this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2025

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102

Decided to try out Bazzite on my desktop PC - Distrobox feels like magic (ttrpg.network)

submitted 1 week ago by AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network to c/linux@lemmy.world

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My distro of choice is Debian (I like their philosophy and it works great on my laptop) but I have an nVidia card in my desktop PC, and driver management was kind of annoying. Decided to try Kubuntu, which worked ok, but I didn't really love, and then I didn't update for a bit too long and had some repo issues trying to install updates. I didn't bother digging into what the fix would be, since I had been considering Bazzite for a while, as it has been talked about a lot for gaming.

Knowing literally nothing other than "Bazzite works out of the box with nVidia" I figured I'd give it a go. First off, I was surprised at the size of the image, and how long the install took. I did some reading about atomic distros and began to understand why things were set up that way. Seems pretty cool! I still don't love that as soon as I logged in on my fresh install, Steam opened up and asked for a log in, but that is what I signed up for with Bazzite, I guess. The nVidia drivers out of the box worked fantastic, as advertised, and I love a good KDE desktop, so it's not all bad.

Initially I was frustrated that some things weren't working in the flatpak versions of the app (couldn't get to my 3d printer using the .local address from the browser because flatpak has a bug with mDNS) and layering a package with rpm-ostree seems like overkill and not a good experience. Then I watched some videos on distrobox.

I can just distrobox create --image debian:latest debian-box and then use apt install for whatever packages I want, export them and use them as if they were natively installed on Bazzite??? And this works on any distro??? I have been using Linux exclusively for a few years (and on and off for more years), but I have been totally out of the loop with distrobox and atomic distros. This feels like the same level of magic I felt when I first dual booted Ubuntu back in the Windows Vista days. This seems like it will fix 99% of the issues I run into on Linux.

I know distrobox isn't exclusive to atomic distros, but I wouldn't have discovered it if not for Bazzite.

Anyway, none of this is really new info, but I just wanted to nerd out about it for a bit with people who will know what I'm talking about.

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[–] Dangerhart@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I've also been using bazzite with an nvidia card since the windows 10 death, my only callout would be VR is utterly broken for me. This isn't a Bazzite problem, its due to nvidia drivers and impacts all Linux when using a wired headset (wireless is fine). I'm currently looking for a second cheap nvme to install windows to for just VR. If you have an AMD card everything works great. I've spent hours tinkering, switching to Monado and Xrizer from steamvr while tinkering with environment variables. Best I can do is get HL playable on 90hz with my index and a 3090. On windows I was doing 120hz pretty easily. Heres to hoping AMD really steps up next gen because I don't want to support nvidia.

[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That sounds really frustrating. When my 1070 croaks I'm going with an AMD. Probably not going to upgrade before then since I mostly play older games and GPUs are just too expensive these days. First it was crypto mining, now it's AI... I just want to play my single player RPGs!

[–] Dangerhart@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Keep in mind HDR over HDMI doesn't work for now either 🤣

[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 1 points 4 days ago

It's always something 😅

[–] YesIAmHoomanNoCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I just installed bazzite a couple of weeks ago and have multiple issues. Gonna have to migrate away from it again.. Unstable WLAN, Sound Bugs and lag spikes in games

[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 1 points 5 days ago

That sucks. I have definitely had issues with certain hardware on other machines. Even with this Bazzite install, sleep doesn't work (thanks to my Gigabyte MB, as the other poster mentioned) and I have some weird behavior with ethernet, but my asus wifi card is working fine, thankfully, and that didn't work properly on windows when I tried it before I stopped dual booting.

Hopefully you can find something that works well with your setup. The most frustrating issues to debug are ones with support for some specific hardware that isn't widely used by other Linux users, and may not ever be fully supported. Now that I am fully on linux, next time I upgrade I'm going to try to find components that are proven to work, and will probably be avoiding both Gigabyte and nVidia.

