pyssla

I wanted to write a long-ass comment until I remembered the existence of the following excellent guide: https://lemmy.ml/post/18268622 . Please give it a read 😉.

Thank you for the kind words, fam. Much appreciated 😊!

why are so many advising Bazzite instead of CachyOS?

Assuming you’re referring to why so many others recommended Bazzite to OP instead of CachyOS. I believe it stems from the following line of OP:

mostly for gaming since my only exposure to linux is steam os and i heard its uses arch with kde plasma so i try to emulate it as close as i can.

And even if the following is true:

CachyOS is Arch-based, Bazzite is not.

It’s simply undeniable that Bazzite is closer to SteamOS compared CachyOS, by virtue of how it -just like SteamOS- doesn’t deliver the traditional model of desktop Linux but instead goes all-in on a new paradigm. A simple example to point this out would be how both SteamOS and Bazzite default to automatic updates:

• SteamOS; https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/1062
• Bazzite; https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/Updates_Rollbacks_and_Rebasing/updating_guide/

CachyOS, by contrary, doesn’t. Though it ain’t hard to enable this: https://github.com/CachyOS/cachy-update?tab=readme-ov-file#the-systemd-timer

This is all tied to the aforementioned paradigm shift. I can name a lot more similarities if you happen to be interested.

So Red Hat decided to put Fedora in front and put RHEL in the back? Red Hat used to be the base OS of Fedora, no?

It seems that RHEL has been based on Fedora for over twenty years now 😅. As Red Hat Linux seems to predate Fedora, perhaps it was based on RHEL once upon a time, but it hasn’t been for a long time. Regardless, documentation on this event seems to be relatively sparse. As such, I wasn’t able to arrive at a definitive conclusion. Please feel free to complete my ‘research’ 😜!

But I don’t think any container app would diversify distros

Sorry, I didn’t quite get this. Do you mean that *“container app”*s will not succeed in decentralizing efforts and instead have the opposite effect?

or make Fedora distros more popular.

Perhaps you misunderstood me, but to be clear: Distrobox is basically available on every distro out there. So it’s not a Fedora-thing to begin with. (Though, it has to be said that I’ve yet to see it being better utilized/integrated than uBlue’s images.)

In fact, it probably will lead to AUR-based distros becoming even more popular, because one will have access to all the other smaller repos, as AUR becomes the standard.

Hmm…, I don’t quite understand why you think like that. There’s a lot that goes into making distros unique and deserving of their existence. Strictly limiting their appeal to the size of their respective (user) repos is honestly a disservice to the grandiose effort put out by our respected F(L)OSS developers.

Though, I kinda wonder… Why are you even praising Arch for this? Shouldn’t you root for NixOS instead as they’re the ones to possess the biggest repo?

I don’t think I’m an expert on the matter 😅, but I will try my best at an educated guess:

• Most Linux users had to create their first Linux install drive from a Windows machine. As such, they were most likely inclined to use something else instead. Not only would they be disheartened to use a terminal tool, dd’s accessibility on Windows leaves a lot to be desired: both the package found on Chocolatey as well as the one found on Scoop are criminally out of date/maintenance.

  Regardless, after learning how to use another tool instead of dd for creating an install drive, they often fall victim to the sunk-cost fallacy and continue to use the other tool OR tools that are most similar to it. Letting dd slide for the foreseeable time…

• dd, while absolutely functional, is relatively bare-bones:

  • it does not download ISOs for you
  • nor does it checksum them to see if you got the right one
  • nor does it give you the functionality to put multiple bootable ISOs to the same drive
  • it comes with no guardrails; as such, destroying your own system isn’t out of the ordinary. I can totally understand why some people would be hesitant to use something as such
  • it only offers a TUI while the vast majority seems to favor a GUI instead

  If someone would like to use a tool that does any of the above in addition to making an install drive, then dd simply falls short and is simply ignored/dismissed in favor of any of the viable alternatives.

recommend me a distro that runs well on an Asus laptop with an Integrated and Discreet GPU.

