Does the community have any thoughts on Bazzite for a desktop gaming machine?
My primary use with be mouse and keyboard, but the deck interface looks nice for the 10% of the time I want to use a controller. I also hear that HDR and VRR work better under it then most of the DEs.
Anyone out there using Bazzite for a similar use case? I’d also be curious to here about other ways people are using it.
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I recently installed it on my gaming PC with an Nvidia GPU and AMD CPU. It was my first time with Linux and I was partitioning a drive to dual boot windows in case I screwed the whole thing up and needed a fall back. I hit a few speed bumps mostly due to lack of experience and the dual booting (stupid secure boot!).
Beyond that my only issue so far has been an inability to get my VPN app running but since this is just a gaming PC that I don’t use for anything else I’ve just gone without the VPN. The Nvidia GPU has not really caused any problems for me so far to be honest.
I’ve only tried two games so far, Cyberpunk so I could benchmark graphical performance against Windows, and Return to Moria because I wanted to test a cheap game that specifically says it’s not Steamdeck compatible. Both tests have been successful as far as I’m concerned. I will mention that I’m pretty exclusively a solo gamer and I’ve heard that people have had issues with trying to play Return to Moria with friends.
New Bazzite user here. Long story short I was looking to leave Windows and tried a few distros (Nobara,Kali, Endeavour…)
At the end of the day Bazzite is the one that works best out of the box.
My only issue was with Nvidia&Wayland: I got tons of crashes even on native games. Switched to X11 and works like a charm.
The negative point? It’s not Arch :D
I installed Bazzite onto the laptops of two friends who have never used Linux before but were getting fed up with Windows.
They’ve been very happy with it, and I’ve been very happy not having to worry about hybrid GPU support, or them misconfiguring something to breakage!
I used it for about 9 months on my gaming laptop. From a gaming perspective it was great. I have AMD and everything just worked out of the box. Installing new packages takes some getting used to, but 99% of the time you can find it on flathub which is super easy to use and maintain. I did notice that it seemed to take a significantly longer time to boot compared to my previous distros. On average probably a good 15-30 seconds longer which feels like forever when waiting for it to come up. Not sure if this is common or just something funky with my setup. I used Silverblue a few years back and don’t remember it being that slow. I also never could get my Canon printer drivers to install and function properly which is what inevitably lead me to switch back to Nobara. I like being able to use “dnf install” for something or tweak a vendor provided install script and it just installs the thing and then be done with it.
I use Bazzite exclusively on desktop. It’s pretty much unmatched, and it “just works” out of the box especially on AMD.
I do have an AMD GPU, so that sounds like it will make things easier.
Are you running the
-deckvariant that gives you a Steam deck experience that has a DE for “desktop mode” or just the version with a more traditional DE?I run the non-deck variant with the traditional DE (KDE 6, in this case). I admit that I haven’t tried the deck variants but it should work similar with the difference being the default environment to boot into, irrc.
Right now I am pretty frustrated with HDR under Linux. Well frustrated may be the wrong word, but it is the thing right now that gets me to boot into Windows to play games that have HDR.
I am wondering if I would have more luck using the deck variant for HDR because apparently Valve has this figured out before everyone else.
I’ve been using it on my gaming rig/dev workstation for nearly a year and its been great. Games work great. I had some issues with printer drivers, and with some dev tools. I hadn’t used a fedora-based system in years so many of my issues likely stemmed from that. Editors seem to be confused by the home symlink, especially IntelliJ et al.
Overall I’d highly recommend it. Someone mentioned slow boot, but that hasn’t been my experience. It boots within a few seconds.
I used it for a while, it was pretty good until something messed up and I couldn’t fix it because of the “immutable” aspect, but if that’s a selling point for you then I’d say go for it.
I’ve had a couple of things mess up, usually nvidia related (egregiously sleep, and I like sleeping my desktop), but because it’s immutable I just revert the entire OS and come back to current in a few weeks, and it’s good (not the best security-wise, but my use-case is pretty sanguine). That’s one of immutable positives. Bazzite natively supports 6 months reversion, or in a pinch you can go back to Silverblue/Kinoite.
