I’ve noticed a lot more talk about Bazzite lately and I’ve been wanting to at least give it a try as a daily driver. I’m not us gaming though I do dev work and what have you. For people on Bazzite that also do that, how is it? easy to set up for that like say using Doom Emacs or what have you?
its nice as a console. boots right into steam, start game with controller, bam. Since you can get Lutris games added to your steam library, there are so many game and platform options available.
bad: yeah you need to tinker around with a couple of games so they run right. Some only start with the specific proton version, some just take very long to start, some dont like the steam overlay, etc. But once you have them set up, its the best.
bazzite is an excellent all-round linux distro for contemporary spec computer (gpu, >=16GB ram)
i use it for rust and c# dev work using distrobox. all gui ide’s and tooling run in the containers with excellent performance
i also layer a handful of packages on the “immutable” or atomic base os for some carefully chosen tools i want. the base os is generally well fitted out
very highly recommend as daily dev driver and also gaming
Dev work in the uBlue family (and yes I use bazzite for dev) leans heavily on distrobox (think development containers). Took a bit to adapt but now I think it’s the ducks nuts. Because you decouple the dev environment from the main, immutable OS you get a lot of wins, especially if you work with a lot of different projects as you can setup distroboxes specifically for each. AI code that only works with specific drivers / libraries / python with instructions only for Ubuntu or Arch, no worries, make up a distrobox, when you’re finished archive it and spin it up later if needed. If you’re only working one project on say LTS or something it’s going to be much less of a win, but for the flexible developer it’s a godsend.
As to doom emacs or whatever, I have a post install script for distroboxes that sets up my preferred environment for the big 3 (Fedora, Arch, Ubuntu), it’s not hard. Very much a kill your darlings philosophy.
ETA Because of this workflow it really doesn’t matter what the host OS is, so it may as well be something I can game on, and I’m fond of the Fedora relative stability with sharp, but not bleeding edge.
For a “set it and forget it” gaming console experience? It is awesome. It feels like I already have a GabeCube under my TV (that I bought for probably half the price…). And when I have to do more complicated things than “run the update once a month”, I just ssh in from either my desktop or laptop.
But… it is an immutable/atomic distro. So if the packages you want to add are flatpaks or appimages? You are probably fine. Otherwise? You get into a mess where you are adding packages to your layers (?) and kinda feel like you are playing with fire. I did that to get iperf3 installed to test some networking upgrades and it was mostly painless but it was also a really bad experience versus sudo dnf install iperf3. And… even on machines where I spend 90% of my time ssh’ing into servers, I still tend to want to install a good amount of local packages as a developer.
So my suggestion would be to stick to Bazzite for gaming first platforms and continue to use whatever distro you like (Fedora for the win!) for “real” computers.
Also, if you aren’t as annoyed by atomic distros as I am, I would still be wary of Bazzite. They have a lot of different SKUs and I don’t care enough to try to parse what each one does. But the common use case is to basically treat a machine like a Steam Deck… which means you boot into Big Picture with essentially no login screens or a REALLY insecure pin code. And then you switch to desktop mode with a single click.
There are ways to harden that (and very much an argument of whether you need to harden a machine in your home). And Linux, generally, has very good protections by actually requiring auth for sudo. But I already feel sketchy that I am logged into Steam/GoG on a box with almost no protections. But I also live in an environment where I don’t have to worry about someone buying 10k in fortnite bucks on my TV.
Bazzite has a Desktop image explicitly to cover your last issue. The SKU picker has a “Do you want Steam Gaming Mode?” question and explains that it’s intended for less secure single user/HTPC setups. If you say no, you’ll get the standard Desktop image with a standard user login like any other distro.
You can use distrobox/distroshelf to set up a container with a regular distro and install packages in that instead of layering; if a package installs a GUI application you can export the application and it will show up in your applications menu.
