t work on major platforms.
- Takennickname 3y agoNever thought about it like that. Very possible.
- sirspacey 3y agoThe Roku of the internet, I love this idea so much.
- mikepurvis 3y agoI've tried at several points to roll my own media center PC/server setup and it's always been a very far cry from what the fire stick does for like a tenth the price and zero effort. So yeah, I'm very keen for something plug and play in this space.
- stavros 3y agoThis is probably a bit too custom, but I did the same, and it works really well after it's set up. Plex/Jellyfin just works for everyone (you do need to use the app, because I disabled transcoding). I have a repo that uses a Harbormaster (a Comppse-based deployment tool I wrote, https://harbormaster.readthedocs.io/ https://harbormaster.readthedocs.io/) to set everything up and keep it up to date, so all you need to do is run the Harbormaster container, point it to the above repo config, and the apps will run. Then, you just need to configure each app, but the directories will be set up properly. It's a bit of work, but probably not as intimidating as it sounds. https://github.com/skorokithakis/mediacenter-in-a-box/ https://github.com/skorokithakis/mediacenter-in-a-box/
- Apocryphon 3y agoBehold: Bazzite on the trash can Mac Pro! https://youtu.be/te1AEj_RA64 https://youtu.be/te1AEj_RA64
- figmert 3y agoAny one know if there is a reason not to install this on my SD? The Waydroid installation is very interesting. How well does it work? Would you consider this a bit bloated?
- SubiculumCode 3y agoI decided to ditch windows. Installed Budgie, and I installed Steam. What is the advantage of Steam OS or Bazzite over Ubuntu variant + Steam?
- bsimpson 3y agoGamescope, the compositor used on the Steam Deck variants, is optimized for gaming. It can do things like integer scaling, so your game is always fullscreen regardless of what resolution it renders to.
- jabbequbs 3y agoWhat does OCI mean in this context? My best guess is Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, but that doesn't seem right...
- mkotowski 3y agoI guess this refers to OCI image format from Open Container Initiative: https://opencontainers.org/ https://opencontainers.org/ Here is Containerfile from the repo: https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/blob/main/Containerfile https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/blob/main/Containerfile
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tmountain 3y agoIt refers to the OCI image format. Think of git for your base operating system. The host system is immutable with full support for easy rollbacks. Stable installs can be pinned permanently for maximum stability. Software installs happen in user space, typically via flatpack and distrobox, so you can reach for any packages you want with minimal fuss. It’s pretty great.
- puchatek 3y agoCould this replace a media center like Kodi for playing music and movies or is it just for games?
- Geisterde 3y agoIll take this as an opportunity to explore fedora (i guess?), ive been using ubuntu for ~2 years and am ready for a change. This looks like it has a lot of what I would want built in, im not tech savvy enough to get some of this stuff working.
- deng 3y agoCan anyone report how well this would work on a pure touch device (tablet)? I have a Thinkpad X1 Tablet (gen3) and am still looking for the best Linux distribution to work with it as a plain tablet, without the keyboard attached. Plain Fedora has some very annoying bugs with the on-screen keyboard. Installing the Phosh extension fixed most of these, but this introduces other annoying things that make it tedious to use. Also, the disk encryption still requires to attach a keyboard at boot, since Grub does not feature an on-screen keyboard, so I'm wondering how this was solved here.
- robinwassen 3y agoNot sure if you are to do any super sensitive work on the tablet or not. But a home folder encryption rather than full disk might solve the touch input problem.
- KyleGospo 3y agoWe're working on porting unl0kr from postmarketOS to Fedora to allow for LUKS on the Steam Deck without an external keyboard, that should also work well for a tablet use case once it's done.
- Kellyhnsn 3y agoErulabs is all about Bazzite shaking things up and bringing back the good old peer-to-peer days of the internet - it's like a digital revolution waiting to happen. And heyoni? Totally feels the pain of how clunky and centralized the web's gotten lately, especially when you can't even get a straight answer from a simple search. Then there's mikepurvis, who's been down the DIY media center road and found it's not all it's cracked up to be, making the dream of a simple, plug-and-play system super appealing.
- felbane 3y agoI would love to hear how people are building HTPC/media streaming setups using this kind of stack in 2024. I am very interested in replacing all my aging fire sticks with something custom built. Was considering just doing some RPi based dongles on bedroom TVs and a higher spec gaming PC with Steam Big Picture on the main TV, but with all the innovation recently I feel a bit of choice paralysis. Anyone willing to share what their setup looks like, or what they're planning to do in the coming year?
- CharlesW 3y agoI did the HTPC thing for many years. Finally, I just got tired of the noise, heat, and occasional maintenance requirements of having a PC in the media room. My recommendation: Get a tiny, quiet, privacy-respecting client (e.g. Apple TV) and put the media on a NAS that lives elsewhere. Depending on your preferred client UX, you may (Plex) or may not (Infuse) need a separate app to serve the media.