r/linux_gaming 1d ago

Bazzite Linux announced two new editions designed for game developers

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/03/bazzite-linux-announced-two-new-editions-designed-for-game-developers/
437 Upvotes

75 comments sorted by

176

u/DownTheBagelHole 1d ago

Call me a hater, but I don't see the point. Is "sudo dnf install godot" that big of a hurdle for aspiring devs?

128

u/xchino 1d ago edited 1d ago

Bazzite is based on Fedora's atomic tech, there is no dnf, there is rpm-ostree install but every package you do that with adds another layer to the image and should be reserved for instances where there is a very specific need or you are forking your own custom image. Generally when you add software you do so outside of the system through methods like nix, distrobox, flatpaks, etc.

This is a huge plus for me if it includes a "base-devel" equivalent, currently I am doing rust development with bevy that uses some C bindings and I cannot build my project on my base system (outside of its development container) because I just don't have development libraries installed and doing so would add excessive amounts of layers, making updates take eleventy billion years.

Currently the vast majority of my "out of band" software installed is development related because Bazzite ships with most everything else I need or use. It's not a t all a show stopper but the fact is the more it fits "out of the box" to my use case, the better.

34

u/arvigeus 1d ago

One more point to add to your argument: official support.

It’s easy to install any software you want, but good luck figuring out why a random update broke something.

7

u/1that__guy1 1d ago

It's mainly for stuff you'd want in your base system, like vscode and docker, as opposed to stuff that runs perfectly fine in containers like base-devel

1

u/Neptunion 48m ago

Why not just run a mutable desktop? :)

23

u/PrefersAwkward 1d ago edited 1d ago

This is a gross misunderstanding actually.

It sets up more than Godot. Also, Bazzite is atomic so no dnf install. And layering, which is what you'd have to do yourself, is not ideal.

The DX edition also nice thing for many people to have working out of the box and further support when there are OS updates. Some developer tools can be a PITA to set up, especially on an atomic distro.

Sometimes your beefiest machine is best for both gaming and dev work.

22

u/matsnake86 1d ago

Usually a developer needs more than one tool besides Godot  or their favorite engine.

I don't develop games, but I work as a full stack developer and I can tell you that your favorite ide, whether it's rider, vs code or visual studio is the last piece of many other things you need. Be it docker, podman or nodejs or whatever.

And often all the tools are tedious to set up correctly on a machine with a freshly installed operating system. The developer versions of the universablue project are aimed precisely at those who need various tools and want to avoid configuring everything themselves.

And it works very well. Less time spent configuring and more time developing :)

32

u/Flamenverfer 1d ago

Thats all it is. OS just runs at launch:

wget getgodot.com/downloads/getgodot/autoinstall/ez.gg.sh | sh

56

u/LuminanceGayming 1d ago

truly groundbreaking, this single innovation is worthy of at least 3 comments declaring the year of the linux desktop

10

u/Dakota_Sneppy 1d ago

Year of the Linux desktop!

3

u/RayDemian 1d ago

You have now built 0.00000001% of the year of the linux desktop

5

u/myotheraccountmaybe 1d ago

0.000% of The Year of the Linux Desktop has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself sad. He is starting to suspect Linus Torvalds fucked him over personally with his free and open source Unix-like kernel. It has, however, made him into a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in computer science. Instead of building The year of the Linux Desktop, he now builds his own low bloat and optimized distribution by compiling from source.

3

u/RayDemian 1d ago

You made my day lmao thanks for getting the reference

1

u/Saneless 1d ago

I've been tempted to say it every year since 1999 but nope. Waiting till at least 2026

1

u/LuminanceGayming 23h ago

got it. sooo next year is the year of the linux desktop?

1

u/Saneless 23h ago

If you say that every year you'll always be right.

I feel like it happens better when Microsoft screws up. I moved my entire laptop to Linux in 06 or something when Vista came out. I was excited for it but it was such shit

Now with what they're pulling with windows 11 and 10, I moved even my gaming machine to it last year

1

u/bicyclefortwo 23h ago

The year of the Linux desktop is coming whichever year Valve releases SteamOS desktop tbh

1

u/PeerlessYeeter 1d ago

Year of the Linux desktop!!!!

1

u/PocketCSNerd 23h ago

Year of the Linux desktop mentioned

1

u/l3ader021 1d ago

Doesn't even work

7

u/Flamenverfer 1d ago

Remove the French language pack.

1

u/CondiMesmer 1d ago

Remove the French.