[–] bargo@mastodon.tn 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

@YesIAmHoomanNoCat @AldinTheMage they can exist for you only, it depends, is your device an unsupported or Linux-aggressive one? I have a Gigabyte laptop that is very aggressive towards Linux but is pretty much supported, and I don't have any shame to say that I use Cachy, Generally Linux since I bought it (the Laptop), I know this because I bought to my brother a sibling Laptop, same brand, and last year it did a very stupid thing, it activated secure boot with no way to disable it

[–] bargo@mastodon.tn 0 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

@YesIAmHoomanNoCat @AldinTheMage a quick google search revealed that this was common & someone posted about it on Gigabyte Support forum & the reply was that "your laptop doesn't support Linux", also another result gave a relatively simple solution, but the damage was done, I lost my brother to the dark side, & I don't think there sells in tunisia a Linux-friendly device (yes not even a SteamDeck)

[–] YesIAmHoomanNoCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I mean thanks for your research but it's not applicable.

I have a custom desktop with a MSi board and the proclaimed 'just works' distro is lacking.

I'm just grumpy and tired if having to troubleshoot everyone of my linux installs :(

[–] TheMadCodger@piefed.social 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

If you're not primarily a gamer, Bazzite has a sister ~~Kinoite~~ Aurora (or Bluefin if you want Gnome, but you said you like KDE), which is the same underlying OS, but not preconfigured for gaming. I use Bluefin on my laptop and Bazzite on my steam deck, and yeah I love not having to think about it.

Also, have you read about rebasing?

edit: Kinoite and Silverblue are Fedora's default atomic distros. Aurora and Bluefin are the equivalents that are preconfigured out of the box for ease of use and related to Bazzite.

[–] eodur@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think Aurora is closer to Bazzite and Bluefin for KDE.

[–] TheMadCodger@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago

Oh you're right. I don't KDE so I gave the Silverblue equivalent accidentally. I'll edit it.

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[–] Mikina@programming.dev 15 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I also highly recommend looking into https://www.winboat.app/

It might be a pain to setup on Bazzite (it's probably better to just use ostree-rpm for the prerequisities), but it's exactly the same kind of magic, but for Windows apps!

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Is that a compatibility layer thing, or a full Windows VM (requiring a Windows license) integrated into the Linux desktop environment? Being able to run the Affinity suite without having to switch to Windows is appealing.

Edit: There's no GPU access so it's unlikely things like Affinity Photo would run well.

[–] Neptr@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Full KVM in Docker but doesnt require a Windows license.

[–] sga@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

if it is not requiring license, it is either because you leave windows unactivated (because that barely has any use) or because they use some activation scripts which is illegal. it is very likely former. does it matter? not really

[–] StarlightDust@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago

it does need activating and it installs an evaluation copy by default. no idea what the poster above is on about.

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[–] melfie@lemy.lol 2 points 1 week ago

Haven’t heard of WinBoat and looks pretty slick—thanks for sharing!

[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 2 points 1 week ago

Huh, I may look into this. Sounds neat. Thanks!

[–] artyom@piefed.social 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I still don't love that as soon as I logged in on my fresh install, Steam opened up and asked for a log in, but that is what I signed up for with Bazzite, I guess.

Yeah, it's a gaming distro and anyone who games will be using Steam, especially on Linux.

I do wish they would release a non-gaming version.

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Bluefin and Aurora are the original distros. Bazzite is a spin of bluefin.

[–] petrichornetrainfall@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

uBlue is the original or base distro. Aurora, bluefin, and bazzite are spins of uBlue.

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Ublue is not a workable system image. It's the general cloud native process to make distributions. There's a bare bones starting point oci image called ublue-os. But that's like saying the hammer is the original chair. It's confusing a tool with the final product.

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[–] artyom@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago

I'm aware but those don't have what Bazzite does.

[–] MadameBisaster@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 week ago (11 children)

Isnt aurora from the same devs?

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[–] skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Linux noob here, I've been running Mint for about a year and constantly removed about my Nvidia card's performance vs. Windows. I have the most updated closed source drivers installed, but cooking shaders on games still takes a half hour and many games run like trash even after precompiling said shaders. Space Marine 2 comes to mind, runs like butter on my Win10 partition but is basically unplayable on Linux.

Am I hearing that I just need to switch to Bazzite and this problem disappears?? Because on God I will do that literally tonight if that's true. I had been holding out for a new batch of Nvidia proprietary drivers to hit the scene or else just resigning myself to having to buy an AMD card.

I'd expect that Bazzite and Mint would use the same Nvidia proprietary drivers without much noticeable change in performance, but to be honest I don't know jack about shit about their back end behind the scenes processes so I could be wildly off base.

