Bazzite also has a much more frequent release cadence which is important for the kernel and Mesa. SteamOS only ships a major version every year.
SteamOS 3.7 is still on Kernel 6.11 and KDE Plasma 6.2, for example. Bazzite is 6.17 and Plasma 6.5.
This matters if you're using more recent hardware or want the latest driver optimizations. My 9070 XT is supported by Bazzite, SteamOS won't even boot.
One insanely underrated Linux software is Lutris, if you have non-steam games, it is phenomenal at helping you wire them up for Wine, especially when Steam itself behaves weird (like installing third party things is not exactly done intelligently by Steam).
After that, just use EndeavourOS.
I used Antergos before that and EndevourOS has been great since.
The actual user does not give any shits. And while I love tinkering around and understand my OS/distro/$software I can absolutely relate. Linux should be at last so accessible that most of the things just work and a broad audience can just use their computer.
- Out-of-the-box support for Xbox, Wii, Switch, PS3, PS4, PS5, and numerous other controllers.
- Nvidia drivers and the latest Mesa for AMD & Intel pre-installed, with tweaks applied as needed
- Bazzite ships with support for additional Wi-Fi adapters, display standards like DisplayLink, and more
- Out of the box support for not only desktop PCs, but handhelds, tablets, and home theater PCs.
I'm far from a Linux super-user, I only use it for my servers and Raspberry Pis, but even I would rather pick Debian and install the necessary stuff by hand. This feels like opting-in to bloat on your newly installed OS.
I'll happily listen if anyone has a good selling point for those, but I can't think of any OS less attractive than something tailored for a single use-case on my generalist PC build.
With previous distros I always had issues configuring something or another with games/drivers. Bazzite has been the closest to Windows/console experience for me wrt Linux pc gaming.
If this is a generalist computer, then you are absolutely correct. This is not the distro for you. This is very specifically built for gaming.
Give it a shot, not like it costs anything!
Hopefully Valve will release a general version of SteamOS with Steam Machine coming (and even they are questionable with their track record)
Just need the Atomic Fedora base to still be around and everything else is already pre-setup to run on GitHub infrastructure neither of which I anticipate going away soon. (Famous last words)
Calling it a superset of Fedora rather than just being its own bespoke distro can be a fine line, but really there's nothing stopping anyone from forking it and continuing on, a good few people run their own forks already to meet their own needs a bit more specifically.
LelouBil•1h ago
I really think immutable distributions are the future of linux desktop, and maybe distributions that use OCI images, beacause they are a lot easier to work with than say, NixOS for example.
If you want to have your custom bazzite, you just do a "FROM bazzite:<whatever-version-you-want-to-pin" and add stuff you want.
Of course, you loose a bit of the reproducibility, since usually container images do not pin packages (and maybe other reproducibility issues I am not aware of) but it is way easier to work with.
mikae1•46m ago
hokumguru•26m ago