FWIW, Bazzite offers dedicated images for a bunch of different hardware including ASUS laptops.

Note, however, that Bazzite works a bit differently than your average distro. Though you should be more than fine as long as the means to address your needs are contained within its pretty good documentation. For all else, first try if the conventional method used on traditional distros works. If for whatever reason that doesn’t yield, then consider reaching out to one of their community channels.

What is it you use your laptop for?

2. UNetbootin

I find it hard to recommend a project that hasn’t received any development in over two years.

3. Balena Etcher

Unfortunately, balenaEtcher has allegedly become spyware. (Or there are at least concerns surrounding it.)

4. Ventoy

This used to be my favorite tool for this. However, even after 16 months have gone by and two different issues have been opened to address the same problem, it hasn’t resulted in replacing the (binary) BLOBs by reproducible ones. Hence, security-conscious projects like secureblue have started to recommend against the use of Ventoy for installing their images.

5. Universal USB Installer

6. Yumi

Still going strong over all these years. Though it’s AFAIK the only piece of software that doesn’t host the code on GitHub (or similar platforms), but instead seems to rely on its Contact page for bug and issue reports. FWIW, they do employ Ventoy’s bootloader. Unsure how this relates to the aforementioned concern related to (binary) BLOBs.

7. PowerISO

This ain’t even open source. You can order your copy from here.

9. MultiBootUSB

Hasn’t received any development in over 5 years.

10. ImageUSB Writer

Is this even open source?

This leaves us with:

1. Rufus

Great to leave M$ for Linux. Unfortunately, it’s only distributed as .exe’s. Nor is its maintainer interested to support Linux.

8. GNOME Multiwriter

9. Fedora Media Writer

Ah…, finally, we get to the “by and for Linux”. Though, there are about a dozen or so that the article doesn’t mention.

Regarding installing Steam as a flatpak, as you’ve already noted^[1], it ain’t ideal. That’s why AFAIK all “gaming distros” (including Bazzite) install Steam natively.

is because CachyOS is only a year old, while Bazzite is two years old, unless someone can prove me otherwise.

CachyOS has been installable (at least) as early as November of 2021. Its GitHub page is even older, going as far back as October of 2021.

Bazzite, on the other hand, is at least a year younger as it dates back to December of 2022.

Bazzite is RHEL-based

Bazzite is based on Fedora Atomic. FYI, Fedora is not based on RHEL. Quite the opposite, actually, as Fedora is “upstream” of RHEL.

it won’t have the AUR or pacman, which are the two things that set Arch-based Operating Systems apart from the rest of the pack.

Come out of your cave, fam. Distrobox has been out for years now. And, with it, everyone has access to every other repo (including the AUR). We’ve finally evolved.

Honestly it sounds like you’ve mastered a completely new kind of operating system, based on Linux but evolving in its own direction

Thanks for the compliment 😅. I do think there’s some truth in it being a new kind of Linux-based OS. But it’s not as big of a departure like say NixOS. Heck, I’d argue it’s grounded within a relatively basic premise: What’s the minimal amount of effort required to make our current Linux systems attain desirable qualities like being reprovisionable and anti-hysteresis? The whole bootc-shebang is just leveraging existing container technologies (I’m sure you’re familiar with Docker) to the Linux you run on your computer.

and there’s probably only a handful of people using it at that level.

If we would (perhaps arbitrarily) choose for “that level” to be “crazy enough to create and run their own image”^[1], then it’s true that our numbers are probably only in the order of hundreds. Though, the knowledge required to build your own image is (almost) equivalent to the knowledge one ought to have to create their own OCI image; you know, the very same used for Docker, the container technology that represents a billion dollar industry.

It’s pretty cool to learn more about, so I appreciate what you’ve had to say.

I appreciate it. I like conversing with you as well 😊!

I already know and love traditional Linux and don’t see a compelling reason to change

That’s perfectly valid.

I don’t think it’s the way to point a newcomer.

