Generated via https://github.com/ublue-os/countme
10k added users since last post. Here are upstream Fedora numbers only
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.
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".
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.
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.
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)
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)
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.
My son also picked Bazzite, which I hadn't heard of before. Unfortunately he didn't like it and it back to Windows again.
Any chance he's willing to try another distro? Linux Mint maybe?
I guess his son picked Bazzite for gaming. Linux Mint would not help with that since it's lagging behind in updates to drivers (Mesa, etc)
I did recommend Mint (although I use EndeavourOS myself), but he's not interested anymore.
It probably didn't help that I recently recommended him to buy Nvidia rather than AMD for a recent upgrade, because Nvidia had lower power requirements, and I don't his his PSU would have been able to handle the comparable AMD.
Surprised to see it at the bottom of the graph, but for anyone with a homelab uCore is a present from the ~~heavens~~ cloud!
Bazzite community really deserves tbe credit. Lots of work and great vibes all around!
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.
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. 👍 🎈
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.
Gaming will always take the lead—gamers are usually quick to chase the newest and shiniest things. Bluefin/Aurora adoption takes a bit longer because developers have to adjust their workflows, and there’s still this odd stigma around atomics. People assume you “can’t do things” on an atomic distro that you can on a traditional one, when in reality it’s mostly the same—just a slightly different approach in certain areas. Like with Nix, once it clicks, the pros far outweigh the cons. Personally, Bluefin has made me a more organised and efficient developer.
I can't upload the images for some reason but here's the current numbers for the ublue spins
Bluefin/Aurora adoption takes a bit longer because developers have to adjust their workflows, and there’s still this odd stigma around atomics.
Bluefin maintainer here, our target audience are container people, not people who want to adjust their workflows. The people we cater to don't have an opinion on "atomics" because no one's ever heard of that term. They've heard of docker or podman though.
Thanks Jorge the good work! I had been using silverblue for years and now I'm running machines with bazzite, bluefin, and ucore os. I really, really enjoy how easy to manage atomic distros are, and how they steer you towards better practices (in dev and sysadmin) by design. Thanks!
I actually just switched from Bazzite to Bluefin on my devices, even my gaming PC
Mostly because I wanted a more minimal/essential experience with less pre-installed packages
I'm sure I'm sacrificing a little gaming performance, but nothing noticeable by me so far
:shrug:
Joke's on you, Jorge. I use U-Blue just for the great general purpose desktop experience.
I honestly don't know what any of that means. I use Bazzite for automatic updates, Gnome extensions, Portal/ujust commands, update rollbacks, and game mode/Gamescope. It's simply the most usable distro I've found. Bazaar is a nice bonus too. Gnome Software has infuriated me for a long time and I feel like a crazy person because no one talks about it.
I used Nobara for about a month and was constantly pestered with update notifications. There were multiple updaters, I didn't really understand how to use either of them, and they required a lot of manual input. Eventually I tried to do something else while the updater was running and broke it.
He's not talking about Bazzite, though. Bluefin and Aurora are built from the same cloud tech as Bazzite, but are more focused towards devs, specifically devs who use containers.
once it clicks, the pros far outweigh the cons
I would love to hear a pro about atomic distros that isn't some vague platitude about security or stability. I have zero security/stability problems on my 'normal' Fedora.
As someone who has steadfastly avoided atomic distros because it sounds like an arseache and the last thing I want is more busywork. Convince me to switch!
IME the nicest part of Bazzite is not having to manage it. To that end, it works on my Steam Deck. But that's nothing to do with stability, as you say. In its own ways it's more annoying to use than a regular distro.
Clearly people are finding use for it, but I personally find those annoying aspects needless speedbumps in my own usage. Except for, again, on my Steam Deck.
Security isn’t really one, but saying don’t mention stability is proving the point—Fedora goes to ten, but Silverblue goes to eleven. That’s like saying, “tell me why Arch is good without mentioning the up-to-date packages.”
For Bluefin, it had everything I was doing with Fedora and then Silverblue OTB, and then some things I didn’t realize I needed. Yes, you can run a container-focused workflow in Fedora, but atomics keep you focused on good practices. With Fedora, my system became a bit of a dependency hell with Python and npm packages; now I have a container per project that can either have its own home dir or just seamlessly integrate with my main system.
I’m the whole IT and dev department for my company, so I would often have dedicated VMs etc. for each focus. Now everything is just seamlessly in my system.
It’s a bit of a reset for sure what isn't, but once it’s done you know you can just hit the power button and everything is there ready to go.
I’m getting into rolling my own spin at the moment for our thin clients as they only have 16GB of space, and that’s been really easy to set up. Now I have a trimmed-down Bluefin that comes packaged with Remmina, and I can deploy updates just by updating some files on GitHub. It's really not more busywork, pretty much the opposite for me, my root is basically /var and anything lower level I don't really need to be messing about with on a workstaiton. I have all my tools most out of the box. I have every language package esp elixir thanks to brew have you tried setting up iex on Ubuntu it's dog egg. On bluefin, I just brew install elixir.
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.
Gaming really benefits from up to date kernels. So Ubuntu just isn't a good choice for that.
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.
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