And you can similarly do most/all of your dev work in a container that you spin up with a podman alias (fuck hashicorp with a rusty metal pole but damn if Vagrant wasn’t awesome). Hell, there are a lot of arguments that you should.
It inherently becomes a question of what your primary use case for a machine is and how often you spend fighting it to accomplish that. And, personally, I run Linux so I DON’T have to fight my OS. Which… is really weird when you think about it but holy crap Windows and Mac are annoying.
Immutable OSes are amazing for corporate environments and HTPC/Gaming computers are another solid use case. But if your primary focus is whether you can be a developer (as indicated by the doomemacs ask)… you are gonna be cranky.
Even Flatpaks get annoying sometimes during dev work. Yes I do need to talk to that device. Yes I know the risks. It’s ok. It’s just a microcontroller. Yes I know what I’m doing. It’s not going to hurt you. I wrote it!
Thank goodness for flatseal. If I were to do it again, I would probably do it the “old fashioned” way.
distroboxes are incredible and distrobox expose is legitimately the coolest thing I’ve seen in ages. I have protonge and proton tricks which every game uses installed in a distrobox, and via distrobox expose my host can use them without any any other setup. it’s awesome.
same thing goes for any of my dev tools. i was just shocked about the ability to expose commands and have it be seamless enough for games.
If IDEs from Flathub and CLI tools from Homebrew serve your needs, no further action is required. If deeper system integration is needed for VSCode (ie. devcontainers), Docker (ie. Podman is not sufficient), etc - then see below specialized images.
There is a whole Bazzite for Devs page that mentions Bazzite-DX for development to handle some things like devcontainers: https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite-dx
Their main website also says:
Running a game, a development environment, a container for your Jellyfin server, or a utility only available on the Arch User Repository? You can rest assured it works here. Bazzite is developed on Bazzite.
At the end of the day, its an immutable fedora distro. Which may serve your needs. or may not. And bazzite’s primary focus is on gaming. It will most likely work (given a few criteria), but it may not given that is not their primary focus.
Bluefin and Auroa are for you, changed how I program and organise, our you can make your own template and just pop everything you’re missing in the containerfile similar to how nix pkgs works
I have Bazzite on an HTPC. It’s Fedora but you can’t use DNF only Flatpak. I personally wouldn’t use Bazzite on my main PC. The gimmick with Bazzite is it’s ideal for entertainment appliances, it’s as close to SteamOS you can get forking Fedora Kinote.
Don’t agree with this. I do dev work in bazzite without any issues. Just spin a distrobox and that’s it. Also it’s better that usual dev environments, just like a python env is better than using native os python.
Not true.
I can even develop Linux device drivers on it after figuring out modules signing. Basic stuff if you ask me.
Bazzite is as good for developers as any other distro.
I initially installed Bazzite when switching to Linux, but the development experience made me switch to Kubuntu after a few days. I’ve had various problems with development tools which probably related to Bazzite’s immutability. For example I couldn’t get Godot to connect with a code editor. I’m sure there were solutions to those problems, but I haven’t regretted switching. Development works great now and gaming feels just as good to me as it did on Bazzite.
Look up Bazzite DX. Its a developers oriented version. Other than that, distrobox is amazing for creating containers for your projects, allowing you to have a sane and stable dev environment
Bazzite comes with no dev tools pre-installed and a lot of gaming-related stuff.
Of course you can add what you need through flatpaks, containers or image layering, but why not choose a distro aimed at dev work in the first place?
