If you're wanting something similar to SteamOS right now that has much wider hardware support for your gaming handhelds like the Lenovo Legion Go, ASUS ROG Ally, GPD, Ayaneo or even your laptop / desktop then Bazzite is likely one of the best choices.
Yes, itās designed to be as easy as possible to manage and exceedingly difficult to break in a permanent way.
Itās also turnkey in comparison to Windows, in the sense that you already have all of your hardware drivers and have Steam installed right from the get-go.
Yes, with one caveat: it isnāt going to work like a lot of other distros when it comes to installing packages. If you need help, use the uBlue forums.
I advise against using Bazzite as a Windows convert, unless youāre happy to do a lot of reading to understand what youāre actually signing up for. The founder doesnāt really care about Windows Gamers (or anyone outside of the professional linux world), according to a comment they made earlier today in response to criticism of the description ācloud nativeā.
To save you a click, the conversation was about the description of Bazzite as ācloud nativeā on the bazzite homepage* can be confusing or even misleading for people who assume it means āwill run in the cloudā. The founder explicitly commented theyāll keep doubling down on the term until people no longer complain about it.
Their argument was that there is an entire foundation for Cloud Native Computing and that the concept is āan incredibly common thing in any professional paid Linux job.ā They understand that Windows Gamers in particular might have the aforementioned misconception, but they donāt care if you get it.
That doesnāt necessarily make Bazzite a bad distro, but Iād be wary about the level of assistance you can expect from people who think that a technical word soup featuring terms like ābuild our imagesā and ādeploying Linux environments to usersā is enough to explain that ācloud nativeā actually just means the development process and the end product has nothing to do with the cloud.
*Specifically, the homepageās text opens with:
āBazzite is a cloud native image built upon Fedora Atomic Desktops that brings the best of Linux gaming to all of your devices - including your favorite handheld.ā
I donāt know why theyād lead with the development method, rather than describing what the OS actually does, but apparently thatās what they care most about.
As an aside, I donāt see any obvious description what āatomicā means on the Fedora Atomic site either.
Cloud native is the end product too. The point of my firmness with you was not to express that I donāt care about windows users ā quite the contrary, none of this would exist without that ā but to express that I donāt care about your issue with the definition of an already defined word.
What bearing does it have on use of the end product? If I am a German Native, but move to France, and someone asks me where I live, what difference does it make whether Iām German Native?
Bazzite isnāt cloud based in the sense of āruns in the cloudā. If you install it on your computer, it runs on your computer. Itās not a cloud resident, in the sense of that analogy, no matter whether it was born there.
Unless it does, in which case it would seem that the term isnāt quite so clear as you think.
I donāt care about your issue with the definition of an already defined word.
My issue isnāt with the definition, but with the implicit assumption that itās well known or easy to understand, as well as the way it is used. We had that discussion over in the other thread already, but the gist of your replies has always been āI donāt care if the term is useless or can be misunderstood. Itās correct, so it stays.ā That stance is my issue.
My issue isnāt with the definition, but with the implicit assumption that itās well known or easy to understand, as well as the way it is used.
Bruh, they literally link to their (and the community at largeās) definition, right there where itās first mentioned on the home pageā¦ You literally copied the link when you copied their first paragraph in your previous comment.
You may not like the way itās being used, but you canāt get any further away from āassuming itās easy to understandā than a link to your meaning.
And on that note, you said you couldnāt find a definition of Atomic on Fedoraās siteā¦ So I clicked just one link from your posted link there and found this.
Atomic - The whole system is updated in one go, and an update will not apply if anything goes wrong, meaning you will always have a working computer.
I read your posted argument from earlier, and I want to believe you when you argue your goal is to push for Linux to be more accessible. But the reality of your arguments seem to tell a different story. You seem more interested in dying on a pointless hills while dissuading interested converts from trying what is one of the most stable and user friendly distros Iāve ever tried.
