I....I don't understand. Why would you use Bazzite for software development and not gaming when user is not a gamer but just likes KDE?

you can literally put KDE on anything. Bazzite isn't friendly to installing anything that isn't a flatpak or whatever.

Just use a different distro. you don't need Bazzite. Switch them to like Fedora KDE or something.

And to people in this thread trying to push a camel through a pin hole...why? you're talking about setting up VMs and Distroboxs or just using flatpaks on Bazzite when the most painless solution is to just switch distros.

You picked the wrong distro, just switch them to something more appropriate for what they want to do.

I'm sorry to say this, but switching distros would be the better option. Bazzite locks down a lot of parts to ensure it works for games. There's ways around it, but the effort is so much more compared to any other popular distro. Plenty of distros either come with KDE or have a version that has KDE.

ujust setup-virtualization, distrbox ,homebrew are ur friends

On bazzite, your search order for apps/packages should be something like:

1. Flathub
2. ujust. This is more for general configs than specific apps, but take a look at what it offers.
3. Homebrew
4. Distrobox
5. Podman/Docker images
6. rpm-ostree

rpm-ostree is a last resort because it compromises the "atomic" principle of the system, but in a pinch it will give you access to anything you could get with dnf on a regular Fedora install.

Don't sleep on Distrobox. I have a Debian box so I can run Signal from its official repo and install Geany with both GUI and CLI support. Once you export applications from distrobox they behave like first-class citizens within your desktop.

I strongly recommend trying Distrobox. If you instead hop distros, you're going to find yourself in a similar situation eventually, where something is unreasonably difficult. That's why Distrobox exists; so you can get the best of all worlds.

Maybe rebase* to

https://docs.getaurora.dev/dx/aurora-dx-intro/

before nuking and going a classic Linux distro like others have suggested?

(Personally I'm not sure if I could go back to non-atomic, having the option to just boot the old image if after an update sleep mode is borked or something is just too good.)

• https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/Updates_Rollbacks_and_Rebasing/rebase_guide/

Actual professional software developer here with 10 years of experience. I work on linux for linux targets.

You wanna play around? Use whatever you want with the latest and greatest packages and tweaks, you will encounter issues, learn how to solve them, that is for fun.

You wanna work? Use a serious distro with proven stability, I use debian for example. Yes installing nvidia drivers is a touch less user friendly than on bazzite, but when I update I don't have surprises and when I boot up in the morning i don't have to wonder if today will be debugging and coding for my product or for the damn tool i am using to develop it.

Rebase to Aurora DX

Actual Developer and 20+ year Linux expert.

Don't use immutable distros for development work. Hands down.

If you're expecting the normal workflow of being able to install any tool or library you want without jumping through hoops...that ain't immutable distros.

If you're new to Linux as well, you're going to have a bad time.

Hey, something I can maybe help with.

Flatpak IDEs on the main system are not very useful for development. I got rid of mine entirely. I am developing firmware so it might be a bit different from your case, but what I did in have a single arch distrobox where I could install everything embedded-dev-related that had to work together (JLink, nordic tools, code-oss, etc...) on that. Then a few standalone debugging tools like STLink and Saelae logic2 could be installed to the home folder by default and Code could still find them from the distrobox (but they could be installed in the distrobox also). It doesn't even need to have an init system, but I ran into a few problems like having to manually chmod usb devices to give STLink access. Udev rules are also hit or miss in /etc/udev/rules.d, e.g. the STM udev rules just don't work, but nordic does.

High storage consumption is likely negligible (or at least nitpicky) since storage is so cheap nowadays. Your SSD doesn't care if it has 15GB or 20GB of system programs, especially when development codebases and SDKs, games, and media will likely make up 90% of space and almost never share libraries even on traditional systems.

there is a bazzite-dx image that may be more accommodating to software developers. though, bazzite and the bootc/atomic distros are more geared towards containerizing software as opposed to installing a bunch of packages to the system.

distrobox and devcontainers may work for their use case but they would likely need to learn more about what that would entail.

generally people seem to like the atomic distributions once they understand them. i know I prefer them.

I realise the distro is primarily meant for gamers and my friend is not much of a gamer themselves, however they told me they appreciate its friendlier KDE interface so I wish to avoid switching from this distro again if possible.

KDE lives on probably every single version of linux, most downloads have an option to have it as a pre-loaded download version (https://kubuntu.org/ , https://fedoraproject.org/kde/ , etc : https://community.kde.org/Distributions )

Even if your chosen version doesn't come with KDE, you can usually rip out the existing UI, and install KDE through the package manager.

Check out the 'dx' variants within universal blue It would be a good time to become familiar with rebasing.

I run bluefin-dx environment. (gnome).

There is a different learning curve to immutable/atomic systems and workflows. I don't think it's harder per say, it's just you'll have to be cognizant of the differences when searching for relative and relevant information when you come up against anything (like any opinionated *nix distro). Learn Homebrew, and Flatpack (and thier quarks running with atomic systems).

If they want to try new distros, maybe try Fedora with KDE? Installing the Nvidia drivers isn't too difficult.

For RTX 20 series and above, it's recommended to use Nvidia's open-source drivers. The instructions for how to switch on Fedora are here: https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA#Kernel_Open. Note that this is not Nouveau, which is a different open-source Nvidia driver not made by Nvidia themselves.

Are you me and your friend is also me?

This sounds a HELL of a lot like my scenario. I swapped to Bazzite from Mint on account of NVidia/gaming issues, and IMMEDIATELY noticed a big improvement, but I've had a handful of issues dealing with the flatpak of JetBrains Rider, and Firefox for that matter.

One thing I figured out early was to configure permissions to allow Rider to access the filesystem outside of its sandbox. That seems to be not something that flatpaks are setup for, by default.

More recently, I found that flatpak sandboxes don't inherit PATH or other global system variables. Which makes sense, but I haven't figured out the solution yet.

I would definitely take a shot at another KDE distro, cause I also have liked KDE/Plasma (that's what Bazzite runs, right?) more than I did Cinnamon, but I don't know anything about what Bazzite does to get great NVidia performance for gaming, or how I might replicate it on a non-immutable distro.

the distro is now facing problems installing certain programs for software development

What programs? What kind of errors?

I think there are issues related to the immutability of the distro

Unlikely. That only applies to the OS partition.

they told me they appreciate its friendlier KDE interface so I wish to avoid switching from this distro again if possible

Pretty much every distro will have KDE Plasma optional.

Thus I intend to ask here if it is possible to arrange something for easing development related tasks e.g. VM, distrobox etc. or whether it is easier to simply switch to some other compatible distro.

Hard to say without knowing what the problem is but switching distros rarely solves anything.