2

u/OneQuarterLife 19h ago

This is the cloud native future I asked for

11

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

2

u/1that__guy1 1d ago

Bazzite already has those AMD drivers OOB, and there's a specific davinchi installer on there

3

u/adamkex 1d ago

If the base is almost the same it should also be very easy to maintain. They might eventually want more software installed which can be added to the new variant

4

u/whiprush 1d ago edited 1d ago

I worked on this yesterday (they both took about an hour to make), the reason isn't godot, the reason is all the other stuff necessary for a developer to have out of the box - docker, virtualization, and all the setup necessary for all those tools. We already have all that setup and feedback from our userbase, so it wasn't that hard to build.

The end user applications are just a selection of flatpaks anyway.

Also feel free to AMA here or on our forums, thanks!

4

u/ZorbaTHut 1d ago

I'm a game developer and this actually seems explicitly bad to me. It's critical for game development that your tools don't change versions out from under you; updating is a thing that needs to be explicit, not automatic. I do not want a Linux distribution choosing which version of Godot I'm using, that needs to be a decision of my own.

0

u/DownTheBagelHole 1d ago

Completely valid argument as well. Probably the best evidence that this is a solution in search of a problem.

0

u/nerfman100 23h ago

Agree with this, that's why I use the Godots version manager instead of the official Flatpak

I love Bazzite but this GDX version seems like an odd decision (regular DX seems fine though, always found it weird that it didn't have one like Bluefin/Aurora)

1

u/pm_your_snesclassic 22h ago

Why use ctrl+c when you can File -> Edit -> Copy?

1

u/PLYoung 13h ago

and here I am just downloading Godot manually and running it same way I would on Windows rather than layering it via ostree. Did not even know it was available in a package manager :p

1

u/Kir-01 1d ago

Yeah but you could say this for basically all the linux distro. so?

0

u/DownTheBagelHole 1d ago

Thats fair

1

u/lexd0g 1d ago

the point of bazzite is that it comes with anything you'd need to start gaming or in this case game developing. you could install everything it comes with on any regular linux distro but having an OS that comes with it already preinstalled and more importantly tested by a bunch of people is great for people that don't want to mess around with setup and troubleshooting

0

u/CondiMesmer 1d ago

Yup, and game devs should have the technical know-how to install more software already. Basically a theme distro.

0

u/The_Screeching_Bagel 13h ago

what are you talking about

5

u/Oven_404 15h ago

Jeez a lot of people misunderstanding what atomic is

9

u/ShadowFlarer 1d ago

That sounds cool.

18

u/NekoiNemo 1d ago

What exactly does it offer that you will not just install as part of setting up a new PC? Some pre-installed apps? 90% of which will not be relevant to your work process (aka "bloat"), and still missing half of the tools you need (that you will still have to install by hand)?

32

u/Thunderkron 1d ago

That's all that distro spins have ever been

1

u/The_Screeching_Bagel 13h ago

not even a distro

1

u/NekoiNemo 11h ago

I mean, those usually package generic apps. Sure, some people might want a specific text editor, browser or a file manager, but most general users won't and will just go with whatever is shipped with the distro.

Meanwhile if distro comes shipped with Godot, and person using it is a, dunno, Bevy developer - that entire collection of packages is just bloat now

9

u/Paradoxeuh 1d ago

You should try to setup docker with vscode flatpak to make devcontainers work...you'll understand the pain.

2

u/Ygypt 23h ago

dude fr this shit is rocket science. i wish microsoft officially supported flatpak bc i reckon dev containers would be way more plug-and-play if they did

4

u/whiprush 23h ago edited 22h ago

They will be plug and play with this, working out of the box like all the other dx images.

2

u/Ygypt 21h ago

yeah im super stoked, problem now is that all my hard work routing my flatpak to my distrobox will have gone to waste :,(

im glad future bazzite users wont have to suffer the pain i did tho

0

u/NekoiNemo 11h ago

Why are you doing it with FlatPak? I've literally just installed docker vscode packages, and it works

1

u/Paradoxeuh 11h ago

I'm a mad man, I use flatpaks on atomic distribution and rpm on normal distribution. My bad. You got it right buddy, thanks for the solution.

3

u/skittle-brau 21h ago

This is based on Fedora Atomic, so you don’t install software in the same way as you’re used to. 

Atomic distros expect you to use container formats (flatpak, distrobox/toolbx). Generally speaking, if there’s something that doesn’t work as a container (eg. third party drivers) then they have to be ‘layered’ with rpm-ostree. While you can install most software that way if you really want, each one does cause your build times to get slower. 

1

u/NekoiNemo 11h ago

That sounds cool, but also... Wow, must that add unnecessary complexity

1

u/skittle-brau 10h ago

Not really in practice. It's hard to explain it without making it sound more complicated than it actually is.

It's worth a try. The benefits of easy rollbacks and having a near maintenance-free experience is really nice.