Please allow me to explain why I differ on this:

The beginner has no preconceived notion on how Linux is ‘supposed’ to work. As such, they will adapt to whatever you throw at it. Be it Mint, Arch or Fedora Atomic. Heck, it’s undeniable that out of these, Fedora Atomic works the closest like their phone. Which has undoubtedly become the most recognizable OS for your average Joe.

FYI, Fedora Silverblue was my foray into Linux. The first one or two weeks definitely gave me a hard time, but that was over three years ago. If I was able to survive in such a ‘hostile’ environment, then newcomers should have absolutely no trouble getting onboard with the introduction of Bazzite (and the other uBlue images).

FWIW, I have edited my previous comment.

Anyhow, if you wish to disengage, then I’d like to wish you a great day. If not, then I’m (patiently) awaiting your return 🙂.

You do sound obtuse.

Hehe :P . Please feel free to clarify what you meant with the repos being limiting (or something). I’m genuinely interested to know. See Edit down below

I still think bazzite is the wrong suggestion for newcomers

It’s your absolute prerogative to believe/think/state whatever you wish. However, I don’t think you’ve yet made a convincingly compelling case. You absolutely don’t have to, but if you’ve got more to say on the subject matter, then please do so for the sake of (potentially) enlightening others.

I don’t care if you like my opinion.

Good…, I suppose. Neither should you care anyways 😜.

Edit: I only now noticed that you had edited your previous post. My apologies.

Having access to the AUR allows me access to much wider array of software.

Agreed. I also occasionally access stuff from there through my dedicated Arch distrobox. I occasionally make use of my Ubuntu distrobox, or Alpine distrobox as well. Thanks to Distrobox (and similar technologies), it has become an absolutely glorious experience to not be limited by the distro’s repos. Instead, I can make use of whatever repos are out there. Granted; Distrobox is not exclusive to Fedora Atomic, but you’d be hard-pressed to find another distro on which it works as well as it does on uBlue’s offerings.

Thank you for the quick answer and for providing clarifications!

I would say the greatest limitation would be repos

What do you mean? What’s wrong with Fedora’s repos? Apologies if I sound obtuse*.

and your ability to build whatever software you want from source.

There’s nothing preventing you from doing this within a container created by Toolbx/Distrobox. I can attest to this. You can even build it natively. While I haven’t personally engaged in building it natively, I can’t imagine it would cause any problems. But please correct me if your experience (or otherwise) is different.

Can you run Hyprland and all of its companions like hyprlock, hyprpaper, etc on bazzite? That’s the setup I prefer, and I’m fairly certain it’s not possible in a Fedora based immutable system.

Fam, break your leg. Nothing is stopping you; someone else has already done just that. And you can just piggy-back of their effort. In case you’d like to see other (successful) attempts at making Hyprland work on Fedora Atomic: consider taking a look at wayblue and hyprland-atomic.

few people recommend bazzite too. ill try to give it a look

If you want the system to be out of your way while you get to enjoy your games, then that’s exactly what Bazzite is for.

If, instead, you’re interested in getting to know how the traditional model of Linux desktop works, then I’d look elsewhere.

They are extremely limiting

Assuming you’re referring to Fedora Atomic, your statement is extremely exaggerated. Out of the top of my head, the current limitations are iffy akmods and UKI/systemd-boot. The latter of which is being worked on currently and might arrive rather sooner than later. Neither of which I’d assume 95% of Linux users ever engage with anyways…

add multiple complications to otherwise simple tasks

I feel like you don’t know what you’re talking about. Please be explicit; which tasks are made more complicated on Fedora Atomic?

the padded cell of immutability means you can’t really fuck around and learn how traditional Linux systems work

It’s true that you aren’t supposed to “fuck” around (most of) /usr during runtime. Furthermore, I agree that the existing ways to circumvent/bypass this leave much to be desired. But, again, most peeps use perfectly fine systems without ever feeling the need to tinker with /usr… And if you absolutely must…, well…, Fedora Atomic doesn’t actually stop you. It just wants you to adhere to its ways of achieving it. Making it more of a paradigm shift, rather than outright limiting the user.