Linux is going to have a LOT of terms a new user will have to learn. The idea of a cloud native image may cause a misconception, but no more so than any of the other myriad terms a new user will have to learn.
Universal Blue rests on the idea of bringing cloud native patterns to the operating system. We leverage standard cloud tools like the OCI standard images, Docker/Podman, and GitHub to build our images.
and assumes those terms already mean something to you? Oh wait, cloud native is a link again letās seeā¦
CNCF is the open source, vendor-neutral hub of cloud native computing, hosting projects like Kubernetes and Prometheus to make cloud native universal and sustainable.
Great! Two more technical terms! Oh, thereās another text further down the page.
As part of the Linux Foundation, we provide support, oversight and direction for fast-growing, cloud native projects, including Kubernetes, Envoy, and Prometheus.
Nope, still no explanation, but weāve got another link, this time to an actual definition:
Cloud native practices empower organizations to develop, build, and deploy workloads in computing environments (public, private, hybrid cloud) to meet their organizational needs at scale in a programmatic and repeatable manner. It is characterized by loosely coupled systems that interoperate in a manner that is secure, resilient, manageable, sustainable, and observable.
Cloud native technologies and architectures typically consist of some combination of containers, service meshes, multi-tenancy, microservices, immutable infrastructure, serverless, and declarative APIs ā this list is non-exhaustive.
Aaaand itās another wall of technical terms.
What is āeasy to understandā about this, unless youāre already familiar enough with that specific technical field that it really isnāt an issue in the first place? A definition directed at experts is no explanation, and hitting a reader with a wall of terms they donāt even know how to classify, let alone understand, isnāt very accessible.
And on that note, you said you couldnāt find a definition of Atomic on Fedoraās siteā¦ So I clicked just one link from your posted link there and found this.
Sorry, I didnāt think Iād have to āGet startedā on a particular distro to find a note on what the whole āatomicā thing they advertise is about. Wouldnāt have killed them to put that paragraph on the previous page already, just a small note at the top, to explain the selling point theyāre using.
Linux is going to have a LOT of terms a new user will have to learn. The idea of a cloud native image may cause a misconception, but no more so than any of the other myriad terms a new user will have to learn.
Thatās an issue Iāve complained about before: The entry barrier is too high still. People shouldnāt have to learn a lot of new terms, if at all possible. In that vein, itās better to start out with distros that require less learning, and if the interest grips you, start learning and exploring from there.
But if you have to learn terms, it should be ordered from most fundamental and universal to most specific, and Iād put ācloud nativeā in the back half of that spectrum. Youāll need to know what a file system is, for instance, may need to learn the term distro / distribution and many more, but for the immediate operation of a system, you donāt need to know what OCI, Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, Prometheus, deploying, workloads or āloosely coupled systems that interoperate in a manner that is secure, resilient, manageable, sustainable, and observableā mean.
So I genuinely do recommend starting out with something less laden with technical terms, and working your way up from there. I started out with Ubuntu, now Iām using Nobara and plan to use my old spare drive to try some other flavours like Silverblue. Itās not that I donāt think the learning isnāt worth it, itās just that it shouldnāt be frontloaded.
I read your posted argument from earlier, and I want to believe you when you argue your goal is to push for Linux to be more accessible. But the reality of your arguments seem to tell a different story. You seem more interested in dying on a pointless hills while dissuading interested converts from trying what is one of the most stable and user friendly distros Iāve ever tried.
My gripe with Bazzite isnāt whether itās user friendly, but whether its maintainers are. The founder made a point of telling people āthe more I see this whining the more I want to keep it on the websiteā, because itās an accurate definition, no matter how useless. I like reasonable discussion, I can accept personal disagreement, but what Iām seeing here is a user providing a prime example of the confusion the word causes and the founder replying to the effect of ānow I want to use it even moreā.