[–] seitzer@piefed.social 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Am I hearing that I just need to switch to Bazzite and this problem disappears??

Yes, simple as that. I use Bazzite for ~2years now on my main desktop with nvidia and a legion go. It really is "install and forget it's linux". It's almost too good to be true...let's hope the big "enshitification" doesn't follow soon.

[–] skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fuck yeah, heard. I've got a project to do tonight. Thanks!

[–] seitzer@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago

During installation make sure to read up on atomic distros, there are some changes like package handling or the immutable system, but it's not a big hurdle. Have fun!

[–] sga@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

do a lot of magic with the kernel on Bazzite

sadly, no. there are not any special kernel parameters or compilation difference. at best, these things can bring +- 5% difference (assuming a general benchmark, instead of a special synthetic benchmark). if there was some major switch you could hit which would increase performance, most distros would just press it. if most are not doing it, then it is likely because either their is not much to gain.

for example, cachy os compiles it's programmes for x86-64 v3/v4 as opposed to v1 or v2 for most distros. their have not been many extensions to x86-64 between v2 to v3, and most performance gain you get is in specific hashing benchmarks. on average, their is not much reason. as to why not all distros do it? because any software compiled in v1 runs on v4, but v3 can not be run on v2, v4 or v3, so if all distros would start doing it, then either they would have to stop serving users v3 or earlier versions (that is practically everyone with cpu before 2020, and new v3 cpus are still being made), or they would have to serve separate v3 versions for v3 folks, v2 for v2 folks and so on. that is a lot more costly, and increases software burden. even big company like microsoft is not serving different windows version forr different x86-64 versions (though they have different things, and windows 11 requires v2 or higher afaik)(it may even be v3, but not sure).

[–] seitzer@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago

The repository itself or the build process have had no changes, with the one addition being the large set of handheld and performance optimization patches Bazzite users have come to expect. These include the latest in handheld compatibility patches (OneXPlayer, ROG Ally, Steam Deck LCD/OLED, Surface devices) and stability fixes.

https://github.com/bazzite-org/kernel-bazzite

Enough magic for me :D I'm not sure where I read about latency fixes as well, have to come back on that.

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Yes

I got a 3090 card and have her 0 issues so far. Wouldn't even consider another OS for gaming at the moment with how well everything works.

Even my monitor works better with Bazzite than with Windows 11.

[–] AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 week ago

I still had to wait for a long time for shaders to load on initial launch on some games (DA Veilguard) but performance seemed fine. I didn't have performance issues on Ubuntu so not sure about your particular issues, but another thing to consider is based on your card, the latest nvidia drivers may not be correct - I had to download an older driver package for my card (1070) as recommended by nvidia. Bazzite had me select which series of card I had when downloading the ISO, so I assume it included the older drivers for my card. I haven't actually checked the installed driver version though

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[–] blipcast@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I had used Ubuntu in the past, but ran into some wifi driver issues when installing it on my new laptop, fast forward a few years, and I was ready to give Linux another go. I read that Bazzite was pre-optimized for gaming, and I figured everything else I want to do should be relatively easy in comparison.

I've been impressed by how clean and no nonsense the interface is, and is just a solid daily driver OS. I've been slowly learning the nuances of what it means to be an Atomic Desktop, but I still get confused about the proper way to install things if they can't be found in the flatpak discovery tool. Pretty sure I have two versions of Chrome installed right now. That's not a problem with Bazzite though, just a new-to-linux problem.

[–] sga@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago

you have 2 major package managers (ootb) on bazzite iirc - flatpak and rpm (through rpmtree). ideally - do not install anything through latter. that is the one that requires the cli. if you can not find a package on flatpak (very common if you want a cli thing, or a niche gui software, or some browsers), then try to find if it is served elsewhere. for example, as this post highlights very nicely - use distrobox. for example, use distrobox and add arch (for example), and you can get new cli stuff.

for chrome, if you have 2 versions, either you have 2 different flatpaks, or 1 from rpmtree, for that, try using rpm-ostree search chrome (or some other package name, for example chromium). you may also just want to do chro (in a terminal window) and then press tab (once or twice) to get completion options. that should help you with name of package most likely.

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