That’s valid, I just went with Arch and BTRFS snapshots for similar functionality, with the added benefit of being able to fix stuff and tinker a bit. Everyone’s use case is different though! I don’t hate on immutables, it’s just not my personal cup of tea.
Aye, to each their own. I went the other way, Arch -> Fedora -> Immutable Fedora, because I was sick of tinkering and wanted stability ;}
Kind of the boat I am in.
Just want my gaming desktop to work and be stable. Or at least more stable then my current rolling release, Tumbleweed.
For what seems to be your use case, it should be good or better (AMD helps) and everything you need is in the tin. There are a couple of gotchas, and the doco could be better if you’re a dev, but if you’re just gaming you’ll be fine.
Try to avoid using rpm-ostree install (it’s dog slow and slows updates, you’re building an OS image after all) instead first try flatpak and then create a fedora distrobox (or arch or whatever, but fed is most in line with the base install) and dnf install from inside that (and then export to the main OS, keep it clean and it’ll be stable).
ujust updaterocks, but it updates automatically in the background (there’s at least two OS images at all times, so in the unlikely event it breaks you just revert), so don’t forget to reboot every now and then, weekly at least for security reasons.Go here for questions, there’s a discord too if you like that sort of thing. Have fun!
Can 100% recommend.
The only difference between
-deckand the classic one is the default environment it bolts into.With
-deck, you boot into the Steam big picture mode, and with the normal variant into normal KDE.If you chose
-deck, you can still enter desktop mode by clicking the power menu and then “Exit to desktop”.Anything you want to use that works is fine. You’re not going to be seeing much performance difference between distros for the most part aside from some very specific cases.
Tried hard to get it to run on a T470p (nvidia gpu) but did not succeed. Switched to nobara and am very happy as gaming/desktop replacement. Very sleek ootb.
nvidia gpu) but did not succeed
Hardly surprising.
Yeah, Nvidia is pretty bad on Linux in general in my experience. Especially with Wayland. AMD and Wayland run very well, however.
I had a pretty bad experience with Nobara where KDE was super unstable. Probably hardware specific, but when I switched off it everything was stable.
May be less Nobara and more KDE. I love KDE but 6 defaults to Wayland and that is not a good mix with Nvidia in my experience. I am on OpenSuSE Tumbleweed on my main gaming desktop and had numerous problems at the beginning of the year when KDE 6 launched but since switching to X11 have had no issues. I have tried Wayland a couple of times since KDE updates and it has improved but remains flaky in my view. On a separate home media PC I use Nobara with an integrated AMD GPU I’ve not had any issues with KDE and Wayland.
When it comes to immutable desktops, I like the idea but be aware they do have their downsides. Installing custom software relies on universal formats like Flatpak (which have their own overhead and downsides, and not all of the packages are “official”) and if what you want is not available then it can be a pain having to use virtualisation and containers for a less locked down system, especially if dependencies for software are complex. They can bloat quickly but storage is dirt cheap these days so might not matter to you. I still find it too much faff. These are not insurmountable and may be worth it if concerned about the security and stability benefits. For me that’s particularly problematic as I like to try out niche programmes and play with the latest versions of emulation tools. If you like to tinker then immutable can get in the way.
I must admit though, I am someone who is (generally) quite happy to reinstall if I break the system. However the purported stability and security of immutable systems does make sense if you want a good system that “just works”.
Overall, in my experiences with Nobara and separately KDE and Nvidia have been good, as long as you avoid Wayland. May be worth a relook if the immutable nature of Bazzite isn’t for you.
Edit: should say I did consider Nobara for my desktop PC but opted to try OpenSuSE first. I really like it and haven’t had issues setting it up for gaming so I’ve not bothered switching. But Nobara in my media PC in my living room has been super convenient as it “just works” when it comes to controllers and all the gaming set up, so I also haven’t bothered switching that to OpenSuSE. Both are good.
Actually on Tumbleweed right now. I’ve been generally impressed but my suspend broke out of no where and it’s the latest in a long line of (mostly) minor things breaking with updates. The upside with how fast the updates are is that usually things are fixed as quickly as they break but suspend has been broken for me for about 3 weeks now.
I honestly just don’t think rolling distros are for me. Or at least, not for my use case of chill out during my downtime and play a game PC.