Thatās the exact opposite of accessibility. Thatās someone saying āBy the way, this is a barrierā and getting the reply āYes, and people complaining about it makes me want to keep it.ā Itās not even āSorry, this canāt be helpedā so much as āI want this barrier to be thereā for no good reason.
So that is a hill I will fight on, not because of the specific term but because of the culture behind it that plagues the tech sphere at large. Weāre building walls of technical understanding requirements instead of bridges of explanations. Some walls are reasonable, some necessary, some harmless. Some gaps are too wide for a single bridge to cross, so youāll need to take a detour over other concepts. But building walls out of spite, along with (not represented here, but also common) scoffing at those looking to build bridges or telling people looking for entry ājust scale the wallā, are communication culture issues that serve to isolate rather than integrate.
Yeah, and if you click enough links on Wikipedia you always wind up at logic, math, or philosophy. At some point, you are going to have to read new words to learn new things. And it will get increasingly technical as you go deeper.
But bazzite devs donāt just leave you up shitās creek with a turd for a paddle. They still make installing and gaming on Linux far more accessible than the majority of other distros. With a significantly smaller learning curve. And provide solid guides for new users that use beginner friendly language.
And therein lies the crux of my problem with your argument. Scaring folks away to seek out another distro where they will almost certainly have to learn more to get started is hurting your stated cause. You claim to be fighting the good fight against āunreasonable barriers of entryā, but you are causing more than you are solving. Over a very ignorable term.
When it was just you arguing over the value of the term with the dev, okay, whatever. But when you throw a new user asking for help out to sea because you had an argument that has no bearing on the significant reduction to the barrier of entry to Linux gaming that Bazzite provides, you are shooting your own goal in the head.
You didnāt care that they used a single term that might cause confusion, you didnāt care that a person who was looking for help on getting started with Linux gaming was asking about installing one of the most beginner friendly distros, you wanted to win an argument and hold a grudge.
Maybe you donāt even see it yourself, the road to hell is paved with good intentions after all, but the obvious outcome of your actions directly go against the goals you claim to have.
ETA: The Bazzite homepage also makes numerous references to it being āinstallable on all your favorite devicesā so it becomes quickly apparent to most folks that it isnāt hosted āin the cloudā. And it has this fun definition of Atomic - Bazzite is Atomic meaning that after every update the previous version of the operating system is retained on your machine. Should an update cause any issues, you can select the previous image at boot time.
I get that you donāt like the term cloud native image, but it is really a very small piece of a very user friendly pie.
Yeah, and if you click enough links on Wikipedia you always wind up at logic, math, or philosophy. At some point, you are going to have to read new words to learn new things. And it will get increasingly technical as you go deeper.
Provided youāre willing to dig deep, yes, but Wikipedia usually offers a summary of the term at the top. In the event, I found Wikipediaās explanation of cloud native much more useful than the link to the ublue page about it, or the CNCFās definition.
Scaring folks away to seek out another distro where they will almost certainly have to learn more to get started is hurting your stated cause.
I donāt have an accurate sense of how much youād have to learn about bazzite, so Iāll have trust you on this when it comes to the usage. I personally didnāt have difficulties with other distros, but Iām also not entirely new to the OS world, so my experience may be skewed.
My proximate issue is the pitch, the entry point, the first impression. Evidently, there are people who come across that term and worry that it may mean what ācloudā in many other contexts means: āYour data is somewhere else you have no control over.ā And how would they know theyāre wrong? If they click on the link, theyāre faced with a stack of technical terms they might not understand. Even if they concluded that nothing explicitly says their system will be running in the cloud, how could they trust that conclusion built on unknowns?That insecurity creates an entry barrier for those looking at the website, the impact of which we canāt measure, but that doesnāt have to mean itās negligible.
The underlying issue, however, is the philosophy behind doubling down on that. If youāre faced with evidence of misunderstandings, people pointing out that barrier, and make a point of not just ignoring it but explicitly saying āNow I want to keep that barrier even moreā, that speaks to a mindset that I personally am strongly opposed to. Handing people guides and saying āhere, climb over that barrier on your ownā doesnāt fully mitigate that.
