• Destide@feddit.ukEnglish
    18·
    6 days ago

    Gaming will always take the lead—gamers are usually quick to chase the newest and shiniest things. Bluefin/Aurora adoption takes a bit longer because developers have to adjust their workflows, and there’s still this odd stigma around atomics. People assume you “can’t do things” on an atomic distro that you can on a traditional one, when in reality it’s mostly the same—just a slightly different approach in certain areas. Like with Nix, once it clicks, the pros far outweigh the cons. Personally, Bluefin has made me a more organised and efficient developer.

    I can’t upload the images for some reason but here’s the current numbers for the ublue spins

    • Bazzite: 26k users -> bazzite.json
    • Bluefin: 1.9k users -> bluefin.json
    • Bluefin LTS: 40 users -> bluefin-lts.json
    • Aurora: 1.3k users -> aurora.json
    • Soot [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      112·
      6 days ago

      once it clicks, the pros far outweigh the cons

      I would love to hear a pro about atomic distros that isn’t some vague platitude about security or stability. I have zero security/stability problems on my ‘normal’ Fedora.

      As someone who has steadfastly avoided atomic distros because it sounds like an arseache and the last thing I want is more busywork. Convince me to switch!

      • Destide@feddit.ukEnglish
        12·
        6 days ago

        Security isn’t really one, but saying don’t mention stability is proving the point—Fedora goes to ten, but Silverblue goes to eleven. That’s like saying, “tell me why Arch is good without mentioning the up-to-date packages.”

        For Bluefin, it had everything I was doing with Fedora and then Silverblue OTB, and then some things I didn’t realize I needed. Yes, you can run a container-focused workflow in Fedora, but atomics keep you focused on good practices. With Fedora, my system became a bit of a dependency hell with Python and npm packages; now I have a container per project that can either have its own home dir or just seamlessly integrate with my main system.

        I’m the whole IT and dev department for my company, so I would often have dedicated VMs etc. for each focus. Now everything is just seamlessly in my system.

        It’s a bit of a reset for sure what isn’t, but once it’s done you know you can just hit the power button and everything is there ready to go.

        I’m getting into rolling my own spin at the moment for our thin clients as they only have 16GB of space, and that’s been really easy to set up. Now I have a trimmed-down Bluefin that comes packaged with Remmina, and I can deploy updates just by updating some files on GitHub. It’s really not more busywork, pretty much the opposite for me, my root is basically /var and anything lower level I don’t really need to be messing about with on a workstaiton. I have all my tools most out of the box. I have every language package esp elixir thanks to brew have you tried setting up iex on Ubuntu it’s dog egg. On bluefin, I just brew install elixir.

        • Soot [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          51·
          6 days ago

          Thank you for the informative response! :)

          saying don’t mention stability is proving the point

          My point is that stability is already 100% fine for me now. So saying you’ll make my already rock-solid experience somehow more stable is meaningless. As a power user for over a decade, I’ve personally experienced zero issues where I wished Fedora was somehow more stable. It’s like telling me that Silverblue connects to the internet - Like yes, I already have that.

          From what I’m reading, it sounds like the singular ‘pro’ is being forced to do cleaner, more self-contained practices. I can totally see how that would be helpful for some people. But personally, I would genuinely despise that kind of restriction.

          I’m admittedly the kind of person who hates being forced to do the ‘best practice’ thing. I’m genuinely happy that my Linux distro will me rm -rf the root partition (with an ‘are you sure’ prompt these days :) ). I’m happy that if I really want to purge the kernel package with dnf, then I can. I want (and kind of need) my freedom to make a mess, if I tell Linux to jump, it will goddamn jump, even if it’s a bad practice technically terrible decision. I have zero interest in going all around the houses just to do it the technically correct (and sometimes less-effort-in-the-long-run) way. If I ever want a clean plate, I can still spin up a container just like you’re saying.

          So I get the feeling that atomic is very much not for me, which is what I suspected :) Very glad that people like yourself find it an improvement, that’s what flavours are for!

          • Destide@feddit.ukEnglish
            4·
            6 days ago

            Exactly that. It’s not the be all and end all for Linux, nothing ever will be and that’s OK. Some people have had a few issues, especially when Fedora was in the 30s. Just did a quick search, even this year some users reporting it borking itself. But like you, I have never had an issue, but when I deploy machines that are 100 miles from me, I don’t want to deal with that, same for my work machines.

