Bazzite: An immutable Fedora-based OS optimized for gaming on any device, from desktops to laptops to the Steam Deck

IverCoder@lemm.ee to Linux@lemmy.ml – 176 points – Introduction - Universal Blue
universal-blue.org

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.

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Who finds these names πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ

'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 πŸ˜….

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?

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:

::: spoiler spoiler

Proprietary Nvidia drivers pre-installed.
Full hardware accelerated codec support for H264 decoding.
Full support for AMD's ROCM OpenCL/HIP run-times.
xpadneo driver for wireless Xbox One controllers.
Full support for DisplayLink.
Includes Valve's KDE themes from SteamOS.
LatencyFleX, vkBasalt, MangoHud, and OBS VkCapture installed and available by default
Support for Wallpaper Engine. (Only on KDE)
Distrobox preinstalled with automatic updates for created containers.
Automated duperemove services for reducing the disk space used by wine prefix contents.
System76-Scheduler preinstalled, providing automatic process priority tweaks to your focused application and keeping CPU time for background processes to a minimum.
Customized System76-Scheduler config with additional rules and CFS parameters from Linux-TKG.
Uses Google's BBR TCP congestion control by default.
Input Remapper preinstalled and enabled. (Available but default-disabled on the Deck variant)
Helpful first-start installer provides an easy way to install numerous applications and tweaks, including installing CoreCtrl and GreenWithEnvy.
Nix package manager optionally available.
Waydroid preinstalled for running Android apps. Future releases will offer to set this up for you. (Not available on Nvidia builds)
OpenRGB i2c-piix4 and i2c-nct6775 drivers for controlling RGB on certain motherboards.
GCAdapter_OC driver for overclocking Nintendo's Gamecube Controller Adapter to 1000hz polling.
Out of the box support for Wooting keyboards.

:::

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.

You can totally use one of the tiling window manager images (sericea is based around sway) -- it wouldn't be a ton of work for that to be added to bazzite, it's just another parameter in the matrix, feel free to hop into github and help out, I'm sure people will want lots of options.

You're the main developer of UBlue, right? 🀩

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.

I was going to reply to the parent comment but read yours, and you're totally right. Tinkering to make a custom Universal Blue image is very much encouraged by the devs, and we want people to share their favorite images. That's how Bazzite and Bluefin started out, after all

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.

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.