Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming • Hacker News Board

Re: Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming

#191

Post by parsimo2010 » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 5:11 AM UTC

dralley wrote: post #182

ffsm8 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mmh, you definitely misremember that > As much as I’d like this change to happen, it’s too soon. This change would kill off projects like Bazzite entirely right as Fedora is starting to make major headway in the gaming space. > I’m speaking as it’s founder, if this change is actually made as it is written the best option for us is to just go ahead and disband the project. Now, whenever you would've actually shut down…

What is the point of this line of questioning? They stated that the proposal as-written would make maintaining projects like Bazzite untenable. That's a valid thing to say and not that much of a "threat", but even if it were, most people involved here is effectively unpaid and can do whatever they want with their time.

The point is the original commenter said there’s a risk of these kinds of projects getting shut down. The creator chimed in and claimed there wasn’t much risk, and then someone posted comments from the same creator in the recent past talking about shutting the project down if an upstream change was made, validating the original comment and making the creator sound less valid.

Re: Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming

#192

Post by Gigachad » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 5:12 AM UTC

d3Xt3r wrote: post #129

ecshafer wrote: post #11

Outside of console or handheld like experiences, I am not sure what this distro gives that Mint, proprietary nvidia drivers and Steam dont give me? I basically just download windows games as external applicationd through steam and use proton. Though I suppose a one click like “run this as proton” and “run this in this proton environment” could be useful. But once you learn how to change targets its not super complica…

The entire point of Bazzite and other immutables is that you get a rock solid system that you never ever have to worry about breaking. Atomic updates means updates either apply or don't: there's no partial/fail state that can stop your PC from working. And in the rare event that an update has issues, you can instantly boot the previous two images, without typing any commands or using any fancy restore tools. And if y…

Atomic OSs are such a massive improvement. My experience with traditional Linux disros is the major upgrades failed as often as they worked. And always prompted me to merge config files or other insane stuff.

Bazzite just works like I’d expect an iPhone update or a Nintendo switch update to work.

Re: Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming

#193

Post by smolder » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 5:14 AM UTC

sbarre wrote: post #87

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anticheat doesn't need to be Linux compatible, it needs to move server-side.

Honest question: given all the companies and people working on anti-cheat systems for the last 20+ years of multiplayer video games, don't you think it would all be server-side if it could be, by now?

No, game companies are simply unwilling to pay for the talent and man hours that it takes to police their games for cheaters. Even when they are scanning your memory and filesystem they don't catch people running the latest rented cheat software.

Re: Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming

#194

Post by data-ottawa » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 5:15 AM UTC

haunter wrote: post #21

As much as I love Bazzite at end of the day it's still a custom distro and every single day there is a chance they just close the project down and move on. Happened to so many distros in the past, this is not out of question. I’m not saying “big corporate” distros are better but personally I'd rather stick to something more mainline. Hopefully Valve will release a general version of SteamOS with Steam Machine coming…

The nice thing about atomic distros is switching operating systems is as easy as typing 'ostree rebase', and registering a secure boot key.

So if Bazzite did go that way you could have fedora running in under an hour and with flatpak most thing will just work.

Re: Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming

#195

Post by Gigachad » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 5:15 AM UTC

SamDc73 wrote: post #56

I’ve been using it for a couple of months on my main dev machine (I don’t game much). It’s my first exposure to immutable systems. I love the idea, but honestly, juggling all these package managers gets annoying really fast; for now what I use is rpm-ostree (which you really shouldn’t touch unless you absolutely have to), Flatpak, Homebrew (some package are mac only or mac first), and distrobox (with arch). Every now…

I tried out Fedora Silverblue a while ago but found immutable OSs to be too inconvenient for development right now. I don’t think it’s an inherent flaw in the design, just all the dev tools are not set up to work with them.

For normal non dev usage it works great. On my steam deck I just get everything through Flatpak or steam and it just works.

Re: Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming

#196

Post by moltopoco » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 5:17 AM UTC

iLoveOncall wrote: post #13

While I understand the point of Linux distros overall, because they allow very specific usage like embedded, etc., I really don't get the point of those generalist but slightly specialized distributions focused on a single aspect that consumers use a computer for. I'm far from a Linux super-user, I only use it for my servers and Raspberry Pis, but even I would rather pick Debian and install the necessary stuff by han…

Bazzite is actually two levels of specialization away from Debian. Yes, it supports gaming better than other distros, especially on the current wave of handheld devices, and last I heard 2/3 of its users were using the handheld/HTPC version of Bazzite.

But it is also part of the Universal Blue family, which means that updates are atomic and can be rolled back. SteamOS, GNOME OS, and KDE Linux are all trying the atomic distro thing, but you don't get it out of the box on the mainstream distros (yet).

Re: Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming

#197

Post by vips7L » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 5:17 AM UTC

filleduchaos wrote: post #177

vips7L wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No consoles are an even worse solution. They’ve been through several generations of hardware iterations in the same amount of time.

What console line has had several generations of hardware iterations in the past decade? Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have all put out two generations at best, with plenty of games still shipping to the "old" generation even now.

They’ve all had 2-3 models in the last decade-ish. So that’s at least 1 time I would have had to have thrown everything away.

I miscounted though, I’ve been running the same OS since Windows 7. Probably 2014. I’ve been able to upgrade without having to throw away my entire operating system. Consoles aren’t a solution for longevity.

Re: Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming

#198

Post by Gigachad » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 5:17 AM UTC

periodjet wrote: post #74

Kinda seems like they’re relying a lot on all of the work Valve has done with Proton. Difficult to tell what Bazzite per se is bringing to the table.

Bazzite runs on my desktop while SteamOS does not.

Re: Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming

#199

Post by simoncion » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 5:18 AM UTC

subjectsigma wrote: post #49

Known Linux detractor, been sticking with Windows for years because I’ve had one too many ‘apt-get update’ brick my entire system. Decided to try out Bazzite specifically because of the immutable root partition thing. Overall I will say things are going like 80% smoothly but there are still some very Linux-y problems with it: The default grub has options for ostree:0 and ostree:1. 0 is the default and if you pick 0 i…

> ...drag-and-drop into Electron apps like Discord randomly fails, adding a new widget to the panel and suddenly it’s invisible, notifications appearing floating in the middle of the screen, removing an audio output (like unplugging headphones) seems to cause it to randomly choose an alternative, brightness on my monitor randomly shifts even after turning off DCC, GNOME apps have wonky themes, GNOME apps can’t detect light/dark mode so they just pick one… I could go on.

Hey, you can't possibly be having these problems! You're using a RedHat-derived distro! That means it uses Wayland! And the Wayland people have been telling us all for years that Wayland is good for daily use for everyone, and that it should be the default everywhere!

(Do note that the above is bitter, bitter sarcasm. I'm so, so disappointed by how the Wayland folks tend to use political pressure (rather than plain declarations of both capabilities and shortcomings) to muster up general support for their project.)

Re: Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming

#200

Post by thenthenthen » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 5:23 AM UTC

smolder wrote: post #193

sbarre wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: given all the companies and people working on anti-cheat systems for the last 20+ years of multiplayer video games, don't you think it would all be server-side if it could be, by now?

No, game companies are simply unwilling to pay for the talent and man hours that it takes to police their games for cheaters. Even when they are scanning your memory and filesystem they don't catch people running the latest rented cheat software.

Cheating is a social problem, not a technical issue. Just give the community dedicated server possibility (remember how back in the days games used to ship with dedicated server binaries?) and the community can police for free! Wow!