My fiancee runs bazzite, this was her choice but she’s horribly non techy. I often have to help her with tech support but I don’t use Linux, I’ve been thinking of switching over just so I can learn and fucking keep her PC from breaking all the time but I don’t want to use bazzite. Would I learn by using what I hear it’s based off of? (Fedora)
I have run Fedora for over a decade and switched to Bazzite a couple years ago for my desktop (Fedora still on my server).
In short, yes, but I wouldn’t recommend it. You can learn what you need to directly on Bazzite. If you’re looking for help, Bazzite is most similar to Fedora Silverblue (not regular Fedora) under the covers. The differences between regular Fedora and Bazzite are substantial enough that you’ll run into some things you’d need to research twice, once for Fedora then again for Bazzite. Keep it simple and just use Bazzite.
If you want or need a distribution with a different focus, you should look at the other Universal Blue (ublue) options. Bazzite is built on ublue for gamers, but uBlue also builds for other use cases. Aurora for general desktop, Bluefin for workstation, and uCore for servers.
You’re missing the point though, it’s a good OS for her but I actually don’t want bazzite on my personal desktop, I would rather use something that’s not immutable
Oh, then yeah, Fedora is closest. But I’d recommend at least trying an immutable distro --, immutable distributions have been excellent to me (and I dig in my systems a lot), so much so that I’m considering moving my server over, and we already use them on our Linux fleet at work.
Not really.
Would help you playing around with a Fedora Distrobox Image.
But DistroShelf is a GUI for that and should be pre-installed.
Assuming default Bazzite is installed: You’d be better off learning Kinoite.
And rpm-ostree.
If Gnome variant: Silverblue.
But really easier to just Read the Docs and FAQs for Bazzite itself.
And the built in
ujustcommands in the Terminal.It’s Kinoite with extra steps/bells and whistles out of the box.
“…but I don’t want to use bazzite.”
…Curious.
There’s also Project Bluefin and Aurora universal blue community images.
Can also make your own image:
Community images:
Atomic ≠ Immutable
Is it really that curious? Bazzite is a gaming focused OS, I dont need that and I don’t want an immutable OS on my personal desktop.
I’ll look into atomic, with my particular learning disability I need to start from the ground up to actually understand it
I started on traditional Fedora-KDE 32 as my first time with Linux.
I tend to do things blindly and figure things out as I go/ self-teach as needed.
Needed many extra steps such as setting up RPM Fusion just to be able to install Steam.
Another extra step just to enjoy Hardware Acceleration in your web browser.
Another step if you have an Nvidia GPU.
Ublu projects took all that pain away. 🥹
A much better out of the box experience. Like having batteries included.
Anyway that’s my story.
I even made a gist now a bit old/outdated about it when I became a Bazzite enjoyer around the time Fedora had just upgraded to 38.
edit wow that was back when it was still known as Universal Blue-Kinoite.
So much has changed.
We have FSR 4 and HDR support now.
I’ll look into atomic, with my particular learning disability I need to start from the ground up to actually understand it
Given that, if you’re truly committed to mutable (and what experience are you basing that decision on?) Fedora will support your partner better, but Arch will teach you faster and has the best documentation. My own trajectory over the last decade or so was Arch -> Fedora -> Bazzite.
That said, as a pretty demanding user (dev, local AI stuff etc), I’d suggest thinking twice more on using the atomic and learning in (an Arch perhaps) distrobox. You’ll be getting ahead of the curve, can do all your learning (and breaking of things) in distroboxes without borking your main install, can even distro hop after a fashion (again in distrobox). Give it six months and reassess…
Yes, you could learn Baz by learning Fedora, but that’s a lot of extra work with only adjacent payoffs. I learned Baz by putting it on an HTPC and I’ve found it pretty viable for many usecases. My suggestion would be to use Baz on something to get the hang of it, then reinstance to whatever you’re actually going to use. It isn’t hard to figure out the basics in a day or two of use.
keep her PC from breaking all the time
How did she manage to break Bazzite?
way off topic bud
This is actually a very relevant question: Bazzite is pretty much designed to avoid breakage, so if your fiancée is messing up the system somehow, something must be seriously going wrong.
But, to answer your question. If impatient, take Fedora with the same desktop flavor as her Bazzite, so probably the Fedora KDE Spin, as that is the default desktop Bazzite uses.
However: Bazzite basically is Fedora with sane defaults and, contrary to popular belief, isn’t just for gaming. Under the hood it has many powerful tools for development and power-users, such as distrobox and brew, coupled with being pretty much bullet proof due to the immutability. If you consider yourself in this group of users, it may be worth giving Bazzite another look and persevering to get over the odd learning curve.
I guarantee you she’s not doing anything to the system, she uses it for web surfing and playing steam games, I’m the one who ran into the issues, they’re well documented in the bazzite subreddit and it’s issues that came out of the bo.x No, this post is about Fedora and if it’s at all related to the bazzite learning curve. I’m not expounding, downvote it that makes you feel better
The downvotes are not from me. I’m just trying to understand your angle and (perceived) frustrations. No offence intended here.
However, Bazzite IS Fedora, so you may run in to similar issues that have bothered you about Bazzite too.
I’m not an expert but… Bazzite is based on fedora so most fedora command lines will work the same in bazzite. Most. Since bazzite is immutable it’s not going to let you change some of the system files which might be frustrating but it’s like that to prevent breakage. Bazzite also has specific bazzite command line stuff like ujust. You could also run nobara which is also fedora based gaming distro but it’s not immutable. So you have freedom to break things but also get built in driver’s and stuff. I’ve had better luck with bazzite but it’s an option. Good luck
Actually, it’s your ultimate goal. You said you want her PC to not break. And you want to accomplish it by learning and then fixing it yourself. Well, I’m here trying to help you diagnose the issue & possible solutions.
I was trying to collaborate with you. Help me help you.
To answer your question, Bazzite and all other diestros developed by Universal Blue project are all downstream modifications of the Fedora Silverblue base image, which in turn is downstream of Fedora itself.
If you want to use the closest thing to Bazzite but you don’t want it to be focused on gaming, you could go for Aurora or Bluefin (both Universal Blue distros).
But if the issues she’s having are related to GPU stuff, you should use the same hardware and compositor (valve’s gamescope/KDE plasma kwin/ gnome mutter) which depends on the distro and variant you pick.
If you could tell us the issues she’s having, we could be of greater help.
Honestly, if she’s using bazzite learn to troubleshoot in bazzite.
It’s a pretty stable OS, immutable so you can’t fuck it up too bad, and mostly just works out of the box in my experience. Some games don’t work, but that usually comes down to the dev be shithats than the game itself.
I’d use one of the atomic versions, as these are the most similar.
Then there’s Silverblue with Gnome which has a minimal modern interface, and Kionite with Plasma with a customizable more classical desktop. Might be best to match that with her setup too.
