I'll be sure to let you know 😜

I boarded my friend on arch and he took it like a champ. Beware, it has a very steep learning curve and needs patience.
But otherwise, a more pre-configured distro is better. Cachy os, endeavour, or as much as hate to say, fedora.

The more important thing is the DE. I strongly suggest Plasma (kde).

From OP's post it sounded like they want simple / not tweaking their OS so they can focus on gaming.

I thought Bazzite was now dying?

👆🏻
This is what I install everywhere for others that I'd need to maintain as I can leave it for 6 months and then do an update.

For more advanced users that want to play & learn, plain vanilla Arch. You learn what the hell is in your own machine.

But, as someone else said, get a feel for different desktop environments (DE) as Linux has many whereas Windows only had 1.

I started on Nobara and it’s pretty stable now, been on it for a year. I think it’s the perfect place as it’s based on Fedora so easy to look stuff up and know how to handle problems, but it auto-installs the Nvidia drivers and gets you going immediately.

They have a pretty good discord for support too!

The 4070 was released almost 3 years ago, so the driver should be decently stable and not cause that much issues, no matter the distro.

Just know that whatever distro you are choosing, it is a different workflow than Windows and it will take time to get used to it, and there will be some friction. And that's fine. The first month is the hardest and it gets a lot easier fast.

Take a popular distro because it has a bigger user base and the chances that someone else has already fixed your issue and detailed the steps is a lot bigger than a niche distro.

If you want to easily test a few distro, take a usb key and install Ventoy on it. It will allow you to plug the usb key and drop ISO directly on it and boot from it. It will allow you to easily test distros without having to reformat the usb key each time.

This is what I've been doing, and I've been on Bazzite for about 4-6 weeks now. I haven't booted my Windows drive since the first week. It's definitely an adjustment, but I'm finding my way around. Gaming on it has been pretty easy, it's figuring out the Linux command line that is taking me more time. Knowledge of MS-DOS is really not transferable; all the commands are different. It's kind of like learning a new language.

But I also don't depend on a bunch of proprietary software that won't run on Linux, as I'd been moving away from that over the past 1-2 years. I think that's made my transition a lot easier. My goal is to get to a point where the only proprietary stuff on my computer is video games.

As a beginner on Bazzite who's been struggling to figure out said distroboxes (via Distroshelf), is there a good guide somewhere to them? On like, a conceptual level. I.e., when do I need to use a distrobox and why? A lot of information I've been finding has just been command line instructions and that's great, but I really want to know the 'why' of things so I understand what I'm doing.

Really? Why though?

Now board another friend on NixOS and break their soul :)

Very basically (ELI5):

• Bazzite is an immutable distro, meaning anything in the file system but your /home is read-only. That makes the OS pretty secure: from the user (who cannot break it by messing around), from software bugs (which cannot really take down the system with them) and from potential malware incursions.
• Nice... But how do we install software on such a system? Linux software does need write access to system directories (e.g. /bin, /lib, /etc and others) during installation, and now it can't. So we need to work around that. Bazzite does that in two ways:
  • installing Flatpaks, a special way of packaging software together with all of its dependencies and running it in a kind of sandbox, separated from the rest of the system.
  • installing it inside distrobox containers (for any software that does not come as Flatpaks). These are, essentially, a separate complete Linux distro (though stripped down as much as possible) running in a sandbox. And on these we do have system level write access. If we mess up, the software messes up or it's malware, only the distrobox will be affected, not our host machine.

You may now begin to understand why I wouldn't recommend Bazzite to beginners: it's a cool, but advanced concept, and you need to understand its limitations and workarounds. Otherwise, you will just be roadblocked at some point, or, like you are, hacking away on the command line without actually understanding what you're doing. On that note, props to you for succeeding so far! But also, at the risk of sounding like a gatekeeper, it shouldn't be that way, for two reasons:

As a beginner switching from Windows, you have enough things to familiarise yourself with: the file system structure is different ("Where's my C:\ drive?"), software installation is different ("Wait? I don't just download random binaries from the Internet like a caveman?") and a lot of software is different ("Where is Paint? Where is Outlook? And where did the ribbon menu in Office go?"). You really shouldn't have to tackle the command line to get basic functionality working.

If and when you start working on the command line, you must understand what you're doing, because the command line assumes you do. It lets you do anything with and to your system, which makes it a very powerful tool. But powerful tools need to be handled with caution, and as you can see from your experience, Bazzite does not teach you that: it expects you to use the terminal right away, and since you can't, you just resort to copy-pasting random commands off the internet. In Bazzite, this cannot hurt you much because of how the distro ist built. But it's an absolutely terrible habit for new Linux users to get into. Once you switch distros and move to something else than Bazzite, just running random commands on the command line can absolutely wreck your system.

Don't worry, Arch will do that over time.

Things are moving very fast right now with a lot of back end linux stuff changing rapidly to support more people and programs coming off Windows.

Please, indulge me. What exactly is it you're talking about here?

Imo, not having access to the most recent Thunderbird or LibreOffice version doesn't matter at all to beginners, making Debian-based systems perfectly viable.

