this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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Would this be a good distro for a noob who's thinking about switching from Windows? Or is this more advanced to maintain and use as a daily driver?
Yes, it's designed to be as easy as possible to manage and exceedingly difficult to break in a permanent way.
It's also turnkey in comparison to Windows, in the sense that you already have all of your hardware drivers and have Steam installed right from the get-go.
Yes, with one caveat: it isn't going to work like a lot of other distros when it comes to installing packages. If you need help, use the uBlue forums.
Otherwise, it's great, and very stable.
I advise against using Bazzite as a Windows convert, unless you're happy to do a lot of reading to understand what you're actually signing up for. The founder doesn't really care about Windows Gamers (or anyone outside of the professional linux world), according to a comment they made earlier today in response to criticism of the description "cloud native".
To save you a click, the conversation was about the description of Bazzite as "cloud native" on the bazzite homepage* can be confusing or even misleading for people who assume it means "will run in the cloud". The founder explicitly commented they'll keep doubling down on the term until people no longer complain about it.
Their argument was that there is an entire foundation for Cloud Native Computing and that the concept is "an incredibly common thing in any professional paid Linux job." They understand that Windows Gamers in particular might have the aforementioned misconception, but they don't care if you get it.
That doesn't necessarily make Bazzite a bad distro, but I'd be wary about the level of assistance you can expect from people who think that a technical word soup featuring terms like "build our images" and "deploying Linux environments to users" is enough to explain that "cloud native" actually just means the development process and the end product has nothing to do with the cloud.
*Specifically, the homepage's text opens with:
"Bazzite is a cloud native image built upon Fedora Atomic Desktops that brings the best of Linux gaming to all of your devices - including your favorite handheld."
I don't know why they'd lead with the development method, rather than describing what the OS actually does, but apparently that's what they care most about.
As an aside, I don't see any obvious description what "atomic" means on the Fedora Atomic site either.
Cloud native is the end product too. The point of my firmness with you was not to express that I don't care about windows users -- quite the contrary, none of this would exist without that -- but to express that I don't care about your issue with the definition of an already defined word.
What bearing does it have on use of the end product? If I am a German Native, but move to France, and someone asks me where I live, what difference does it make whether I'm German Native?
Bazzite isn't cloud based in the sense of "runs in the cloud". If you install it on your computer, it runs on your computer. It's not a cloud resident, in the sense of that analogy, no matter whether it was born there.
Unless it does, in which case it would seem that the term isn't quite so clear as you think.
My issue isn't with the definition, but with the implicit assumption that it's well known or easy to understand, as well as the way it is used. We had that discussion over in the other thread already, but the gist of your replies has always been "I don't care if the term is useless or can be misunderstood. It's correct, so it stays." That stance is my issue.
Bruh, they literally link to their (and the community at large's) definition, right there where it's first mentioned on the home page... You literally copied the link when you copied their first paragraph in your previous comment.
You may not like the way it's being used, but you can't get any further away from "assuming it's easy to understand" than a link to your meaning.
And on that note, you said you couldn't find a definition of Atomic on Fedora's site... So I clicked just one link from your posted link there and found this.
I read your posted argument from earlier, and I want to believe you when you argue your goal is to push for Linux to be more accessible. But the reality of your arguments seem to tell a different story. You seem more interested in dying on a pointless hills while dissuading interested converts from trying what is one of the most stable and user friendly distros I've ever tried.
Linux is going to have a LOT of terms a new user will have to learn. The idea of a cloud native image may cause a misconception, but no more so than any of the other myriad terms a new user will have to learn.
You mean the link that aays
and assumes those terms already mean something to you? Oh wait, cloud native is a link again let's see...
Great! Two more technical terms! Oh, there's another text further down the page.
Nope, still no explanation, but we've got another link, this time to an actual definition:
Aaaand it's another wall of technical terms.
What is "easy to understand" about this, unless you're already familiar enough with that specific technical field that it really isn't an issue in the first place? A definition directed at experts is no explanation, and hitting a reader with a wall of terms they don't even know how to classify, let alone understand, isn't very accessible.
Sorry, I didn't think I'd have to "Get started" on a particular distro to find a note on what the whole "atomic" thing they advertise is about. Wouldn't have killed them to put that paragraph on the previous page already, just a small note at the top, to explain the selling point they're using.
That's an issue I've complained about before: The entry barrier is too high still. People shouldn't have to learn a lot of new terms, if at all possible. In that vein, it's better to start out with distros that require less learning, and if the interest grips you, start learning and exploring from there.