Hence, in absence of personal experience on the usage, Iāll argue from a position of principle. Itās not a mindset I want to endorse, and so I attempt to steer people away from what I perceived as a higher barrier of entry.
The Bazzite homepage also makes numerous references to it being āinstallable on all your favorite devicesā so it becomes quickly apparent to most folks that it isnāt hosted āin the cloudā.
Thin clients connected to some cloud-hosted VM are also installable on many devices. Microsoft 365 is available as apps, but still runs in the cloud (but it doesnāt even pitch that, it just says āall in one placeā - the mention of cloud is further down the page, after some other feature pitches). How would I know ānativeā doesnāt mean ālives in the cloudā? It wouldnāt be the first time marketing fudges terms.
And again, I advise against making assumptions about what becomes apparent to most folks. Most folks arenāt confident in their technical understanding and may err on the side of caution. Iāve tried guiding people through the simplest things, and if there was one detail they werenāt sure they understood, the immediate response was to abort the process for fear of breaking something. A message box pops up and they panic āAaah whatās happening, what does that meanā because they donāt trust their understanding. Iāve watched people click on some explanation, get confused at some term and resort to fleeing the page back to things they know betterā¦
I get that you donāt like the term cloud native image
I have no issue with the term. Technical terms are useful in their respective technical contexts, where people know what theyāre a shorthand for. If I talk to a data analyst, Iāll use the term DFM. If I talk to a database engineer, I might use the term denormalisation. But if I talk to a sales manager and use either of those, theyāll stare at me blankly. And thatās what I dislike: Using the term in a context where I feel itās out of place and is known to cause confusion.
really a very small piece of a very user friendly pie
ā¦but may well be the first piece they taste.
But like I said, my issue isnāt with the piece of pie, but the baking practice: āThe more people tell me they donāt like raisins, the more I want to add raisins to spite them.ā Their pie may otherwise be delicious, but I still wouldnāt recommend that baker.
To put a line under all this, I might give Bazzite a try myself, see how I get along with it, but that wonāt change the fact that I find such a spiteful mentality unfit for recommendation.
I believe in the value of user-friendly presentation, not just systems, because the presentation matters to many users. I also believe that the Linux community at large should present itself more helpful and user-friendly, and comments like the one that sparked the thread donāt help that image.
I want to see the Linux ecosystem grow, and I believe that requires a willingness to cater to the least technical users as well. Yes, some amount of learning will be inevitable, but the first contact at least should welcome users as simply and comfortably as possible.
And as a side effect, being more willing to explain and help each other will also help the rest of us. Spite and elitism donāt help anyone.
I can tell you right now if you want the Linux ecosystem to grow, the average person is probably downloading the installer and installing it because of word of mouth or mentions in YouTube videos, and not writing all of these words Iām not going to read on lemmy.
Youāve already done a direct disservice to your cause by starting this comment thread in the first place ā trying your best to dissuade one such user because you donāt like a word and donāt like that a developer doesnāt value your opinion of that word.
I would be skeptical of Luciferās insight on this. By his own admission, he has never actually used Bazzite, and is basing his opinion on a single argument he had with one of the many devās in another post.
To quote Lucifer directly :
I donāt have an accurate sense of how much youād have to learn about bazzite, so Iāll have trust you on this
Obviously switching to Linux will cause you to encounter new terms you wonāt be familiar with, or terms you are familiar with used in new and novel ways, devs and users will be opinionated and have arguments over these terms (and everything else an opinion can be had on frankly). And Luciferās concerns on this front are not without merit, but he is overstating the severity in this case and painting a wildly inaccurate picture. And you donāt actually need to gain a deep understanding of all these terms anyway. (Right away or at all depending on your goals)
But through all of that, what really matters at the end of the day is how useable is it, and how solid is the community surrounding it. And on that front I can say Bazzite has been hands down the easiest distro I have ever used for plug and play Linux gaming, and the community has been endlessly helpful and beginner friendly. Iād recommend it fully, and if you hop into their Discord, or read over their homepage and guides, it quickly becomes apparent how hard they work to make it beginner friendly.
