Bazzite is seeing an insane amount of growth right now
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Can someone ELI5 why Bazzite is so popular? I'm a Linux longtimer (since 2006!) but never heard of Bazzite.
Along with what others have said about it being a great ootb experience for anyone looking to play games. It is also immutable so you can't fuck it up too easily. And the very popular YouTube channel gamers nexus has started doing their Linux testing exclusively on bazzite. I think the latter is playing one of the biggest parts, while the previous two points are specifically why they choose bazzite.
As I understand it, it's atomic Fedora with virtually everything you might need to game on Linux baked in (no need for layering) and more or less preconfigured. Off the top of my head, proprietary Nvidia drivers, Steam, Lutris, Hero launcher, support for Xbox One wireless controller dongle, plus a number of useful tools like Tailscale. An app with a catered list of gaming-oriented flatpacks, one click updating. Also a lot of effort into replicating the Steam Deck experience for handheld devices or devices connected to a TV.
I believe they also do Aurora, which is similarly geared toward workstations with a ton of container-related tools like distro box readily available to easily use containers instead of layering where possible. The same tools may be available in Bazzite but I never checked. I have Aurora on my laptop and use a dedicated gaming device with Bazzite.
I'm not a Linux veteran by any means but I was hopping distros looking for something I could install on my family's computers I tried atomic Fedora. When using it for myself, I became frustrated with the number of tools I use that needed to be layered or run in a container and eventually found myself on Bazzite and Aurora. So far so good.
Besides the reasons others mentioned, it's also popular as an OS for gaming handhelds, like the Steam Deck, Lenovo Legion Go, ASUS Ally X and what have you.
Imagine you like video games. You install Bazzite. You have Steam, with only a little checkbox (to allow playing on linux). It works, you can play, you have a "playstore" if you need something. You have really little to do if you don't go outside Steam and the playstore.
New users aren't going to administer their computers either. there's no "flavor of the month" it's just teaching new users how to administer linux systems properly. And of course directions on the internet are going to be incorrect, the only correct solution is to follow the documentation, not random guides on the internet.
I never say it has no problem. I'm on bazzite and every time I want something that's not in the playstore, it's a fucking hell and it never works. I just stopped.
You couldn't just layer it on, or use distribox and container it? I have plenty of Linux on machines I work with, but my gaming rig is Bazzite, and it literally does it's job perfectly, which is to game, and the few other misc things beyond its regular scope I have done in the couple's years it's been on that machine I have had no issues with?
Maybe I could if I had an idea what it was x) That's ok, I do with whatever bazaar has. My main frustration is for the VPN I paid, and can't use, but I tried things for days with the support and all failed, and since I don't understand what I'm doing and had to go in admin mode, I let it go. It's not a call for help.
I just switched to Bazzite recently and have been using containers through podman/docker for anything not on Bazaar. But what do people mean when they say "layering" on an immutable distro? I'm very much still new at this
You can layer packages not in the base image. This effectively installs that package. Except by default the "installation" will not take effect until the next boot.
You're doing it the correct way, usually the people who are confused are used to their existing linux ways. You only have to learn this way and that will not only be best practice but works on any linux distro.
What exactly do you think someone is going to have to do that isn't easily done on Bazzite? Bazzite isn't based around Steam. 99% of users will install everything they need from Flathub and be perfectly fine.
Also, you can do anything you want with an "immutable" distro, it's just done differently. Immutable is a bad and unclear descriptor, which is why Bazzite uses atomic.
It's the "just works" distro for people who want to play games.
A lot of things are built into it to be easily installable with less user effort. Has nice defaults. I use cachyos on my pc but on my handheld a lot of stuff wasn't working by default, like the handhelds buttons/joystick. On bazzite everything works by default. (Think it's one terminal command to install what is needed for controls in cachyos, but it didn't work by default) You can still download whatever using rpm ostree, as a user idr know the difference. Grabbed gparted that way. Bazzite has the ujust command which gives you a lot of options for modifying and installing stuff easily like waydroid, emudeck, plugins, etc.
Also prefer gnome with extensions on touchscreens and handhelds, while everything else comes with kde and it's apps by default. Kde isn't bad at all and only 1 extension on pc (window thumbnails to pip any window) has me staying on gnome, but gnome works so much better for touchscreens and smaller devices.
Could you make this argument?
No they can't, they can only say "flavor of the month" nonstop until another parrot catches it and repeats it
I can counter argument their non-existing argument, if bazzite dies tomorrow you are free to rebase to any other Fedora Atomic distro
It's nonsense you can just use one command to swap from bazzite to kinoite if it does, it's very easy and low effort to distro hop on fedora atomic based distros
And half of the project is mostly just automated package update pulls and compiling them into images
It’s the most plug-and-play Linux has ever been from my experience.