I am very interested in what you are saying. I’ve been trying Bazzite for a while now and I ran into some quirks I couldn’t resolve - tiny stuff, that’s mainly a small inconvenience like not being able to put icons on the desktop with Steam due to it being Flatpak and Valve not having enabled that specific option) -
BUT -
I’ve also tried Nobara then was kinda put off by people saying something along the lines, that GE disabled some security features for better performance (and since it was a distro for personal use at first) and I tried to search for the details, but came up empty. Could you say a bit more about this or where I could find more info, please? Cause I’m using my distro as daily driver and not only for gaming, so it got me worried a little.
Oh yes, that’s entirely my own fault. I first installed Aurora, then Steam as Flapak and later rebased to Bazzite. It was all just for trying stuff out, on my main machine, the install will be clean.
Think of it like you have a base OS that is stock, like Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite. Then the different ublue offerings, Bluefin/Aurora/Bazzite/Ucore take those and add new things on top. If you rebase, anything you installed as a user isn’t touched. But all of the addons change to whatever the default is for that ublue variant.
So someone rebasing from Bluefin/Aurora to Bazzite will have Lutris and Steam (and other gaming specific software and system tweaks) automatically ‘layered’ as part of the default experience, since Bazzite is targeted primarily at gaming, and the other two for general desktop use.
You’re swapping out the default system image, just like when you update and the update is actually just replacing your entire OS with the new version (until the feature that let’s them only replace things that have changed gets finished).
Yes. They use the official Fedora atomic images as their base, then add things from there. Silverblue/Bluefim has GNOME and Kinoite/Aurora/Bazzite has KDE. Then they just have more stuff that Fedora can’t or won’t ship, such as built-in proprietary drivers for Nvidia GPUs without any extra repos or downloads, and the Xone driver for Xbox Wireless Controllers.
You could technically do all of this yourself, but it’d be a lot of work and be slower. For Ublue, a lot of things are on the image, as in baked into the OS as part of the iso and standard install. For things you layer yourself, the OS has keep track of what is stock and what isn’t, then act accordingly with each update. So the more things you personally layer versus installing through their preferred methods like Distrobox, Brew, or Flatpak, the longer the system takes to update. Layering some stuff like Steam is also not straightforward, so its beneficial to have a system that has most of the things you need. The phrase they like to use is crowdsourcing your OS. If everyone has mostly the same base OS, support is easier, bugs are fixed faster, etc.
They follow the main release schedule of Fedora but frequently contribute things upstream and take their own approach by integrating things from Nobara, ChimeraOS, and OpenSUSE’s Aeon/Kalpa. Folks from those groups collaborate back and forth.
Oh I think I’ve found my answer, it was about SELinux being disabled. Now it says on their official website:
"SELinux:
– We have replaced SELinux with AppArmor (AppArmor is used in Ubuntu and OpenSUSE) as we find it to be more user-friendly, less intrusive, and easier to write policies for. You will still see some SELinux packages as they are required to keep Fedora compatibility and not break package dependencies."
Yup. That’s basically it. AppArmor isn’t a slouch either, but SELinux works well and is well-tested on Fedora. It’s a pity. I do think that SELinux > AppArmor, so if security is a serious concern of yours, then it’s worth considering Bazzite over Nobara. If, however, security is a top priority of yours, you might even consider secureblue. It’s not great for gaming though 😅. At some point, hardening clashes with performance gains…
I am very interested in what you are saying. I’ve been trying Bazzite for a while now and I ran into some quirks I couldn’t resolve - tiny stuff, that’s mainly a small inconvenience like not being able to put icons on the desktop with Steam due to it being Flatpak and Valve not having enabled that specific option) -
BUT -
I’ve also tried Nobara then was kinda put off by people saying something along the lines, that GE disabled some security features for better performance (and since it was a distro for personal use at first) and I tried to search for the details, but came up empty. Could you say a bit more about this or where I could find more info, please? Cause I’m using my distro as daily driver and not only for gaming, so it got me worried a little.
Interesting. Bazzite has (for some time now) been shipping the native Steam package; so not the Flatpak one.
Oh yes, that’s entirely my own fault. I first installed Aurora, then Steam as Flapak and later rebased to Bazzite. It was all just for trying stuff out, on my main machine, the install will be clean.
Thanks for clarifying!
I’m totally new to Atomic Desktops. How rebasing differs from installing fresh OS?
And what exactly is rebasing though?
Think of it like you have a base OS that is stock, like Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite. Then the different ublue offerings, Bluefin/Aurora/Bazzite/Ucore take those and add new things on top. If you rebase, anything you installed as a user isn’t touched. But all of the addons change to whatever the default is for that ublue variant.
So someone rebasing from Bluefin/Aurora to Bazzite will have Lutris and Steam (and other gaming specific software and system tweaks) automatically ‘layered’ as part of the default experience, since Bazzite is targeted primarily at gaming, and the other two for general desktop use.
You’re swapping out the default system image, just like when you update and the update is actually just replacing your entire OS with the new version (until the feature that let’s them only replace things that have changed gets finished).
Thank You.
I can’t understand this though. So, Bazzite is built on top of Fedora SIlverblue/Kionite?
Yes. They use the official Fedora atomic images as their base, then add things from there. Silverblue/Bluefim has GNOME and Kinoite/Aurora/Bazzite has KDE. Then they just have more stuff that Fedora can’t or won’t ship, such as built-in proprietary drivers for Nvidia GPUs without any extra repos or downloads, and the Xone driver for Xbox Wireless Controllers.
You could technically do all of this yourself, but it’d be a lot of work and be slower. For Ublue, a lot of things are on the image, as in baked into the OS as part of the iso and standard install. For things you layer yourself, the OS has keep track of what is stock and what isn’t, then act accordingly with each update. So the more things you personally layer versus installing through their preferred methods like Distrobox, Brew, or Flatpak, the longer the system takes to update. Layering some stuff like Steam is also not straightforward, so its beneficial to have a system that has most of the things you need. The phrase they like to use is crowdsourcing your OS. If everyone has mostly the same base OS, support is easier, bugs are fixed faster, etc.
They follow the main release schedule of Fedora but frequently contribute things upstream and take their own approach by integrating things from Nobara, ChimeraOS, and OpenSUSE’s Aeon/Kalpa. Folks from those groups collaborate back and forth.
Thank you for explaining.
Oh I think I’ve found my answer, it was about SELinux being disabled. Now it says on their official website: "SELinux:
– We have replaced SELinux with AppArmor (AppArmor is used in Ubuntu and OpenSUSE) as we find it to be more user-friendly, less intrusive, and easier to write policies for. You will still see some SELinux packages as they are required to keep Fedora compatibility and not break package dependencies."
Yup. That’s basically it. AppArmor isn’t a slouch either, but SELinux works well and is well-tested on Fedora. It’s a pity. I do think that SELinux > AppArmor, so if security is a serious concern of yours, then it’s worth considering Bazzite over Nobara. If, however, security is a top priority of yours, you might even consider secureblue. It’s not great for gaming though 😅. At some point, hardening clashes with performance gains…
Thank you, that’s very helpful. I will have to think about it - it comes down to a question of convenience vs. “best” security possible.
It has been my pleasure!
I’ve solved this for myself by dedicating two different devices; one that’s optimized for security, while the other is only used for gaming.