I’ve noticed a lot more talk about Bazzite lately and I’ve been wanting to at least give it a try as a daily driver. I’m not us gaming though I do dev work and what have you. For people on Bazzite that also do that, how is it? easy to set up for that like say using Doom Emacs or what have you?
its nice as a console. boots right into steam, start game with controller, bam. Since you can get Lutris games added to your steam library, there are so many game and platform options available.
bad: yeah you need to tinker around with a couple of games so they run right. Some only start with the specific proton version, some just take very long to start, some dont like the steam overlay, etc. But once you have them set up, its the best.
bazzite is an excellent all-round linux distro for contemporary spec computer (gpu, >=16GB ram)
i use it for rust and c# dev work using distrobox. all gui ide’s and tooling run in the containers with excellent performance
i also layer a handful of packages on the “immutable” or atomic base os for some carefully chosen tools i want. the base os is generally well fitted out
very highly recommend as daily dev driver and also gaming
Dev work in the uBlue family (and yes I use bazzite for dev) leans heavily on distrobox (think development containers). Took a bit to adapt but now I think it’s the ducks nuts. Because you decouple the dev environment from the main, immutable OS you get a lot of wins, especially if you work with a lot of different projects as you can setup distroboxes specifically for each. AI code that only works with specific drivers / libraries / python with instructions only for Ubuntu or Arch, no worries, make up a distrobox, when you’re finished archive it and spin it up later if needed. If you’re only working one project on say LTS or something it’s going to be much less of a win, but for the flexible developer it’s a godsend.
As to doom emacs or whatever, I have a post install script for distroboxes that sets up my preferred environment for the big 3 (Fedora, Arch, Ubuntu), it’s not hard. Very much a kill your darlings philosophy.
ETA Because of this workflow it really doesn’t matter what the host OS is, so it may as well be something I can game on, and I’m fond of the Fedora relative stability with sharp, but not bleeding edge.
I use Bazzite for my HTPC (AMD NUC).
For a “set it and forget it” gaming console experience? It is awesome. It feels like I already have a GabeCube under my TV (that I bought for probably half the price…). And when I have to do more complicated things than “run the update once a month”, I just ssh in from either my desktop or laptop.
But… it is an immutable/atomic distro. So if the packages you want to add are flatpaks or appimages? You are probably fine. Otherwise? You get into a mess where you are adding packages to your layers (?) and kinda feel like you are playing with fire. I did that to get iperf3 installed to test some networking upgrades and it was mostly painless but it was also a really bad experience versus
sudo dnf install iperf3. And… even on machines where I spend 90% of my time ssh’ing into servers, I still tend to want to install a good amount of local packages as a developer.So my suggestion would be to stick to Bazzite for gaming first platforms and continue to use whatever distro you like (Fedora for the win!) for “real” computers.
Also, if you aren’t as annoyed by atomic distros as I am, I would still be wary of Bazzite. They have a lot of different SKUs and I don’t care enough to try to parse what each one does. But the common use case is to basically treat a machine like a Steam Deck… which means you boot into Big Picture with essentially no login screens or a REALLY insecure pin code. And then you switch to desktop mode with a single click.
There are ways to harden that (and very much an argument of whether you need to harden a machine in your home). And Linux, generally, has very good protections by actually requiring auth for
sudo. But I already feel sketchy that I am logged into Steam/GoG on a box with almost no protections. But I also live in an environment where I don’t have to worry about someone buying 10k in fortnite bucks on my TV.Bazzite has a Desktop image explicitly to cover your last issue. The SKU picker has a “Do you want Steam Gaming Mode?” question and explains that it’s intended for less secure single user/HTPC setups. If you say no, you’ll get the standard Desktop image with a standard user login like any other distro.
You can use distrobox/distroshelf to set up a container with a regular distro and install packages in that instead of layering; if a package installs a GUI application you can export the application and it will show up in your applications menu.
And you can similarly do most/all of your dev work in a container that you spin up with a
podmanalias (fuck hashicorp with a rusty metal pole but damn if Vagrant wasn’t awesome). Hell, there are a lot of arguments that you should.It inherently becomes a question of what your primary use case for a machine is and how often you spend fighting it to accomplish that. And, personally, I run Linux so I DON’T have to fight my OS. Which… is really weird when you think about it but holy crap Windows and Mac are annoying.
Immutable OSes are amazing for corporate environments and HTPC/Gaming computers are another solid use case. But if your primary focus is whether you can be a developer (as indicated by the doomemacs ask)… you are gonna be cranky.
