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?
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.
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.
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)
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)
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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)
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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.
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Surprised to see it at the bottom of the graph, but for anyone with a homelab uCore is a present from the
heavenscloud!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.
It works very nicely on my legion go.
Bazzite is not growing because it’s immutable.
Angry upvote.
They all are
But “being immutable” is not why Bazzite is growing.
?
Bazzite’s growth is not because it is immutable, Bazzite’s growth is because it offers gamers a straightforward onboarding process.
The upward trend is not because Bazzite is immutable.
👑 the goat is here
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.
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
- Bazzite: 26k users -> bazzite.json
- Bluefin: 1.9k users -> bluefin.json
- Bluefin LTS: 40 users -> bluefin-lts.json
- Aurora: 1.3k users -> aurora.json
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!
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.
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:
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.
Thank you for the informative response! :)
saying don’t mention stability is proving the point
My point is that stability is already 100% fine for me now. So saying you’ll make my already rock-solid experience somehow more stable is meaningless. As a power user for over a decade, I’ve personally experienced zero issues where I wished Fedora was somehow more stable. It’s like telling me that Silverblue connects to the internet - Like yes, I already have that.
From what I’m reading, it sounds like the singular ‘pro’ is being forced to do cleaner, more self-contained practices. I can totally see how that would be helpful for some people. But personally, I would genuinely despise that kind of restriction.
I’m admittedly the kind of person who hates being forced to do the ‘best practice’ thing. I’m genuinely happy that my Linux distro will me
rm -rfthe root partition (with an ‘are you sure’ prompt these days :) ). I’m happy that if I really want to purge the kernel package with dnf, then I can. I want (and kind of need) my freedom to make a mess, if I tell Linux to jump, it will goddamn jump, even if it’s a bad practice technically terrible decision. I have zero interest in going all around the houses just to do it the technically correct (and sometimes less-effort-in-the-long-run) way. If I ever want a clean plate, I can still spin up a container just like you’re saying.So I get the feeling that atomic is very much not for me, which is what I suspected :) Very glad that people like yourself find it an improvement, that’s what flavours are for!
Exactly that. It’s not the be all and end all for Linux, nothing ever will be and that’s OK. Some people have had a few issues, especially when Fedora was in the 30s. Just did a quick search, even this year some users reporting it borking itself. But like you, I have never had an issue, but when I deploy machines that are 100 miles from me, I don’t want to deal with that, same for my work machines.
Bazzite works really well for my living room PC, wife approved PS5 replacement. Again, for my personal gaming rig I don’t want to get home go to game and have to deal with some dependency issue. I put Bluefin on my field laptop because again I use it sporadically, and it’ll update on boot if it was cachyOS or workstation there’s a chance it could drift out of spec enough to bork.
So yeah I love the Atomics, but I was prob 90% the way there before Silverblue came about and 95% there when the Ublue stuff stated rolling out.
Like a lot of things Linux it’s not the future of Linux but its a future I think.
I don’t think I’ve even tinkered with Bazzite since installing it. It just works. You do have to get used to container workflows and using flathub but its a marginal amount of overhead for improved security. Bonus points: you can lazy install lots of apps with distrobox, for example you can install .deb files, .rpm files, pull from the AUR, its no biggy, and its all preconfigured and easy to setup.
It’s also nice to be able to rebase your distro whenever you want to try out different spins and features, makes inter-fedora atomic distro hopping easy without destroying your configs.
Thanks for the response, though up to this sentence I’m hearing extra busywork and slow/annoying containerising, in exchange for vague security platitude and a tool which I can already use.
It’s also nice to be able to rebase your distro whenever you want to try out different spins and features, makes inter-fedora atomic distro hopping easy without destroying your configs.
I’m interested by this. Is there a uniqueness to Atomic setups such that you can (more easily) keep your user partition, GNOME configs, etc. and swap out the Fedora distro underneath?