But if you have to learn terms, it should be ordered from most fundamental and universal to most specific, and I'd put "cloud native" in the back half of that spectrum. You'll need to know what a file system is, for instance, may need to learn the term distro / distribution and many more, but for the immediate operation of a system, you don't need to know what OCI, Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, Prometheus, deploying, workloads or "loosely coupled systems that interoperate in a manner that is secure, resilient, manageable, sustainable, and observable" mean.
So I genuinely do recommend starting out with something less laden with technical terms, and working your way up from there. I started out with Ubuntu, now I'm using Nobara and plan to use my old spare drive to try some other flavours like Silverblue. It's not that I don't think the learning isn't worth it, it's just that it shouldn't be frontloaded.
My gripe with Bazzite isn't whether it's user friendly, but whether its maintainers are. The founder made a point of telling people "the more I see this whining the more I want to keep it on the website", because it's an accurate definition, no matter how useless. I like reasonable discussion, I can accept personal disagreement, but what I'm seeing here is a user providing a prime example of the confusion the word causes and the founder replying to the effect of "now I want to use it even more".
That's the exact opposite of accessibility. That's someone saying "By the way, this is a barrier" and getting the reply "Yes, and people complaining about it makes me want to keep it." It's not even "Sorry, this can't be helped" so much as "I want this barrier to be there" for no good reason.
So that is a hill I will fight on, not because of the specific term but because of the culture behind it that plagues the tech sphere at large. We're building walls of technical understanding requirements instead of bridges of explanations. Some walls are reasonable, some necessary, some harmless. Some gaps are too wide for a single bridge to cross, so you'll need to take a detour over other concepts. But building walls out of spite, along with (not represented here, but also common) scoffing at those looking to build bridges or telling people looking for entry "just scale the wall", are communication culture issues that serve to isolate rather than integrate.
Yeah, and if you click enough links on Wikipedia you always wind up at logic, math, or philosophy. At some point, you are going to have to read new words to learn new things. And it will get increasingly technical as you go deeper.
But bazzite devs don't just leave you up shit's creek with a turd for a paddle. They still make installing and gaming on Linux far more accessible than the majority of other distros. With a significantly smaller learning curve. And provide solid guides for new users that use beginner friendly language.
And therein lies the crux of my problem with your argument. Scaring folks away to seek out another distro where they will almost certainly have to learn more to get started is hurting your stated cause. You claim to be fighting the good fight against "unreasonable barriers of entry", but you are causing more than you are solving. Over a very ignorable term.
When it was just you arguing over the value of the term with the dev, okay, whatever. But when you throw a new user asking for help out to sea because you had an argument that has no bearing on the significant reduction to the barrier of entry to Linux gaming that Bazzite provides, you are shooting your own goal in the head.
You didn't care that they used a single term that might cause confusion, you didn't care that a person who was looking for help on getting started with Linux gaming was asking about installing one of the most beginner friendly distros, you wanted to win an argument and hold a grudge.
Maybe you don't even see it yourself, the road to hell is paved with good intentions after all, but the obvious outcome of your actions directly go against the goals you claim to have.
ETA: The Bazzite homepage also makes numerous references to it being "installable on all your favorite devices" so it becomes quickly apparent to most folks that it isn't hosted "in the cloud". And it has this fun definition of Atomic - Bazzite is Atomic meaning that after every update the previous version of the operating system is retained on your machine. Should an update cause any issues, you can select the previous image at boot time.
I get that you don't like the term cloud native image, but it is really a very small piece of a very user friendly pie.
Provided you're willing to dig deep, yes, but Wikipedia usually offers a summary of the term at the top. In the event, I found Wikipedia's explanation of cloud native much more useful than the link to the ublue page about it, or the CNCF's definition.
I don't have an accurate sense of how much you'd have to learn about bazzite, so I'll have trust you on this when it comes to the usage. I personally didn't have difficulties with other distros, but I'm also not entirely new to the OS world, so my experience may be skewed.
My proximate issue is the pitch, the entry point, the first impression. Evidently, there are people who come across that term and worry that it may mean what "cloud" in many other contexts means: "Your data is somewhere else you have no control over." And how would they know they're wrong? If they click on the link, they're faced with a stack of technical terms they might not understand. Even if they concluded that nothing explicitly says their system will be running in the cloud, how could they trust that conclusion built on unknowns?That insecurity creates an entry barrier for those looking at the website, the impact of which we can't measure, but that doesn't have to mean it's negligible.
The underlying issue, however, is the philosophy behind doubling down on that. If you're faced with evidence of misunderstandings, people pointing out that barrier, and make a point of not just ignoring it but explicitly saying "Now I want to keep that barrier even more", that speaks to a mindset that I personally am strongly opposed to. Handing people guides and saying "here, climb over that barrier on your own" doesn't fully mitigate that.
