[Caution: Long Post Ahead]

A while ago, I tried to dual boot my computer with Kubuntu. It went alright. There were some games in my Steam library that I couldn't play but I was willing to accept that. I had wanted to use Kubuntu as my development environment while Windows remain my gaming environment.

Then I tried to go through with a major upgrade. Yup, that was a mistake. Something had gone wrong and I couldn't boot into Kubuntu anymore. I think I was already fed up with dual-booting back and forth anyway. So I went back to Windows full-time. There was an attempt to upgrade to Windows 11. "Maybe it's not that bad."

It was that bad. I had to reinstall Windows 10.

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Few days ago, I decided I couldn't take it anymore with Windows. Hearing others running into issues with every update. Things resetting on them. It was a matter of time. Plus, MS will end Win10 support by Oct 2025 and I don't want to be waffling on a decision to switch to something else.

On top of all that, my boyfriend's computer can't handle Windows 11 and his computer was built to last a few more years AT LEAST. It seemed like bullshit for him to have to buy a new computer just so Windows 11 will run on it. On top of the fact that I don't think he should put up with the poor performance of Windows 11 and the way they hamstrung user customizability.

Here I am, a few days after installing Bazzite.

While I am aware of other gaming-focused Linux distro, I was drawn by the idea that Bazzite was built with handheld PCs in mind. Plus, the idea that it's a "semi-immutable" OS means I'm less likely to screw something up installing all sorts of stuff, rendering the OS unusable and having to jump through hoops of figuring out what went wrong and how to excise it from the OS.

I opted with the term "semi-immutable" because you can still layer programs and libraries on top of the system. In Bazzite, it's done via rpm-ostree. Borrowing Git vernacular, every time I layer something on top, it creates a new commit. I can rebase to a previous one if the layering went wrong. In fact, GRUB menu offers the previous commit as a boot option.

I also like that Bazzite's documentation is pretty decent. It's not inundated with too much details beyond what you need to get up and running. Don't get me wrong, I like knowing the nitty-gritty and ArchLinux's wiki is great for that. But when I'm trying to just get things set-up, I want something more concise!

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I did run into some issues, but I most of them up to user error 🙃 and a learning curve. Installing programs and especially libraries on Bazzite almost feels like a paradigm shift away from the usual way of installing things. Instead of the typical package manager (DNF in this case, since it's based on Fedora Atomic), you have the aforementioned rpm-ostree. Although that's labelled as the last resort. There's at least five more ways to install things to your system. Hell, they even give you a means to host services without relying on rpm-ostree via Quadlet.

For instance, I thought I had to install VSCodium via rpm-ostree because I was running into a lot of issues with Rust not being able to compile crates that required system libraries within the editor, despite the fact that I already layered those required libraries earlier!

Yeah, I did install VSCodium via flatpak first. I had wanted to stick with what seems to be the preferred method of installing apps on Bazzite. But it required more setup than I wanted to deal with, so I switched to the AppImage version. I think leftover config files from the flatpak version may have interfered and caused issues. On top of that, I had installed rustup via Homebrew instead of using the script on Rust's official site's Install page.

Ultimately, I'm using Lapce now. It's faster, but it does have some odd bugs. Still, I'm more productive with Lapce than I was with VSCodium. I vaguely recall having some issue with Lapce on Windows so it took me a while to give it another chance. I'm glad I did!

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Anyway, I'm afraid this post have gotten ridiculously long. I'm actually using the "Add long text" feature and this is the 11th section! Mostly, I want to say that despite the issues, Bazzite have been a Linux install that I'm really happy with. It didn't take me as long as it did with previous Linux installs to get setup the way I want. And I haven't ran into a Steam game in my library that couldn't run well (even if a little bit of tinkering was required).

If only they had one with Xfce instead. It seems like if I really want to, I would have to make my own custom image of Bazzite. I might actually try, since KDE (as of 6.3.0) has a showstopping bug that requires me to log in via SSH to deal with. Or hard reboot.

Feb 25 · 10 months ago · 😄 1

4 Comments ↓

Windows 11 drove my wife to Linux as well. We went with KDE Neon, an unusual choice but it seems to work fine on that hardware. (after some fiddling) It was Windows Vista that drove me to delete my Windows partition for good. I'm rather surprised at your choice as it is one that hasn't crossed my radar. How is the flatpak situation for additional applications?

I almost never use flatpaks with text editors or development tools. It just never made sense, imo. I moved to Kinoite, which is what Bazzite is based off of, and I've been liking it quite a lot.

Btw, with Fedora 42, they are going to make a COSMIC desktop spin, which might be interesting to try out. I don't know if it'll have an atomic variant though.

Just as a point of clarification: DNF is replaced by rpm-ostree in Fedora Atomic as well.

Right, rpm-ostree in Fedora Atomic. I was thinking Fedora but then I was thinking I didn't want to confuse people about Bazzite's base OS. Thanks for clarifying!

And yeah, I'm learning that lesson with flatpak pretty quick! I was hopeful that the situation had improved with flatpak. Disappointing to see that it had not. I guess it never will be.

That's pretty cool about COSMIC! Hope they'll actually make an atomic version with that DE. The downside is if I want to switch desktop environment, I probably have to do a fresh install. I could try and rebase first if I'm willing to fresh install anyway :P

@darkghost Flatpak is fine as long you don't mind troubleshooting the apps after. And as clseibold mentioned, it is a little silly to install dev tools and whatnot via flatpak. Those don't work too well with sandboxing.

Hey, I have no judgment on which distro you and your wife went for! As long it works and don't give you trouble then I'm glad you guys got free of Windows!

It took me this long to switch because I skipped past Windows Vista. Went straight to 7. Plus the Linux gaming situation wasn't very good back then so I didn't really have that much of a choice. I'm glad that a lot of advancements have been made on that front now!