I think it's important to point out (for someone familiar, such as everyone on lemmy obviously) that Bazzite is based on the immutable Fedora Silverblue.

Being immutable makes it apparently stable, but comes with tradeoffs (you are basically limited to flatpaks for installing things, or at least highly discouraged from using other install methods).

If you want a gaming focused distro that is based on the standard Fedora, I can recommend Nobara. Their default version now uses KDE but I use the Gnome version. I think KDE did something recently to make everyone angry but I can't remember what (AI related maybe?), I use Gnome because I like it.

[–] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 19 hours ago

Homebrew is the first go-to for software. Distrobox for more heavy-duty things.

There's also ujust which has a handful of things made specifically for Bazzite. And AppImages work just like on any other distro.

The only thing that's really discouraged is rpm-ostree. That's a last resort, and almost never necessary.

[–] Mikina@programming.dev 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'd add to this that you can install stuff from package repositories, but only if you "layer" it onto your system, which I think slows up boot time, plus you have to re-boot for it.

Also, I highly recommend getting familiar with Distrobox. It can run even gui apps without issues, and is grate for whenever I need to install more stuff and just want to do the regular dnf install, i.e for dev environments.

[–] Hal@piefed.nz 2 points 1 day ago

They discourage layering on the packages, as that's how you get conflicts that might break things in future releases.

I tried to run Bazzite as my daily driver but I just couldn't do it. I probably was not familiar enough with Distrobox, but everything I tried to do had some caveat that meant I couldn't work it out.

The desktop the kids use runs Bazzite, and I'm pretty close to changing it. Issues with xbox controllers, issues waking from sleep, issues going to sleep to start with. It's barely used outside of the kids playing games and it still has more issues than I do running Nobara as my main.

[–] scallisto@retrofed.com 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I think KDE did something recently to make everyone angry but I can’t remember what (AI related maybe?)

Partly true. Somebody talked about the idea of KDE Plasma becoming an "AI-native" desktop at Akademy (the KDE conference), and the discussion (which, as far as I'm aware, was all it was. I'm pretty sure it was just some guy, not the KDE team), and the media overblew it with headlines like "KDE Plasma becoming an AI-native desktop???"

There are good reasons to dislike KDE Plasma, but I don't think this is one of them. If you prefer GNOME because you prefer how it looks, that's cool too! And again, it's made by developers who do it at no cost to us, and the fact that Plasma is so good (as is GNOME, Cinnamon, etc.) is awesome

edit: The people who talked about Plasma as an "AI native" desktop in Akademy used to be KDE developers but are no longer active contributors. It was not the KDE team saying "this is what we will do in the future". There's a good video about it by Nicco (a KDE dev who makes videos regarding Linux and other bits) if you want to learn more: https://tube.kockatoo.org/videos/watch/b97487b5-b544-4652-8548-c0a732f87f45

[–] HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How do dependencies work for immutable distros, do you just download them and stick them in a folder with the thing they are a dependency for to run it, for everything? At least if it doesn't have a flatpak version already which IIRC basically does that for you?

[–] Hal@piefed.nz 3 points 1 day ago

For the most part, something either comes with the system or you install it as a flatpak. Or as someone else mentioned, run in Distrobox.

Therre's actually a Bazzite help page on this: https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/software-intro/

The very last resort is that you can install packages sort of as normal, by layering them in rpm-ostree, then rebooting to rebuild things. It's discouraged though, as if you manually install packages then it can break updates and upgrades take longer to run. Basically, installing packages manually is defeating the purpose of an immutable system (the purpose being basically to keep things super stable).