There are some good alternatives, Mint for example is a very easy distro to make the switch from Windows. As is Pop_OS!. And with how easy steam has made running games, itās harder to find a bad choice in general nowadays.
To shift topics, Iād say the most important thing to a āsmooth switch from Windowsā is less the distro you choose, and more the Desktop Environment. (Which, for the point of this recommendation, is the catch all term for what your OS ālooks likeā, where the āStart Menuā is, where your ātool bar to switch appsā is, etc) For a new Windows convert, Iād say find one that uses āKDEā, as it is very similar to Windows. Bazzite offers this when you are downloading the installation image. But itās quite popular, so many others will anyway.
Sorry for the extended rant, hope this initial mess didnāt make you less likely to try Linux! I was a Windows convert just a couple years ago and can say it was one of the best decisions Iāve ever made! Feel free to ask any questions, or hop over to the Bazzite Discord to get some helpful insights!
Would this be a good distro for a noob whoās thinking about switching from Windows? Or is this more advanced to maintain and use as a daily driver?
Yes, itās designed to be as easy as possible to manage and exceedingly difficult to break in a permanent way.
Itās also turnkey in comparison to Windows, in the sense that you already have all of your hardware drivers and have Steam installed right from the get-go.
Yes, with one caveat: it isnāt going to work like a lot of other distros when it comes to installing packages. If you need help, use the uBlue forums.
Otherwise, itās great, and very stable.
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I advise against using Bazzite as a Windows convert, unless youāre happy to do a lot of reading to understand what youāre actually signing up for. The founder doesnāt really care about Windows Gamers (or anyone outside of the professional linux world), according to a comment they made earlier today in response to criticism of the description ācloud nativeā.
To save you a click, the conversation was about the description of Bazzite as ācloud nativeā on the bazzite homepage* can be confusing or even misleading for people who assume it means āwill run in the cloudā. The founder explicitly commented theyāll keep doubling down on the term until people no longer complain about it.
Their argument was that there is an entire foundation for Cloud Native Computing and that the concept is āan incredibly common thing in any professional paid Linux job.ā They understand that Windows Gamers in particular might have the aforementioned misconception, but they donāt care if you get it.
That doesnāt necessarily make Bazzite a bad distro, but Iād be wary about the level of assistance you can expect from people who think that a technical word soup featuring terms like ābuild our imagesā and ādeploying Linux environments to usersā is enough to explain that ācloud nativeā actually just means the development process and the end product has nothing to do with the cloud.
*Specifically, the homepageās text opens with:
āBazzite is a cloud native image built upon Fedora Atomic Desktops that brings the best of Linux gaming to all of your devices - including your favorite handheld.ā
I donāt know why theyād lead with the development method, rather than describing what the OS actually does, but apparently thatās what they care most about.
As an aside, I donāt see any obvious description what āatomicā means on the Fedora Atomic site either.
Cloud native is the end product too. The point of my firmness with you was not to express that I donāt care about windows users ā quite the contrary, none of this would exist without that ā but to express that I donāt care about your issue with the definition of an already defined word.
What bearing does it have on use of the end product? If I am a German Native, but move to France, and someone asks me where I live, what difference does it make whether Iām German Native?
Bazzite isnāt cloud based in the sense of āruns in the cloudā. If you install it on your computer, it runs on your computer. Itās not a cloud resident, in the sense of that analogy, no matter whether it was born there.
Unless it does, in which case it would seem that the term isnāt quite so clear as you think.
My issue isnāt with the definition, but with the implicit assumption that itās well known or easy to understand, as well as the way it is used. We had that discussion over in the other thread already, but the gist of your replies has always been āI donāt care if the term is useless or can be misunderstood. Itās correct, so it stays.ā That stance is my issue.
