cross-posted from: https://pawb.social/post/27451562
Seemingly for the first time, the Bazzite gaming-focused Linux distro has appeared on the Steam Hardware Survey. Well done to the Bazzite team for making such an amazing distro for gaming (and now just general usage as a while too)! Been my main choice for going on a year now for my general use distro, and I haven’t looked back.
I’m really happy to see Bazzite climbing the chart. It’s by far the best gaming-centric Linux distro.
I’m not sure I will ever understand the appeal of Linux Mint. Not because it’s bad, but because there are better distros for every use-case I can think up, especially gaming.
If you don’t mind me asking, why exactly is bazzite a gaming centric Linux distro? What does it do different from other distro. I know it’s an atomised fedora based distro, aside from the drivers and software that’s pre installed, what does it offer that it gets recommended as distro for gaming user?
What else do you need?
You install, log into steam and play games. The age of modpatching custom kernels for low latency or hardware hacks is gone. The kernel already das what it takes to outperform windows on gaming. It’s all on the user space now to bring convenience and ease of use.
The package distribution model was never popular with users. It was perfect for sys admins. But people don’t want to manage a system, they want to use their device. Image based containerized OS and software distribution makes more sense for end users who have no interest on troubleshooting a pacbage dependency conflict.
Ohh okay, when people pushed it as distro for gaming my mind did think about custom kernel optimised for gaming. I was really hoping it was something like that but yeah you are right I have seen and heard about diferent distros running some games better on Linux so the kernel is already there. Anyway the good news from all this is people who used windows primarily for gaming is now shifting to Linux whatever the flavour it may be.
… Thats about it. Bazzite comes with everything you need to play games without much hassle pre installed. All the drivers, software to run windows games, various utilities such as key remapping, steam, and if desired you can even get emulators pre installed to play console games.
It also works with next to zero cli knowledge required which is great for anyone who may be coming from windows and is intimidated by that Linux facet. You can just slap it on a machine and generally things just work and you can start playing.
Mint is very plain and simple, which makes it the most non-threatening transition from Windows for casual users. It’s also one of the most well rounded distros. Sure, other distros can do specific things better, but Mint deserves its flowers for its polish.
Mint feels a little sloppy, though.
I would much rather suggest Bluefin, which is from the same group as Bazzite. And if you are a fan of KDE (or a more Windows-like UI), then Aurora is an excellent one, too.
They are all atomic, so users can’t really mess them up.
Bazzite > Bluefin > Aurora in usership from what I’ve seen. I started on Bazzite KDE but ended up staying with Aurora.
Yes, Bazzite and Bluefin are more popular for sure. But I like Aurora as a daily driver (more for power users), and have Bluefin installed in other laptops and our TV’s miniPC for its “Chrome OS” feel and simplicity.
But any option is better than Mint, IMO. Mint feels unfinished and was not very stable. Aurora and Bluefin are the only linux distros that I haven’t broken in 24h. LOL
Yeah, bazzite, or any atomic distro, is not something I would recommend to someone coming from windows. It’s just too different in some ways.
Been running bazzite myself as a fairly experienced linux user and love it though.
I think it would actually be better for beginners, were it not for issue solving: any web search for a solution is bound to give you mostly answers written for traditional distros, which would potentially be incompatible with Bazzite.
I found it easy to transition to as a new linux user. I’m curious what you think makes it too different.
What would be better for desktop use? It’s simple, with wizards and help for setting up almost everything, has support for all the ubuntu stuff like ppas and deb packages so if there is a linux package for some software you are usually covered, and it also doesn’t restrict you from doing whatever you want, so you can change it to your liking (and at least there is a stable base that you start changes from)
Kubuntu minimal (no snaps) or Pop!_OS would be great picks for those use-cases.