Yep, I can for example rebase from Bazzite to Secureblue and keep all of my configs intact for say, KDE. So if a project goes fubar you aren’t out of luck and need to reinstall and reconfig linux, its trivial to rebase/“swap distro”, its a single command that looks like this
rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-dx-nvidia:stableAll programs, files, configs, etc are intact in your home directory. I’ve swapped between user created spins for different DEs like Cosmic and so on, whats cool is its all preconfigured to run well under bazzites kernel. Image based upgrades are also very nice, theres inevitably config drift that messes with performance or updates can break your setup on other distros, image based means the devs tweak every interaction and push it all to you with the least effort possible on your part.
This is very cool, and I can suddenly see atomic being useful for certain circumstances. Won’t be using it for my personal computer main driver, but hopping/resetting this is easily attracts me so. Thank you!
rpm-ostree is pretty nifty in general, it functions like git so it reapplies each of your configs over what the devs do each time you upgrade, leading to as little config drift and broken upgrades as possible. each upgrade feels like a fresh install imo
I switched from Fedora KDE to Kinoite a few months ago. Both were 100% stable for me as well.
The main reason I switched to Kinoite is because I’m a digital hoarder and after 5 years or so all my systems are completely trashed with various libraries, 12 different PHP/.NET versions, custom builds and a bazillion Python packages.
In the end it always causes issues like my builds stop working because I have some ancient version of a library stashed away somewhere.
Immutable distros are really easy to return to “factory defaults”. It keeps a list of all the packages that are installed on the system and everything else now goes in Toolboxes, Distroboxes or Docker containers. If I mess up my C++ environment (again) I can just delete that toolbox and start from scratch.
I still manage to bloat my home directory but that is much easier to clean up than looking through all system files.
I switched to fedora for stability and pretty consistently each major update would break my computer. I switched to fedora silverblue and everything is so much simpler and upgrading is a breeze. A few times I have missed the simplicity of just installing random obscure software or toolkits for school but typically I can use containers and that also works nicely.
I also prefer using containers anyways because that aligns with how I mentally organize things. Flatpak has basically everything I need so that’s not a concern either.
Edit: I see you don’t benefit from stability, so don’t worry about that bit. It benefits me greatly though.
I use Aurora DX for my work box! But yeah all my personal PCs run Bazzite now.
I started on Bazzite but transitioned to Aurora for my personal PC and wife’s laptop. God I wish I could use it for work. I’m forced to use Windows or Mac.
Very fun, I’ve been rocking Fedora workstation for years. If Fedora could take off as the gaming distro that’d be great, I’ll get even more up-to-date top-notch graphics drivers without having to change distros
Neat!
I’ve been running Garuda on my main rig for a minute. I thought all would be good but some of my music production stuff has been a bit slow to catch up as far as updates in the AUR vs the official .deb releases (and I haven’t tinkered enough to just make that work myself).
Being able to install .deb otb seems nice; I was planning on running a new framework 12 laptop on it (which I dream of getting for a new performance rig for my music) but I may install it on my current performance rig to see how it runs.
How well does it play with nvidia? If it’s all good and I eventually switch on my main rig I’d love to be able to run a local GPU supported AI. I know that for nvidia I have to have drivers that support cuda stuff.
Nvidia open source drivers are working pretty good, I have no complaints. Local AI stuff can be a little annoying to setup as a beginner I bet, but if you run it through llama.cpp its smooth sailing. I recommend something like StabilityMatrix (app image) if you have no clue whats going on
You might want to check out distrobox. Nice way to access apps for other distros or package managers like they’re native.
I’m also on Garuda for my main box (Bazzite on the framework 13), and I have an Ubuntu distrobox for dev work with one dev project, another for general tools that are only released as .debs, one running fedora for things that “only support RHEL”, etc.
I’m using it with a 5070 ti and everything is smooth. I have been using ComfyUI to restore old photos so the AI aspect works well too