Bruh, they literally link to their (and the community at largeās) definition, right there where itās first mentioned on the home pageā¦ You literally copied the link when you copied their first paragraph in your previous comment.
You may not like the way itās being used, but you canāt get any further away from āassuming itās easy to understandā than a link to your meaning.
And on that note, you said you couldnāt find a definition of Atomic on Fedoraās siteā¦ So I clicked just one link from your posted link there and found this.
I read your posted argument from earlier, and I want to believe you when you argue your goal is to push for Linux to be more accessible. But the reality of your arguments seem to tell a different story. You seem more interested in dying on a pointless hills while dissuading interested converts from trying what is one of the most stable and user friendly distros Iāve ever tried.
Linux is going to have a LOT of terms a new user will have to learn. The idea of a cloud native image may cause a misconception, but no more so than any of the other myriad terms a new user will have to learn.
You mean the link that aays
and assumes those terms already mean something to you? Oh wait, cloud native is a link again letās seeā¦
Great! Two more technical terms! Oh, thereās another text further down the page.
Nope, still no explanation, but weāve got another link, this time to an actual definition:
Aaaand itās another wall of technical terms.
What is āeasy to understandā about this, unless youāre already familiar enough with that specific technical field that it really isnāt an issue in the first place? A definition directed at experts is no explanation, and hitting a reader with a wall of terms they donāt even know how to classify, let alone understand, isnāt very accessible.
Sorry, I didnāt think Iād have to āGet startedā on a particular distro to find a note on what the whole āatomicā thing they advertise is about. Wouldnāt have killed them to put that paragraph on the previous page already, just a small note at the top, to explain the selling point theyāre using.
Thatās an issue Iāve complained about before: The entry barrier is too high still. People shouldnāt have to learn a lot of new terms, if at all possible. In that vein, itās better to start out with distros that require less learning, and if the interest grips you, start learning and exploring from there.
But if you have to learn terms, it should be ordered from most fundamental and universal to most specific, and Iād put ācloud nativeā in the back half of that spectrum. Youāll need to know what a file system is, for instance, may need to learn the term distro / distribution and many more, but for the immediate operation of a system, you donāt need to know what OCI, Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, Prometheus, deploying, workloads or āloosely coupled systems that interoperate in a manner that is secure, resilient, manageable, sustainable, and observableā mean.
So I genuinely do recommend starting out with something less laden with technical terms, and working your way up from there. I started out with Ubuntu, now Iām using Nobara and plan to use my old spare drive to try some other flavours like Silverblue. Itās not that I donāt think the learning isnāt worth it, itās just that it shouldnāt be frontloaded.
My gripe with Bazzite isnāt whether itās user friendly, but whether its maintainers are. The founder made a point of telling people āthe more I see this whining the more I want to keep it on the websiteā, because itās an accurate definition, no matter how useless. I like reasonable discussion, I can accept personal disagreement, but what Iām seeing here is a user providing a prime example of the confusion the word causes and the founder replying to the effect of ānow I want to use it even moreā.
Thatās the exact opposite of accessibility. Thatās someone saying āBy the way, this is a barrierā and getting the reply āYes, and people complaining about it makes me want to keep it.ā Itās not even āSorry, this canāt be helpedā so much as āI want this barrier to be thereā for no good reason.
So that is a hill I will fight on, not because of the specific term but because of the culture behind it that plagues the tech sphere at large. Weāre building walls of technical understanding requirements instead of bridges of explanations. Some walls are reasonable, some necessary, some harmless. Some gaps are too wide for a single bridge to cross, so youāll need to take a detour over other concepts. But building walls out of spite, along with (not represented here, but also common) scoffing at those looking to build bridges or telling people looking for entry ājust scale the wallā, are communication culture issues that serve to isolate rather than integrate.