Fedora KDE, on the other hand, may turn out to be an annoyance once they need to install proprietary drivers (as OP is due to their NVIDIA card).

Agreed. I installed kubuntu on my desktop today and I'm super happy with it. Not snaps etc but kde plasma feels like a cross between windows 7 and 10. Like you know it's not windows but it's close enough where you can pick it up. I'm used to openbox so it feels very different.

Want to test if a game runs on Linux? Great, set aside a couple of hours beforehand: first to install steam and set it up, then to figure out Proton, then to troubleshoot the game not even booting up, then to fix any glitches or whatnot, then to get your controller working.

Alternately, install Linux Mint.
Search the software store for Steam. Click Install.
Let Steam do it's first run install stuff. Sign into Steam. Click the little Penguin icon to see which games should run fine on Linux. Install some by clicking on them. Enjoy games.

90-99% of the solutions originally for Ubuntu worked for me in Pop.

Yes. When I'm running Debian, Mint, or various other Debian variants, the vast majority of "Ubuntu" recipes just work.

Sometimes on Debian, itself, an Ubuntu recipe doesn't work because some feature hasn't made it into "stable" yet. But usually it's fine if the Ubuntu article is at least a year old.

My oldish Nvidia 4xxx GPU worked immediately and automatically on Linux Mint.

Your mileage may vary.

Edit: To be clear, I didn't do any command line, or even change a setting. Mint just automatically detected my Nvidia GPU and got it working during the install while I looked at pretty pictures and new user tips.

(Disclaimer: Folks here have warned me this was some combination of luck and my Nvidia GPU being a few years old.)

When my Mint install finished, I searched for "Steam" in the Mint software center and clicked "Install".

A few minutes later I was playing a game from my Steam library without any issues, without any config changes, and without any command line use.

Edit 2: On Linux, there's a little Penguin icon in the Steam library filters. Click that, and it'll only show your games that Valve is pretty confident will run without any issue.

It took me a few clicks to realize it did anything, at all. Very few of my games were filtered out. None of my games that were filtered out happened to fit
in the first page of search results.

So at first it looked like penguin filter button did nothing.

A recent post in here linked to this: https://ba.antheas.dev/bazzite-postmortem.html

Yeah please elaborate?

Searching 'bazzite development status' on ddg barfed up This article and scrolling a bit further, saw no official or nonofficial discussion of fedoras changes (being any different for an already atomic distro??). The article is AI, and very SEO'd to be showing in the top from august last year

(Bold not added)

The future of the Bazzite Linux gaming distro hangs in the balance. While the inherent relationship with Fedora creates a symbiotic partnership, it also introduces significant challenges. To thrive in this dynamic environment, the Bazzite team must embrace proactive planning, foster a strong community, and implement smart mitigation strategies.

Nobody types this shit, I won't lie you had me worried because I've very much enjoyed my experience with it so far across 3 PCs. And would be verh bummed if it came to that. But ffs this is the shit just searching for development status, and I wish sifting through this garbage wasn't a requirement now

See my other reply just before yours.

It was from another post a few days ago

Check https://bazzite.gg/

All you need for games can be grabbed from flathub, like what you need to grab ge proton, that and steam you are mostly set. I also use faugus launcher every once in a while. All distros support flathub, id worry more about what de you want since thats the real commitment. Marginal differences in actual usage if any, like being on bazzite, cachyos, or mint, I use the same exact apps, installed different ways sometimes.

My only 2 issues with bazzite has been that it names the computer bazzite, so my handheld with bazzite can't use an app to share its mouse across monitors since they have the same usernames and it causes issues and my amazon handbrake doesnt work, seems to be a bazzite issue and not all of linux since their are workarounds that work for others not using bazzite.

Ik its bazzite because someone else mentioned on the discord their handbrake wasn't working either after following the same guide

I've been using arch for years. 99.999% of the time it's fine. But the 0.001% of the time it's a real bitch

I'm a Guix guy myself. So I'm boarding them on arch+guix like myself slowly 😁 l think if you have someone to walk you through, guix is pretty easy to get started with.

I forgot to mention the I DO NOT recommend ubuntu :)) but a start is a start.

I would recommend debian or MX linux instead.

Don't use Ubuntu. It's just a suckier version of Debian. It used to be user-friendly Debian, but now Debian is more user-friendly than it.

As a reasonably new Linux user, who's merrily used Kubuntu for the past year, what makes Ubuntu sucky? Aside from dabbling in Asahi and a little bit of Arch, just to see why everyone loves it (I don't think my use-case is advanced enough to really tell the difference), my only real experience with Linux has been Mint and Kubuntu, both of which have been fine for me.

This isn't a bad-faith query, btw, I'm genuinely interested in what the actual differences are between Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora.

+1 for LM, no issues so far with my gaming laptop

What's went wrong in your .001% cases?

People don't like Ubuntu because they're(Ubuntu) trying to make money with it. For end users, it's can be a non issue because "pro" is free for 5 computers. But seeing the paywall for some is really off putting to some (myself included).

