Bazzite: An immutable Fedora-based OS optimized for gaming on any device, from desktops to laptops to the Steam Deck
Introduction - Universal Blue
Bazzite is an OCI image that serves as an alternative operating system for the Steam Deck, and a ready-to-game SteamOS-like for desktop computers and living room home theater PCs.
Who finds these names đ€·ââïž
'Spins' on Fedora Silverblue had -for some time- been following a naming scheme that involved picking the name of a blue mineral that ended on "ite". We see this in for example its KDE-spin Fedora Kinoite -which (inadvertently) happens to be the one starting this trend- and the unofficial spins of Vauxite (Xfce), Sodalite (Pantheon) and thus Bazzite (Gaming/Steam Deck). However, the official Sway-spin (Fedora Sericea) and the upcoming Budgie-spin (Fedora Onyx) don't quite follow this naming scheme đ .
Yes, ideally a naming scheme that's a lot more descriptive would be awesome; like say Fedora Atomic GNOME or Fedora Atomic KDE etc.
Blood sweat and tears went into this project and I'm so glad they've finally released version 1.0.0. Congratulations to everyone in the team!
Optimized how?
thatâs described on the webpage
Bazzite is built from ublue-os/main and ublue-os/nvidia using Fedora technology, which means expanded hardware support and built in drivers are included. Additionally, Bazzite adds the following features:
I'm as skeptical as you are, but at least they automatically preinstall a few useful gaming apps by default, ie. LatencyFlex.
I recently put the nvidia variant of ublue-os on my work laptop, which has Optimus graphics. Couldn't be happier.
It's great to see these variants popping up! I really think ostree may be the future for desktop Linux, and not even very far away.
The images with the nvidia drivers baked in are one of the greatest selling points for Universal Blue. Its the easiest and simplest way to run Linux with nvidia, hands down.
I kinda hope not, to be honest. Unless there could be an easy way to get tiling window managers working. It's easy on NixOS, another immutable distro, but it's definitely not as easy on something like Silverblue.
Ironically, Fedora's setup becoming the future of Linux makes it easier to tinker.
OCI images used in immutable distros such as Bazzite are very easily customizable and are much safer to tinker with. If you mess up with packages, you can roll back to the previous state and fix it. Mutable distros are also like this, but the recovery process is much more complicated and leaves leftovers in the long run.
See the Tinkerers' Guide for more details.
There's a base image of ublue, which is Silverblue without a DE. I'd suppose you can mostly just layer e.g. Sway or i3 on top.
Traditional package model will still have it's usage, of course, I agree. But if Silverblue works for a developer like me, I'd say a for more "regular" users immutable distros seem like a very viable option.
What the hell is an immutable OS?
Base system is not changeable. you install user apps etc and those are separate from the root system that remains identical.
This video on steam os which is also immutable went over it: https://youtu.be/gwUf8pwoA5U?si=RlbN0pDnAgEGa-uf
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/gwUf8pwoA5U?si=RlbN0pDnAgEGa-uf
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Immutable is awesome. The user instead uses flatpak, snap, and/or nix to install their packages and apps. If you want a mutable environment, you can use containers and their many system integration tools like distrobox.The system has rollback functionality thanks to ostree, abroot, or similar technologies, so in case an update goes awry, you can roll back to a previous working image. Update anxiety no longer exists for me
been rocking silverblue and then its ublue variant for a while. This sounds very interesting and definitely worth checking out.
I love how ostree lets you rebase to any other ostree image with no issue. The switch is just a matter of rpm-ostree rebase something something and its as painless as it gets
I was just thinking of doing a fresh install on my gaming rig. I might give this a try. I've been wanting to dig into Universal Blue for a while and this seems like a good place to start!
Interesting might have to give this a go in a dual boot.
This is not a new distro fork, it's just the immutable Fedora images modified to include packages Red Hat cannot legally ship.