Yeah, and if you click enough links on Wikipedia you always wind up at logic, math, or philosophy. At some point, you are going to have to read new words to learn new things. And it will get increasingly technical as you go deeper.
But bazzite devs donāt just leave you up shitās creek with a turd for a paddle. They still make installing and gaming on Linux far more accessible than the majority of other distros. With a significantly smaller learning curve. And provide solid guides for new users that use beginner friendly language.
And therein lies the crux of my problem with your argument. Scaring folks away to seek out another distro where they will almost certainly have to learn more to get started is hurting your stated cause. You claim to be fighting the good fight against āunreasonable barriers of entryā, but you are causing more than you are solving. Over a very ignorable term.
When it was just you arguing over the value of the term with the dev, okay, whatever. But when you throw a new user asking for help out to sea because you had an argument that has no bearing on the significant reduction to the barrier of entry to Linux gaming that Bazzite provides, you are shooting your own goal in the head.
You didnāt care that they used a single term that might cause confusion, you didnāt care that a person who was looking for help on getting started with Linux gaming was asking about installing one of the most beginner friendly distros, you wanted to win an argument and hold a grudge.
Maybe you donāt even see it yourself, the road to hell is paved with good intentions after all, but the obvious outcome of your actions directly go against the goals you claim to have.
ETA: The Bazzite homepage also makes numerous references to it being āinstallable on all your favorite devicesā so it becomes quickly apparent to most folks that it isnāt hosted āin the cloudā. And it has this fun definition of Atomic - Bazzite is Atomic meaning that after every update the previous version of the operating system is retained on your machine. Should an update cause any issues, you can select the previous image at boot time.
I get that you donāt like the term cloud native image, but it is really a very small piece of a very user friendly pie.
Provided youāre willing to dig deep, yes, but Wikipedia usually offers a summary of the term at the top. In the event, I found Wikipediaās explanation of cloud native much more useful than the link to the ublue page about it, or the CNCFās definition.
I donāt have an accurate sense of how much youād have to learn about bazzite, so Iāll have trust you on this when it comes to the usage. I personally didnāt have difficulties with other distros, but Iām also not entirely new to the OS world, so my experience may be skewed.
My proximate issue is the pitch, the entry point, the first impression. Evidently, there are people who come across that term and worry that it may mean what ācloudā in many other contexts means: āYour data is somewhere else you have no control over.ā And how would they know theyāre wrong? If they click on the link, theyāre faced with a stack of technical terms they might not understand. Even if they concluded that nothing explicitly says their system will be running in the cloud, how could they trust that conclusion built on unknowns?That insecurity creates an entry barrier for those looking at the website, the impact of which we canāt measure, but that doesnāt have to mean itās negligible.
The underlying issue, however, is the philosophy behind doubling down on that. If youāre faced with evidence of misunderstandings, people pointing out that barrier, and make a point of not just ignoring it but explicitly saying āNow I want to keep that barrier even moreā, that speaks to a mindset that I personally am strongly opposed to. Handing people guides and saying āhere, climb over that barrier on your ownā doesnāt fully mitigate that.
Hence, in absence of personal experience on the usage, Iāll argue from a position of principle. Itās not a mindset I want to endorse, and so I attempt to steer people away from what I perceived as a higher barrier of entry.
Thin clients connected to some cloud-hosted VM are also installable on many devices. Microsoft 365 is available as apps, but still runs in the cloud (but it doesnāt even pitch that, it just says āall in one placeā - the mention of cloud is further down the page, after some other feature pitches). How would I know ānativeā doesnāt mean ālives in the cloudā? It wouldnāt be the first time marketing fudges terms.