If your criticism basically boils down to “I can’t make use of my preconceived notion on how Linux works.”, then “Yes.”; that’s exactly the point. Granted, it wouldn’t hurt if Fedora Atomic allowed conventional methods to continue working. But as it’s currently in the middle of a architectural shift (going from rpm-ostree to bootc), I’d argue they’ve got more important things to work on.

If you’re the type of new user that likes to go balls deep straight away, then Arch is arguably one of the better options thanks to its excellent Wiki. However, please don’t blatantly overestimate yourself for the heck of it. Consider checking out ArchWiki’s own entries on this matter:

• Why would I not want to use Arch?
• I am a complete GNU/Linux beginner. Should I use Arch?
• System maintenance

i found a tutorial on it with 3 - 4 pages full of text and was a bit overwhelmed

I don’t think this attitude is helpful for conquering Arch, but YMMV.

recently i just finished building a new pc. mostly for gaming since my only exposure to linux is steam os and i heard its uses arch with kde plasma so i try to emulate it as close as i can.

FWIW, if you just want to emulate SteamOS, perhaps consider Bazzite instead. It’s not based on Arch, but it arguably is the closest to SteamOS (but better). More so than any Arch-based distro*.

I switched from a shitty Windows to Garuda. That was working wonderful, until I suddenly couldn’t get it to work no matter what Proton version. Then I switched to Ubuntu, same issue. Then Cachy, then back to Ubuntu, and now back at it again with Garuda.

While I’m in the camp that one shouldn’t distro-hop in hopes of fixing their problems, you seem to be keen on it. And that’s ultimately your prerogative. With that in mind, have you considered trying something based on Fedora instead? Perhaps Bazzite is able to offer you a fix?

Why Kinoite over say uBlue’s Aurora, Bazzite or even uBlue’s base^[1] Kinoite image?

Honestly, we’ve been eating pretty good fam. See https://www.protondb.com/ for game compatibility on Linux.

The only remaining pain points are (see the provided links for databases on what does and doesn’t work):

• Anti-cheat; https://areweanticheatyet.com/
• VR; https://db.vronlinux.org/

That can be a double-edged sword, especially if the distro has been around a long time. What the user finds can be out of date and now just plain wrong. Ubuntu definitely suffers with this.

Excellent point! Thank you for mentioning this! I feel this is often overlooked for reasons I don’t understand. Thankfully, we can teach (new) users how they can navigate around this: e.g. by mentioning the version of the distro within the search query OR by simply being wary of old(er) info.

Hmm…, would you so kind to explain what the end goal is? I feel like we’re dealing with the classic XY problem. But hopefully I’m wrong.

OP is still a very new Linux user (if at all) that hammers on stability in every one of their posts. My comment was written with that in mind. But, even in its current version, it isn’t absolute and leaves room for nuance/exceptions by using terms like “(almost)” etc.

Veteran users with awareness of the Linux landscape are somewhat able to discern the upcoming serious projects with a future from the to-be abandonware. FWIW, I’ve championed distros like Bazzite (and its uBlue siblings), CachyOS, Nobara, PikaOS and secureblue far before they had any serious recognition (if at all). So I’m definitely with you that promising projects deserve adoption, support and more.

And let’s be honest, if a distro is a one man or small team project, mass adoption is no guarantee of longevity.

Agreed. I believe the “somewhat” I used alludes to that. One might argue that the concept of absolute guarantee doesn’t exist. Even with Arch and Debian*; though I’d argue they come closest IMO. Nevertheless, there are definitely gradations between Arch/Debian and a student-owned hobby project that was created just today.

Mass adoption is a relatively easy metric to gauge. And (often) comes with tons of support/discussion across the internet that will prove to be useful for the new user.

Please feel free to provide other metrics that OP or others might appeal to.