Decided to try out Bazzite on my desktop PC - Distrobox feels like magic (ttrpg.network)

submitted 7 months ago by AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network to c/linux@lemmy.world

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My distro of choice is Debian (I like their philosophy and it works great on my laptop) but I have an nVidia card in my desktop PC, and driver management was kind of annoying. Decided to try Kubuntu, which worked ok, but I didn't really love, and then I didn't update for a bit too long and had some repo issues trying to install updates. I didn't bother digging into what the fix would be, since I had been considering Bazzite for a while, as it has been talked about a lot for gaming.

Knowing literally nothing other than "Bazzite works out of the box with nVidia" I figured I'd give it a go. First off, I was surprised at the size of the image, and how long the install took. I did some reading about atomic distros and began to understand why things were set up that way. Seems pretty cool! I still don't love that as soon as I logged in on my fresh install, Steam opened up and asked for a log in, but that is what I signed up for with Bazzite, I guess. The nVidia drivers out of the box worked fantastic, as advertised, and I love a good KDE desktop, so it's not all bad.

Initially I was frustrated that some things weren't working in the flatpak versions of the app (couldn't get to my 3d printer using the .local address from the browser because flatpak has a bug with mDNS) and layering a package with rpm-ostree seems like overkill and not a good experience. Then I watched some videos on distrobox.

I can just distrobox create --image debian:latest debian-box and then use apt install for whatever packages I want, export them and use them as if they were natively installed on Bazzite??? And this works on any distro??? I have been using Linux exclusively for a few years (and on and off for more years), but I have been totally out of the loop with distrobox and atomic distros. This feels like the same level of magic I felt when I first dual booted Ubuntu back in the Windows Vista days. This seems like it will fix 99% of the issues I run into on Linux.

I know distrobox isn't exclusive to atomic distros, but I wouldn't have discovered it if not for Bazzite.

Anyway, none of this is really new info, but I just wanted to nerd out about it for a bit with people who will know what I'm talking about.

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[-] artyom@piefed.social 1 points 7 months ago

I still don't love that as soon as I logged in on my fresh install, Steam opened up and asked for a log in, but that is what I signed up for with Bazzite, I guess.

Yeah, it's a gaming distro and anyone who games will be using Steam, especially on Linux.

I do wish they would release a non-gaming version.

[-] dustyData@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Bluefin and Aurora are the original distros. Bazzite is a spin of bluefin.

[-] petrichornetrainfall@piefed.social 1 points 7 months ago

uBlue is the original or base distro. Aurora, bluefin, and bazzite are spins of uBlue.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 1 points 7 months ago

I also highly recommend looking into https://www.winboat.app/

It might be a pain to setup on Bazzite (it's probably better to just use ostree-rpm for the prerequisities), but it's exactly the same kind of magic, but for Windows apps!

[-] floofloof@lemmy.ca 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Is that a compatibility layer thing, or a full Windows VM (requiring a Windows license) integrated into the Linux desktop environment? Being able to run the Affinity suite without having to switch to Windows is appealing.

Edit: There's no GPU access so it's unlikely things like Affinity Photo would run well.

[-] StopSpazzing@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Still beta and its on the top of the todo list i hear.

[-] skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago

Linux noob here, I've been running Mint for about a year and constantly bitching about my Nvidia card's performance vs. Windows. I have the most updated closed source drivers installed, but cooking shaders on games still takes a half hour and many games run like trash even after precompiling said shaders. Space Marine 2 comes to mind, runs like butter on my Win10 partition but is basically unplayable on Linux.

Am I hearing that I just need to switch to Bazzite and this problem disappears?? Because on God I will do that literally tonight if that's true. I had been holding out for a new batch of Nvidia proprietary drivers to hit the scene or else just resigning myself to having to buy an AMD card.

I'd expect that Bazzite and Mint would use the same Nvidia proprietary drivers without much noticeable change in performance, but to be honest I don't know jack about shit about their back end behind the scenes processes so I could be wildly off base.

[-] Echolynx@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago

I am currently on Kubuntu but thinking of switching to Bazzite on my PC, which does have an Nvidia card.

How much of a pain is it to switch distros while redoing setups the least amount possible?

[-] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 month ago

It's going to be a total re-install, so that depends on what kind of setups you have. Not really different than switching to/from another distro.

Bazzite ships with KDE, so you could likely copy your themes and customizations for that pretty easily.

Bazzite is fedora based, and doesn't use apt, but you can use distrobox like I mentioned in my post to get familiar ubuntu packages, if there are things that you need to be not flatpaks. You also can probably copy config files from non-flatpak apps into the flatpaks for most apps. I did this with my Cura configs. It may depend on the application.

Basically, I just backed up my user folder (~/) and pulled any configs out of there. You could just back up ~/.config and ~/.local but with ubuntu there are likely some things in a snap directory and such. Mainly ~/.config and ~/.local, but some applications may use other directories, like snap, etc.

[-] TheMadCodger@piefed.social 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

If you're not primarily a gamer, Bazzite has a sister ~~Kinoite~~ Aurora (or Bluefin if you want Gnome, but you said you like KDE), which is the same underlying OS, but not preconfigured for gaming. I use Bluefin on my laptop and Bazzite on my steam deck, and yeah I love not having to think about it.

Also, have you read about rebasing?

edit: Kinoite and Silverblue are Fedora's default atomic distros. Aurora and Bluefin are the equivalents that are preconfigured out of the box for ease of use and related to Bazzite.

[-] eodur@piefed.social 1 points 7 months ago

I think Aurora is closer to Bazzite and Bluefin for KDE.

[-] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 1 points 7 months ago

I have heard of rebasing but I haven't dug into it. Sounds really cool!

I do use my PC for gaming, but Bazzite did come with a lot of other "gaming" software that I don't use, so it's good to know there is a lighter weight alternative that otherwise has the same benefits.

[-] HubertManne@piefed.social 1 points 7 months ago

Is there anything aurora/bluefin gives that bazzite does not or is it just that bazzite adds the proton stuff? Reason is I like being game ready but I don't mostly game with my laptop.

[-] TheMadCodger@piefed.social 1 points 7 months ago

Bazzite is more aggressive with kernal updates and comes with a ton of gaming options and packages preconfigured. Bluefin is a designed more for productivity, but you can still game on it. It's just not it's main focus.

But as long as you stay within the same DE, you can rebase from one to another.

this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2025

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