And again, I advise against making assumptions about what becomes apparent to most folks. Most folks arenāt confident in their technical understanding and may err on the side of caution. Iāve tried guiding people through the simplest things, and if there was one detail they werenāt sure they understood, the immediate response was to abort the process for fear of breaking something. A message box pops up and they panic āAaah whatās happening, what does that meanā because they donāt trust their understanding. Iāve watched people click on some explanation, get confused at some term and resort to fleeing the page back to things they know betterā¦
I have no issue with the term. Technical terms are useful in their respective technical contexts, where people know what theyāre a shorthand for. If I talk to a data analyst, Iāll use the term DFM. If I talk to a database engineer, I might use the term denormalisation. But if I talk to a sales manager and use either of those, theyāll stare at me blankly. And thatās what I dislike: Using the term in a context where I feel itās out of place and is known to cause confusion.
ā¦but may well be the first piece they taste.
But like I said, my issue isnāt with the piece of pie, but the baking practice: āThe more people tell me they donāt like raisins, the more I want to add raisins to spite them.ā Their pie may otherwise be delicious, but I still wouldnāt recommend that baker.
To put a line under all this, I might give Bazzite a try myself, see how I get along with it, but that wonāt change the fact that I find such a spiteful mentality unfit for recommendation.
I believe in the value of user-friendly presentation, not just systems, because the presentation matters to many users. I also believe that the Linux community at large should present itself more helpful and user-friendly, and comments like the one that sparked the thread donāt help that image.
I want to see the Linux ecosystem grow, and I believe that requires a willingness to cater to the least technical users as well. Yes, some amount of learning will be inevitable, but the first contact at least should welcome users as simply and comfortably as possible.
And as a side effect, being more willing to explain and help each other will also help the rest of us. Spite and elitism donāt help anyone.
I can tell you right now if you want the Linux ecosystem to grow, the average person is probably downloading the installer and installing it because of word of mouth or mentions in YouTube videos, and not writing all of these words Iām not going to read on lemmy.
Youāve already done a direct disservice to your cause by starting this comment thread in the first place ā trying your best to dissuade one such user because you donāt like a word and donāt like that a developer doesnāt value your opinion of that word.
Thanks for that insight, Lucifer
I would be skeptical of Luciferās insight on this. By his own admission, he has never actually used Bazzite, and is basing his opinion on a single argument he had with one of the many devās in another post. To quote Lucifer directly :
Obviously switching to Linux will cause you to encounter new terms you wonāt be familiar with, or terms you are familiar with used in new and novel ways, devs and users will be opinionated and have arguments over these terms (and everything else an opinion can be had on frankly). And Luciferās concerns on this front are not without merit, but he is overstating the severity in this case and painting a wildly inaccurate picture. And you donāt actually need to gain a deep understanding of all these terms anyway. (Right away or at all depending on your goals)
But through all of that, what really matters at the end of the day is how useable is it, and how solid is the community surrounding it. And on that front I can say Bazzite has been hands down the easiest distro I have ever used for plug and play Linux gaming, and the community has been endlessly helpful and beginner friendly. Iād recommend it fully, and if you hop into their Discord, or read over their homepage and guides, it quickly becomes apparent how hard they work to make it beginner friendly.
There are some good alternatives, Mint for example is a very easy distro to make the switch from Windows. As is Pop_OS!. And with how easy steam has made running games, itās harder to find a bad choice in general nowadays.
To shift topics, Iād say the most important thing to a āsmooth switch from Windowsā is less the distro you choose, and more the Desktop Environment. (Which, for the point of this recommendation, is the catch all term for what your OS ālooks likeā, where the āStart Menuā is, where your ātool bar to switch appsā is, etc) For a new Windows convert, Iād say find one that uses āKDEā, as it is very similar to Windows. Bazzite offers this when you are downloading the installation image. But itās quite popular, so many others will anyway.
Sorry for the extended rant, hope this initial mess didnāt make you less likely to try Linux! I was a Windows convert just a couple years ago and can say it was one of the best decisions Iāve ever made! Feel free to ask any questions, or hop over to the Bazzite Discord to get some helpful insights!
No apologies necessary! Thatās very helpful and makes me more likely to take the plunge. Thank you for the rant!