Hence, in absence of personal experience on the usage, I'll argue from a position of principle. It's not a mindset I want to endorse, and so I attempt to steer people away from what I perceived as a higher barrier of entry.
Thin clients connected to some cloud-hosted VM are also installable on many devices. Microsoft 365 is available as apps, but still runs in the cloud (but it doesn't even pitch that, it just says "all in one place" - the mention of cloud is further down the page, after some other feature pitches). How would I know "native" doesn't mean "lives in the cloud"? It wouldn't be the first time marketing fudges terms.
And again, I advise against making assumptions about what becomes apparent to most folks. Most folks aren't confident in their technical understanding and may err on the side of caution. I've tried guiding people through the simplest things, and if there was one detail they weren't sure they understood, the immediate response was to abort the process for fear of breaking something. A message box pops up and they panic "Aaah what's happening, what does that mean" because they don't trust their understanding. I've watched people click on some explanation, get confused at some term and resort to fleeing the page back to things they know better..
I have no issue with the term. Technical terms are useful in their respective technical contexts, where people know what they're a shorthand for. If I talk to a data analyst, I'll use the term DFM. If I talk to a database engineer, I might use the term denormalisation. But if I talk to a sales manager and use either of those, they'll stare at me blankly. And that's what I dislike: Using the term in a context where I feel it's out of place and is known to cause confusion.
...but may well be the first piece they taste.
But like I said, my issue isn't with the piece of pie, but the baking practice: "The more people tell me they don't like raisins, the more I want to add raisins to spite them." Their pie may otherwise be delicious, but I still wouldn't recommend that baker.
To put a line under all this, I might give Bazzite a try myself, see how I get along with it, but that won't change the fact that I find such a spiteful mentality unfit for recommendation.
I believe in the value of user-friendly presentation, not just systems, because the presentation matters to many users. I also believe that the Linux community at large should present itself more helpful and user-friendly, and comments like the one that sparked the thread don't help that image.
I want to see the Linux ecosystem grow, and I believe that requires a willingness to cater to the least technical users as well. Yes, some amount of learning will be inevitable, but the first contact at least should welcome users as simply and comfortably as possible.
And as a side effect, being more willing to explain and help each other will also help the rest of us. Spite and elitism don't help anyone.
I can tell you right now if you want the Linux ecosystem to grow, the average person is probably downloading the installer and installing it because of word of mouth or mentions in YouTube videos, and not writing all of these words I'm not going to read on lemmy.
You've already done a direct disservice to your cause by starting this comment thread in the first place -- trying your best to dissuade one such user because you don't like a word and don't like that a developer doesn't value your opinion of that word.
I have no issue with the word, but with the spiteful mentality of "the more people suggest I change it, the less I want to".
Thanks for that insight, Lucifer
I would be skeptical of Lucifer's insight on this. By his own admission, he has never actually used Bazzite, and is basing his opinion on a single argument he had with one of the many dev's in another post. To quote Lucifer directly :
Obviously switching to Linux will cause you to encounter new terms you won't be familiar with, or terms you are familiar with used in new and novel ways, devs and users will be opinionated and have arguments over these terms (and everything else an opinion can be had on frankly). And Lucifer's concerns on this front are not without merit, but he is overstating the severity in this case and painting a wildly inaccurate picture. And you don't actually need to gain a deep understanding of all these terms anyway. (Right away or at all depending on your goals)
But through all of that, what really matters at the end of the day is how useable is it, and how solid is the community surrounding it. And on that front I can say Bazzite has been hands down the easiest distro I have ever used for plug and play Linux gaming, and the community has been endlessly helpful and beginner friendly. I'd recommend it fully, and if you hop into their Discord, or read over their homepage and guides, it quickly becomes apparent how hard they work to make it beginner friendly.
There are some good alternatives, Mint for example is a very easy distro to make the switch from Windows. As is Pop_OS!. And with how easy steam has made running games, it's harder to find a bad choice in general nowadays.
To shift topics, I'd say the most important thing to a "smooth switch from Windows" is less the distro you choose, and more the Desktop Environment. (Which, for the point of this recommendation, is the catch all term for what your OS "looks like", where the "Start Menu" is, where your "tool bar to switch apps" is, etc) For a new Windows convert, I'd say find one that uses "KDE", as it is very similar to Windows. Bazzite offers this when you are downloading the installation image. But it's quite popular, so many others will anyway.
Sorry for the extended rant, hope this initial mess didn't make you less likely to try Linux! I was a Windows convert just a couple years ago and can say it was one of the best decisions I've ever made! Feel free to ask any questions, or hop over to the Bazzite Discord to get some helpful insights!
No apologies necessary! That's very helpful and makes me more likely to take the plunge. Thank you for the rant!