Weren’t you threatening to shutdown Bazzite just a few months ago?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44381265

Oh no I didn't mean as a personal attack or anything so thanks for taking your time and for the reply! I know the chances are miniscule but there is that 1% in the back of my brain because it happened in the past with some distros I've really liked

I don't doubt it, but I actually really hate that the build system is a bunch of bash scripts, github actions and assuming the previous stage builds fine. Especially when the custom image forkable repo has an action commented out to squeeze more temporary storage out of GHA hosted runners because some images don't even fit on those (like the gnome-deck). I wish the entire setup was a little more decoupled and maybe allowed you to build multiple stages in one go so the entire system was more "forkable" and less spread out. I went on a bit of a wild goose chase trying to build Bazzite without the Firefox RPM removed (rpm-ostree doesn't like adding and removing and then adding packages again).

I did voice that concern in some Bazzite-related spaces before and it felt like it got brushed off with a weird undertone.

Just want to say big fan of bazzite! Been running it on my 9800x3d / 9070 rig since April and I have very few complaints

@KyleGospo, Any plans for an arm64 version?

I'm not sure I'd define the atomic Fedora variants as "distros" in the traditional sense.

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but Bazzite, Bluefin, etc, are basically just Dockerfiles that use Atomic Fedora as the base image.

So you are basically getting a pre-built docker container that is "Fedora + various configs added on top", and then you are booting that docker image.

Since it's just a container file, anyone could theoretically just fork the Bazzite repo, make some changes to the Dockerfile, then push it to github + let github actions build a custom docker image.

So is that custom docker image a distro? Some would say yes, others would say no.

haha, is Windows a custom distro? is it going away anytime soon?

> How much of a longevity guarantee do you need from a distro that is used for gaming, of all things?

Games are something I do to relax. I want as little friction to play the games as possible. For tech projects and work stuff having to mess with the OS and move away from deprecated stuff isn’t such a big deal, it’s part of the work. But for games I want them to just work as much as possible, I don’t want to have to find a new distro and install it and set everything up again on my gaming PC.

Despite Windows sucking in so many ways, it is the OS with the most assurance that a game will work without fuss. I am happy to see Linux closing this gap.

I’ve been running the same gaming setup for almost 10 years. Having to upgrade or change OS is a major thing. Don’t minimize longevity.

Currently I literally can’t find the time to convert my drive from master boot record to GPT for Windows 11. I can’t imagine having to completely switch operating systems/distros because it just disappeared. Worrying if it will still be around is legitimate.

It actually does in the upstream dev builds https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/holo/dirlock/-/wikis/Enabling-d...

It’s not in a consumer friendly state yet, but I’ve been using my steamdeck with encryption for a month now with zero issues. I guess technically this is not “full” disk encryption since it’s just the home dir, but I only care about protecting my personal info which is all in the home dir anyway.

Encrypted home directories are coming to the Steam Deck, using the same kernel API that Android uses. https://lwn.net/Articles/1038859/

FDE would be nice though.

It doesn't need to, if your disk supports OPAL2 - just set the password in BIOS and encrypt the drive, it's fully transparent to the OS and as a bonus, there's virtually no performance hit unlike software-based encryption like LUKS.

I have both a steamdeck on SteamOS and a pc on Bazzite and they both work exactly the same. They both run literally the same steam UI and both run flawlessly so I couldn’t even tell you which one I’m using if you just showed me a screen and controller.

Pop!_OS isn't good for gaming thanks to being quite behind in package versions. You're better off going with a dedicated gaming distro (which offers recent packages) such as PikaOS if you want a Debian base.

I tried Pop before Bazzite on my PC back in April and maybe I’m just bad at Linux, but it was a pain in the ass for gaming at first boot. Bazzite ran Expedition 33 out the box. Didn’t have to download drivers, didn’t have to configure anything, it just worked.

There are limitations but if you want a gaming machine, bazzite is a no-brainer to me. Poo is very impressive but I just don’t want to fight my OS constantly when it comes to gaming.

Bazzite works a bit differently as it's an immutable distro. Whilst updates for normal/user-level packages (Steam etc) will continue to work (as these are Flatpaks), your core system packages won't and you can't just change your repo to say Fedora's repos, as system updates are image-based and are pulled directly from Bazzite's github repo (which in turn pulls from Feodra).

The good news is, you can easily rebase to any other uBlue or even Fedora Atomic distro with just one or two commands, or if you're technical, you can even fork Bazzite's repo and build your own Bazzite (they even provide instructions on how to do this, it's very very simple, relatively speaking).

I don’t see why Valve wouldn’t try to support lots of hardware. Small time outfits like CachyOS can do it, why wouldn’t they? I think their motive with the Steam Box is hardware sales. It seems like they’re trying to shift the gaming ecosystem away from Windows.

SuSE would be a better option then, IMO. Not only have they been around much longer (1994 vs 2004), they offer much better support compared to Canonical. And as a bonus, you don't need to put up with any of the continuous enshittifications Canonical subjects you to (Snaps, increasing poor quality code etc).

I'm a big fan as well, but couldn't some clueless IBM exec decide to ruin all the parts of Fedora that Bazzite relies on? What if IBM/RH throw their financial weight behind something like the proposal to drop multiarch packages (breaks Steam)?

I get what you're saying in this comment. And separate from that concept I'm adding on: "Going to?"

Not necessarily a corporate distro, but there is somewhat more sustainability in a project based on Debian or Arch than an individual with a bunch of organically handmade scripts.

Well, the idea of Linux was "a better minix" and "I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones".