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Relevant comment from some months ago [1]. Personally I find that sticking to distros backed by companies or very large communities is just easier in the long

Relevant comment from some months ago [1]. Personally I find that sticking to distros backed by companies or very large communities is just easier in the long term (Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/Arch). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46092225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46092225

jajuuka 8mo ago
On desktops and servers yeah. Bazzite was a bit of a special case as it was catered to handheld devices. So it did have that going for it. A one stop install that just supported everything on these devices from the start.
- opan 8mo ago
  I've been thinking we could eliminate a lot of niche specialized distros by replacing them with system configs for Guix System or NixOS. Maybe if you got Ansible involved it could work for Debian and Arch also. Set your default packages, custom kernel, whatever else in there. Everything needing a big brand, name, logo, website, and so on seems a bit excessive at times.
  - shantara 8mo ago
    Now it’s your responsibility to explain what any of these words mean to an average user who just wants to play their Steam games. Like it or not, brands have power. It’s been hard enough to convince people already willing to try Linux gaming to use one of the dedicated gaming distros, instead of waiting for when SteamOS is going to support their hardware.
  - plagiarist 8mo ago
    Bazzite is sortof in that category, though. Fedora atomic is a podman container image, and Bazzite is using that as FROM in their Containerfile. It's niche and specialized only to the extent that they're providing gaming specific setup (like Nvidia drivers). It's mostly a Fedora system. https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/blob/main/Containerfile https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/blob/main/Containerfile
- cobolexpert 8mo ago
  Maybe SteamOS will help with this!
  - ycombinatrix 8mo ago
    What do you mean? SteamOS is backed by a large company.
    - cobolexpert 8mo ago
      As it slowly starts working on another platforms, it can fill in Bazzite's role (a bit ironic I guess, given Bazzite is inspired on SteamOS)
      - ycombinatrix 8mo ago
        The fix for being held captive by a large company is not to hand yourself over to a different large company.
RandomGerm4n 8mo ago
Using Fedora Kinoite/Silverblue is not really an option if you are using an Nvidia GPU. With Bazzite, the driver is pre-installed and also signed directly with a Secure Boot Key that you can import when installing Bazzite. With normal Fedora Atomic, you have to install and sign the driver manually, and with some updates, the whole thing breaks again, so you have to fiddle around with it. In addition, Fedora Flatpak Remote has been removed, which is a “noobtrap” in normal Fedora Atomic. This allows you to install broken versions of browsers where the codecs are missing and videos don't work. In addition, Distrobox functions better than Toolbox, and in general, Bazzite's defaults are much more geared towards an immutable system. Silberblue/Kinoite's defaults are just like normal Fedora, and you have to layer dozens of things to achieve the same thing, whereas Bazzite is completely designed for a container workflow. Even if you ignore any gaming optimizations, etc., this alone makes it a significantly better option than the official Fedora Atomic images.

jajuuka 8mo ago

On desktops and servers yeah. Bazzite was a bit of a special case as it was catered to handheld devices. So it did have that going for it. A one stop install that just supported everything on these devices from the start.

opan 8mo ago
I've been thinking we could eliminate a lot of niche specialized distros by replacing them with system configs for Guix System or NixOS. Maybe if you got Ansible involved it could work for Debian and Arch also. Set your default packages, custom kernel, whatever else in there. Everything needing a big brand, name, logo, website, and so on seems a bit excessive at times.
- shantara 8mo ago
  Now it’s your responsibility to explain what any of these words mean to an average user who just wants to play their Steam games. Like it or not, brands have power. It’s been hard enough to convince people already willing to try Linux gaming to use one of the dedicated gaming distros, instead of waiting for when SteamOS is going to support their hardware.
- plagiarist 8mo ago
  Bazzite is sortof in that category, though. Fedora atomic is a podman container image, and Bazzite is using that as FROM in their Containerfile. It's niche and specialized only to the extent that they're providing gaming specific setup (like Nvidia drivers). It's mostly a Fedora system. https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/blob/main/Containerfile https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/blob/main/Containerfile
cobolexpert 8mo ago
Maybe SteamOS will help with this!
- ycombinatrix 8mo ago
  What do you mean? SteamOS is backed by a large company.
  - cobolexpert 8mo ago
    As it slowly starts working on another platforms, it can fill in Bazzite's role (a bit ironic I guess, given Bazzite is inspired on SteamOS)
    - ycombinatrix 8mo ago
      The fix for being held captive by a large company is not to hand yourself over to a different large company.

RandomGerm4n 8mo ago

Using Fedora Kinoite/Silverblue is not really an option if you are using an Nvidia GPU. With Bazzite, the driver is pre-installed and also signed directly with a Secure Boot Key that you can import when installing Bazzite. With normal Fedora Atomic, you have to install and sign the driver manually, and with some updates, the whole thing breaks again, so you have to fiddle around with it. In addition, Fedora Flatpak Remote has been removed, which is a “noobtrap” in normal Fedora Atomic. This allows you to install broken versions of browsers where the codecs are missing and videos don't work. In addition, Distrobox functions better than Toolbox, and in general, Bazzite's defaults are much more geared towards an immutable system. Silberblue/Kinoite's defaults are just like normal Fedora, and you have to layer dozens of things to achieve the same thing, whereas Bazzite is completely designed for a container workflow. Even if you ignore any gaming optimizations, etc., this alone makes it a significantly better option than the official Fedora Atomic images.