            Bazzite works really well for my living room PC, wife approved PS5 replacement. Again, for my personal gaming rig I don’t want to get home go to game and have to deal with some dependency issue. I put Bluefin on my field laptop because again I use it sporadically, and it’ll update on boot if it was cachyOS or workstation there’s a chance it could drift out of spec enough to bork.

            So yeah I love the Atomics, but I was prob 90% the way there before Silverblue came about and 95% there when the Ublue stuff stated rolling out.

            Like a lot of things Linux it’s not the future of Linux but its a future I think.

      • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.mlOP
        10·
        6 days ago

        I don’t think I’ve even tinkered with Bazzite since installing it. It just works. You do have to get used to container workflows and using flathub but its a marginal amount of overhead for improved security. Bonus points: you can lazy install lots of apps with distrobox, for example you can install .deb files, .rpm files, pull from the AUR, its no biggy, and its all preconfigured and easy to setup.

        It’s also nice to be able to rebase your distro whenever you want to try out different spins and features, makes inter-fedora atomic distro hopping easy without destroying your configs.

        • Soot [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          71·
          6 days ago

          Thanks for the response, though up to this sentence I’m hearing extra busywork and slow/annoying containerising, in exchange for vague security platitude and a tool which I can already use.

          It’s also nice to be able to rebase your distro whenever you want to try out different spins and features, makes inter-fedora atomic distro hopping easy without destroying your configs.

          I’m interested by this. Is there a uniqueness to Atomic setups such that you can (more easily) keep your user partition, GNOME configs, etc. and swap out the Fedora distro underneath?

          • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.mlOP
            5·
            6 days ago

            Yep, I can for example rebase from Bazzite to Secureblue and keep all of my configs intact for say, KDE. So if a project goes fubar you aren’t out of luck and need to reinstall and reconfig linux, its trivial to rebase/“swap distro”, its a single command that looks like this

            rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-dx-nvidia:stable

            All programs, files, configs, etc are intact in your home directory. I’ve swapped between user created spins for different DEs like Cosmic and so on, whats cool is its all preconfigured to run well under bazzites kernel. Image based upgrades are also very nice, theres inevitably config drift that messes with performance or updates can break your setup on other distros, image based means the devs tweak every interaction and push it all to you with the least effort possible on your part.

            • Soot [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
              4·
              6 days ago

              This is very cool, and I can suddenly see atomic being useful for certain circumstances. Won’t be using it for my personal computer main driver, but hopping/resetting this is easily attracts me so. Thank you!

              • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.mlOP
                5·
                6 days ago

                rpm-ostree is pretty nifty in general, it functions like git so it reapplies each of your configs over what the devs do each time you upgrade, leading to as little config drift and broken upgrades as possible. each upgrade feels like a fresh install imo

      • j0rge@lemmy.ml
        2·
        4 days ago

        Convince me to switch!

        Why? If your computer is working fine there’s no reason to mess with it. bootc images are for people who do not want to use whatever you mean by ‘normal’ Fedora.

        • Soot [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          I’m told my cute’n’calm Hexbear instance means there’s a lot of drama here I can’t see. So apologies if my tone comes off badly in the ol’ .ml context.

          Rest assured I was just out for fun conversation to learn about atomic stuff :) Hope the rest of this thread ain’t too stressful.

        • Soot [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          3·
          4 days ago

          Because I was being told the pros outweight the cons, and if I can get a better OS, then I want it? I feel like it was a reasonable question and we had a good conversation out of it.

          I also put ‘normal’ in quotes myself, I obviously meant a non-atomic Fedora.

          I feel like you’re coming across unnecessarily dismissively here, when I was just out for a nice conversation on the benefit of atomic setups (and got two! :) ).

          • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.mlOP
            3·
            3 days ago

            j0rge is one of the main devs of bazzite and theres a lot of very strange people in this thread on lemmy.ml chumming the waters here, atomic distros doing well apparently bring out the worst in the strangest linux nerds who think their way of life is under attack. On hexbear a lot of these people causing a ruckus probably aren’t even viewable

            edit: yeah the thread here on lemmy.ml has 153 comments currently and on hexbear its 63 and much more tame, lol

            • quarterlife@lemmy.sdf.org
              2·
              2 days ago

              They should be scared, we’re here to replace their 30-year failed experiment with tech that’s already successful everywhere Linux makes money.

      • GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml
        3·
        5 days ago

        IME the nicest part of Bazzite is not having to manage it. To that end, it works on my Steam Deck. But that’s nothing to do with stability, as you say. In its own ways it’s more annoying to use than a regular distro.

        Clearly people are finding use for it, but I personally find those annoying aspects needless speedbumps in my own usage. Except for, again, on my Steam Deck.

      • WellTheresYourCobbler [ey/em, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        I switched to fedora for stability and pretty consistently each major update would break my computer. I switched to fedora silverblue and everything is so much simpler and upgrading is a breeze. A few times I have missed the simplicity of just installing random obscure software or toolkits for school but typically I can use containers and that also works nicely.

        I also prefer using containers anyways because that aligns with how I mentally organize things. Flatpak has basically everything I need so that’s not a concern either.

        Edit: I see you don’t benefit from stability, so don’t worry about that bit. It benefits me greatly though.

    • j0rge@lemmy.ml
      6·
      6 days ago

      Bluefin/Aurora adoption takes a bit longer because developers have to adjust their workflows, and there’s still this odd stigma around atomics.

      Bluefin maintainer here, our target audience are container people, not people who want to adjust their workflows. The people we cater to don’t have an opinion on “atomics” because no one’s ever heard of that term. They’ve heard of docker or podman though.

      • TyrantTW@lemmy.ml
        3·
        5 days ago

        Thanks Jorge the good work! I had been using silverblue for years and now I’m running machines with bazzite, bluefin, and ucore os. I really, really enjoy how easy to manage atomic distros are, and how they steer you towards better practices (in dev and sysadmin) by design. Thanks!

      • jokeyrhyme@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        I actually just switched from Bazzite to Bluefin on my devices, even my gaming PC

        Mostly because I wanted a more minimal/essential experience with less pre-installed packages

        I’m sure I’m sacrificing a little gaming performance, but nothing noticeable by me so far

        :shrug:

  • Soot [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    6 days ago

    Very fun, I’ve been rocking Fedora workstation for years. If Fedora could take off as the gaming distro that’d be great, I’ll get even more up-to-date top-notch graphics drivers without having to change distros

  • Bilb!@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    I had been using Aurora-dx, but I also like to play games, so I re-based to Bazzite-dx when it became available.

  • Bronstein_Tardigrade@lemmygrad.ml
    21·
    4 days ago

    Call me a Luddite, but I want to retain control over my updates and upgrades. I fear the day that Fedora becomes all atomic, all the time, which I can’t help but think is in the cards

  • TyrantTW@lemmy.ml
    2·
    5 days ago

    Surprised to see it at the bottom of the graph, but for anyone with a homelab uCore is a present from the heavens cloud!

  • todotoro@midwest.socialEnglish
    21·
    4 days ago

    I am a container evangelist, I find excuses to convert my jobs into Kubernetes workloads, and I frequently use the likes of podman for one off apps/processes and development. I use Flatpak frequently to isolate dependencies for the likes of Steam and Heroic.

    I really wanted to like Bazzite or Bluefin, but I can’t deal with the overhead from the rpm os-tree updates. I would frequently notice hitches for my use case (sunshine streaming), and the hoops I had to do to configure Nvidia drivers (for it to then not work as good as other distros) was tiresome.

    I went back to Arch (EndeavourOS), and I improved sunshine performance and had a driver that worked with less fiddling.

    I’m saying all this because, while I’m glad to see any Linux distro grow, I hope it starts delivering what it says on the tin eventually without compromises that I experienced. Markering on it being immutable and container focused is true, but I dont see the benefit (aside from more stability which as others pointed out, is already stable is most cases)?. Right now, its a simple to configure (assuming most defaults work for your setup) distro that is finding a growing niche amongst some users (obviously by the data shown). And thats good enough for now at least.

  • gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com
    21·
    4 days ago

    The removal of KDE Discover has me considering going back to plain Kinoite on my HTPC. I figure I can build a sysext with the handful of bazzite bits I actually use and keep the unbutchered plasma experience

    • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      31·
      4 days ago

      Would you be willing to say more about what you know / experienced about the removal of Discover? Preferences included? I only noticed it recently, been away from things for a bit, and you sound like your brief info would probably be at least as fruitful as the reading I was gonna look for :)

      • gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com
        21·
        2 days ago

        the ublue project / bazzite decided to make their own flatpak first app store called Bazaar. Fair enough its their distro. However they created it with GTK4/Adwaita libraries, so its a Gnome native app and looks completely ugly on a KDE Plasma desktop. Also as a flatpak first app store it doesn’t update anything else on your machine like what discover is capable of (cant update ostree, knew stuff etc). This means you have to use the ujust terminal app to access updates, which I dont agree with.

        I think technically you could layer it back in with rpm-ostree install kdediscover - however this pulls back a couple of hundred meg of plasma dependencies, which if you’re not aware, when you update your system would be redownloaded and reinstalled with each new ostree snapshot, slowing down the update process even further. I I tried doing it as a sysext (myrepo) but it keeps segfaulting and I havent worked out the issue edit: I have fixed the segfault issue and readded the ostree backend. Sysexts are new experienmental alternative to package layering which hold a lot of potential (check out tim ravier’s development of them here https://travier.github.io/fedora-sysexts/)

        • quarterlife@lemmy.sdf.org
          2·
          4 days ago

          You don’t use the terminal to do updates, updates are automatic by default.

          We also completely removed discovers ability to update OSTree. It’s never been present in a single build of Bazzite.

          This is why I don’t pay attention to people that complain about toolkits. You don’t like the way it looks so you make up absolutely disingenuous points to argue about it.

          • gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com
            12·
            3 days ago

            I also said ublue is free to do what they want, why are you attacking me for suggesting I want to put something back the way it was? I never asked for your attention, I’m not pestering the developers about it, instead I attempted to author a fix for anyone who also is not a fan of the change.

            Yes, I dont like a core system tool not being part of my desktop, I dont want my updates to fire via a timer, and I have updated my ostree via discover on my bazzite box. I understand a lot of your target audience does want those things, an appliance type experience - I even suggested 2 posts up that perhaps bazzite was no longer for me as the target audience.

            I appologise for drawing your ire

            edit: FYI I’m not some bad faith poster, having defended bazaar - Also my particular bazzite box has been rebased between Fedora and Aurora, probably accumulated some artifacts in the process, which may explain why my discover had not been previously hobbled. Have a good night

  • pirat@lemmy.ml
    3·
    6 days ago

    Neat!

    I’ve been running Garuda on my main rig for a minute. I thought all would be good but some of my music production stuff has been a bit slow to catch up as far as updates in the AUR vs the official .deb releases (and I haven’t tinkered enough to just make that work myself).

    Being able to install .deb otb seems nice; I was planning on running a new framework 12 laptop on it (which I dream of getting for a new performance rig for my music) but I may install it on my current performance rig to see how it runs.

    How well does it play with nvidia? If it’s all good and I eventually switch on my main rig I’d love to be able to run a local GPU supported AI. I know that for nvidia I have to have drivers that support cuda stuff.

    • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.mlOP
      3·
      6 days ago

      Nvidia open source drivers are working pretty good, I have no complaints. Local AI stuff can be a little annoying to setup as a beginner I bet, but if you run it through llama.cpp its smooth sailing. I recommend something like StabilityMatrix (app image) if you have no clue whats going on

      • pirat@lemmy.ml
        1·
        4 days ago

        I’ve done a fair bit of tinkering so I’m sure I can get it to work.

    • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.mlOP
      3·
      6 days ago

      I actually game very little, the performance optimizations are pretty noticeable on bazzite just for general use so its my daily driver

  • brownmustardminion@lemmy.ml
    1·
    5 days ago

    Lots of shit-talking Bazzite…

    I don’t game much but when I do it’s on Fedora.

    What distro do you all recommend for my Windows buddy looking to switch to gaming on Linux?

  • Entertain529@lemmy.ml
    1·
    6 days ago

    I am interested in Bazzite, but am unsure about its compatibility with NVIDIA GPUs. Had anyone here had experience with this?

  • onlooker@lemmy.ml
    1·
    6 days ago

    I have it on my HTPC and Steam Deck. It’s good! Simple to use, simple to set up, no complaints.