Even Flatpaks get annoying sometimes during dev work. Yes I do need to talk to that device. Yes I know the risks. It’s ok. It’s just a microcontroller. Yes I know what I’m doing. It’s not going to hurt you. I wrote it!
Thank goodness for flatseal. If I were to do it again, I would probably do it the “old fashioned” way.
The solution for packages is do it in a container, that way its easy and doesnt involve layering more stuff.
distroboxes are incredible and distrobox expose is legitimately the coolest thing I’ve seen in ages. I have protonge and proton tricks which every game uses installed in a distrobox, and via distrobox expose my host can use them without any any other setup. it’s awesome.
same thing goes for any of my dev tools. i was just shocked about the ability to expose commands and have it be seamless enough for games.
Bazzite has a developer version. Not sure what the differences are though. It’s on their site.
https://docs.bazzite.gg/Dev/
There is a whole Bazzite for Devs page that mentions Bazzite-DX for development to handle some things like devcontainers: https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite-dx
Their main website also says:
At the end of the day, its an immutable fedora distro. Which may serve your needs. or may not. And bazzite’s primary focus is on gaming. It will most likely work (given a few criteria), but it may not given that is not their primary focus.
Bazzite is part of the Universal Blue project, which is basically three distros based on Fedora Silverblue.
Bazzite - gaming focus Aurora - KDE desktop Bluefin - Gnome desktop
Look up the universal blue site and you’ll see more about them.
See also:
Bluefin and Auroa are for you, changed how I program and organise, our you can make your own template and just pop everything you’re missing in the containerfile similar to how nix pkgs works
I’m a huge fan of Aurora, the least popular ublue desktop OS. Bazzite is great, too. But I prefer Aurora.
Hell, even my wife uses it and has no complaints.
I use Bazzite for devwork too, I do use distrobox though which allows me to get proper dependencies without layering more onto the system image.
I have Bazzite on an HTPC. It’s Fedora but you can’t use DNF only Flatpak. I personally wouldn’t use Bazzite on my main PC. The gimmick with Bazzite is it’s ideal for entertainment appliances, it’s as close to SteamOS you can get forking Fedora Kinote.
If you don’t mind a learning
curvecliff, NixOS is great for development, and I haven’t had any issues gaming either.Recommending someone who’s curious about Bazzite to maybe check out NixOS instead is… Certainly something lol
Bazzite isn’t really for you. Bazzite is a gaming 1st distro. You probably want a more normal general use distro.
Don’t agree with this. I do dev work in bazzite without any issues. Just spin a distrobox and that’s it. Also it’s better that usual dev environments, just like a python env is better than using native os python.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. There’s better distros out there.
Especially when you have no interest in gaming.
If you have no interest in gaming and want a modern development environment there’s Aurora/Bluefin. Bazzite is just those with gaming bits added on.
You sure?
Not true. I can even develop Linux device drivers on it after figuring out modules signing. Basic stuff if you ask me. Bazzite is as good for developers as any other distro.
We have Linuxbrew. Homebrew but for Linux. Battletested by countless devs previously using MacOS.
Come join us.
I initially installed Bazzite when switching to Linux, but the development experience made me switch to Kubuntu after a few days. I’ve had various problems with development tools which probably related to Bazzite’s immutability. For example I couldn’t get Godot to connect with a code editor. I’m sure there were solutions to those problems, but I haven’t regretted switching. Development works great now and gaming feels just as good to me as it did on Bazzite.
Look up Bazzite DX. Its a developers oriented version. Other than that, distrobox is amazing for creating containers for your projects, allowing you to have a sane and stable dev environment
Bazzite comes with no dev tools pre-installed and a lot of gaming-related stuff.
Of course you can add what you need through flatpaks, containers or image layering, but why not choose a distro aimed at dev work in the first place?
deleted by creator