Snap really sucks and is Ubuntu's attempt at a private garden. I hate it so much.

But yet I still use Ubuntu because it works, and if it doesn't work there's a post somewhere with details on how to fix it.

I've been using Linux off and on since Red Hat 5.2 ish era. I can handle the tech geek stuff. I just don't want to.

You must be thinking of something else, they just pushed an update last week and are arguably rapidly becoming the closest thing Linux has ever been to mainstream. I just saw that my Life in Gaming (a channel about console gaming) just made a video about it.

Just use Fedora.

Don't get me wrong I love what Zorin is doing but I still think Bazzite is going to be much more "set it and forge it" for gaming than Zorin.

Debian, it's 30+ years old for a reason.

I have similar specs and use pop!_os with no problems. I've found it to be great for gaming.

It's definitely not something I would throw at my parents or my less tech-inclined friends. I think it's alright for me precisely because I'm already motivated to learn the command line and this gives me more incentive. There's more I want to do with my machine and I'll get there, but I already feel annoyed when I have to use my work laptop (which has Windows 11 on it). I didn't think I'd get to a point where I despise Windows File Explorer, but every time it lags I long for Dolphin, lol

I may throw Mint on my personal laptop just to get some experience with it. While I like bazzite, I absolutely see why I can't recommend it to most people starting out. I think more software will need to run on Wine before I can convert people, though.

You can always just get the status updates directly from the project: https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/a-brighter-future-for-bazzite/11575

Fedora Atomic! Kinoite rocks

That's pretty awesome, I bought an old used laptop, not a gaming laptop to practice and I'm new in the Cybersecurity field so I'm a little behind layman stage of using Linux. I installed Ubuntu on that laptop and it's been a pleasure to use. I was gonna partition my gaming PC's main drive and try Linux Mint on it. Even if my Nvidia card might not work out of the box, there's a whole open source community who make compatible drivers independently. I love the open source community. Bunch of people who do what they love without demanding anything for it, just wow.

I'm also assuming OP doesn't want a gaming-only setup / wants to actually have a general purpose use desktop too for work, etc.

Bazzite isn't well suited as a general purpose work + gaming machine.

I went straight to uBlue Aurora and I'm very happy with this distro.

+1

Hate pro, but more than that - hate Snap! Switched to Mint and couldn't be happier, it was seamless. I already only use none of Ubuntu defaults, so switching to mint and copying my dotfiles was almost as if I didn't even do anything. On my other machine, I just uninstalled Snap, which is close, but I feel like switching to Mint entirely would be even better. I just can't bring myself to backup everything to do a fresh install.

I was gonna partition my gaming PC's main drive and try Linux Mint on it.

Nice!

If you can afford it, I lately recommend getting a separate harddrive, and physically taking the Windows drive out, and putting a blank drive in, to run Linux on.

Windows has never liked to share, and has gotten worse (more aggressive preventing other operating systems from booting) with various integrations into BIOS for secure boot.

Also, either way, be sure to back everything up while Windows is still installed. It is much easier to lose data today, due to secure boot and full disk encryption being the default.

(Putting the Windows drive back in and resetting any BIOS settings should be enough, but it is possible that Windows will decide it wants the full disk encryption (FDE) password. I believe I have found my FDE password on the web through Microsoft account, but there's just more that can go wrong, today. So I prefer to just have my files backed up so I can relax.)

(And be aware that it may not be possible to backup files directly from a removed Windows drive, if full disk encryption was enabled. There's probably a utility for it, as long as you have the FDE password. But again, it's much less effort to just make backups before pulling the Windows drive out.)

I've had the best experience booting to a fresh blank harddrive and installing Linux Mint on it, and throwing the Windows drive into a drawer until I find I want the extra drive space more than I want a retreat path to Windows.

any modern distro should work so if you want þe go to beginner distro try mint!

Are you kidding? It's excellent as an everyday desktop! It is basically Fedora Kinoite with a bunch of quality of life stuff for gaming.

I started with a Steam Deck. Now I'm running PopOS on my Framework 13 and Bazzite on a home theatre PC. I've had far fewer issues with them than any flavor of Windows.

I can't go back. I won't.

EndeavourOS meets all of those criteria except for the GUI package management which, admittedly, is unnatural to the Windows convert. However conquering that small, surmountable hump will unlock the AUR which imo is the real value add. There are many packages that are not included in standard repos that are included in the AUR. Regardless users can choose whatever they want. EndeavourOS is a great distro that is not complicated. It uses the calamares installer and ships with KDE. An afternoon of reading about how pacman works and installing yay/paru provides a great user experience and they will never have to do a system upgrade.

Ahh I see. Won't the immutability impede work? I guess that depends on the type of work. But given OP is switching from Windows for first time it's unlikely they'll be wanting to mess that.

yeah Bazzite is also a fine gaming + typical work option

Immutability just means the system files can't be edited easily. Basically every time you update you're updating the entire OS all at once. Which is a good way to keep things stable while also modern!

Unless there's an application not available via Appimage or Flatpak ("app store"), most users will never even come up against the immutability aspect.