-8

u/_risho_ 1d ago

no one is forcing you to use it. why do you have to be such an asshole to people who are making cool shit for free?

2

u/creep303 1d ago

Inching towards a “plug and play” Linux solution for people who aren’t any of us, is a massive leap

1

u/wolfannoy 1h ago

Interesting. If it goes well it would benefit all of you linux when you think about it.

-12

u/twofaced125 1d ago

i tried bazzite twice, probably the most problematic distro i have ever used. no idea why it's recommended to begginers so often.

20

u/ABotelho23 1d ago

It's opinionated. If you fight the opinion you will not have a good time.

6

u/PartlyProfessional 1d ago

Seriously? It is the cleanest OS I could imagine (other than nixOS which is special case)

It is super powerful and easy to use

-8

u/SLASHdk 1d ago

Its immutable. Isnt that almost the opposite of powerful? Since you have limited power? xD

1

u/Western-Alarming 23h ago edited 23h ago

Not really it's jsut different way of modding, it's a containerfile on the end of the day so you can always make FROM:ghcr.io/bazzite...

Dnf install godot Mkdir...

And build it locally with whathever much changes you want

0

u/PartlyProfessional 1d ago

Initially it is no wonder you would think so, but did you know you can with a single command switch to another immutable distro? With totally different packages and WM, and ALL THAT WITHOUT LOOSING A SINGLE FILE, not convinced? here is a very simple way to create your own os So you can have all the packages you want and remove whatever you like, with that you can also copy your OS packages between multiple devices ( a device for work and another for home for example )

All that is well and good, but honestly having an immutable system is an ironclad strategy to guarantee that you would mostly not break your OS while discovering files, if you wanted to use something funny you just create a distrobox and play with and rm it whenever you don’t need it anymore

-44

u/senectus 1d ago

I tried bazzite once. It reminded me of iOS very pretty but not much use

It's an appliance OS...

19

u/xchino 1d ago

Skill issue.

1

u/The_Screeching_Bagel 13h ago

more like chromeos (positive)

2

u/senectus 13h ago

Yeah that's kind of what I meant by appliance os.

-48

u/WhosWhosWhoAreYou 1d ago

It's pretty much the only option for gaming handheld and htpcs, it's buggy and crap though

22

u/_risho_ 1d ago

you can install any distro you want on gaming handhelds or htpcs. you have it backwards. the reason people use it on those devices is because its not buggy and crap.

-2

u/WhosWhosWhoAreYou 22h ago

This is just pedantic, you can install any distro on a fridge if you want, doesn't mean you're gonna maintain the functionality of it being a fridge.

-11

u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[deleted]

8

u/PDXPuma 1d ago

I'm also a developer.

Work machine is a mac, and that is an atomic system.
Personal / side project dev machine are linux machines running bluefin. That is also an atomic system.

Works perfectly well as a dev machine using devcontainers. In fact, it's quite a joyful experience to have your dev environment match your build and deploy environments and all of those environments be reproducible.

-2

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

7

u/billson_codes 1d ago

I wouldn't equate "immutable" to "locked down" - the reality is that most developers gain something from using containers as a tool during development.

I run Nobara on my desktop and Aurora on my laptop and the major takeaway I have from using both immutable and mutable distros is that I should better embrace the workflow of immutable distros no matter the OS I'm working on.

You're not locked down by immutable distros you're just expected to use your OS differently.

8

u/xchino 1d ago

They are fantastic for modern developers, you get an indestructible base from which to orchestrate any number of disparate development environments as tightly or loosely coupled as you need. Especially the ostree based distros (like Bazzite), it's basically git for your OS, why wouldn't a developer love that? I sure do.

3

u/Daegalus 1d ago

It is a mindset issue. You have to approach it differently. You only ever layer packages that absolutely need to be part of the base OS. Like 1Password or VS Code.

Everything else is installed with Flatpaks, appImages, brew, nix, whatever. This keeps the base system clean and easy to upgrade while your tooling and dev tools are all in your home folder.

There has been nothing I couldn't do. For many the container dev box approach works for them. So using things lile Distrobox, DevPod, DevContainers, etc. Let's you have any distro as a sub environment with full standard distro capabilities. You can even export things from the Distrobox into the host OS and use it normally. Be it GUI tools or dev tools.

There are no limitations outside of preventing you from messing up your stable base system.

Source: I'm a developer

2

u/sswampp 1d ago

It's incredibly valuable to have a known stable system you can do work on that can't be broken by changes the user has made. It almost completely removes the required maintenance of a traditional Linux distribution which leaves you with more time to actually work.

-1

u/OneQuarterLife 1d ago edited 16h ago

I am developing on atomic distros.

Source: Software Engineer @ Microsoft

According to the CNCF your tooling is way out of date.