God fucking damnit, I finally find a Linux OS that gels with me and I find this shit…
Note that this is just a proposal that the Fedora community wants feedback on.
Even if it does go ahead, this is minimum 1 year away from happening.
Tbh I wouldn’t be surprised if this was meant as a “hurry up and move away from Steam still being a 32-bit app, Valve!” bit of brinkmanship.
For those that think the response is overblown, from the thread:
These images are intended to be a drop-in replacement for Steam Deck OS for handheld console-like gaming PCs like the Steam Deck (Lenovo Legion Go, ASUS ROG Ally, MSI Claw, and other hardware in the same space).
These are also to be used to create gaming theater PCs, for streamlined use on a living room television.
The issue with “just using Flatpak or a container” is that the gamescope compositor simply does not work in those situations, when paired with Steam’s Gaming Mode, as it has the same concerns as a desktop environment. There would simply be no way to serve Gaming Mode as an environment.
As such, moving to this would essentially force Bazzite, as a project, to abandon its primary reason for existing - alienating 2/3s of their userbase. The remaining 1/3s would be served a lesser experience for a variety of more paper cut reasons, and VR is already a complex topic which would get even worse.
It’s a big deal because disallowing the native steam build would make it nearly impossible to run bazzite in a SteamOS-like experience (which accounts for 2/3s of bazzite’s users)
dang. That was supposed to be my go to OS once I got my data backed up.
any chance someone could recommend another distro for me?it would be on my Laptop. Fairly new, Intel IRIS cpu, no dedicated GPU (can get specs if needed).
I’m going into UNI for comp sci next year
I want KDE as a requirement.
I would prefer it to be arch based so my knowledge can be transferred to messing with my steam deck, but not a requirement.I also tinkered my previous distros to death by messing with terminal commands I didn’t know (it’s how you learn!). I would prefer something to back it up if I accidentally delete a million packages like last time but I don’t know if that would be something dependent on the OS or just a program.
I don’t really understand what immutable is, but I think my SteamDeck is immutable so I think I want it 🤷♀️
any recommendations/tips would be appreciated 🩷
Garuda is built on the zen kernel and ships with KDE, I have been using it for a year now and it meets all my needs.
I’ve appreciated endeavourOS’s installer and defaults. It’s Arch-based and has an option to install KDE/Plasma as the default desktop environment. I only back up my home directory, but I’m sure there’s systemwide options, like btrfs snapshots (although that’s a whole thing you’d need to test/verify). It’s not an immutable distro. And, being Arch-based, it gets frequent updates. I’ve had a handful of issues from a package being too cutting-edge, but often it gets resolved within a few days at most with an update. Never had something totally break my system that I didn’t cause myself (mostly symlink traversal). Just read up on
pacman’s flags (particularly-Rflags, like-dd,-s,-n).just try cachyos off a usb, it has a graphical installer, it boots into plasma off the usb, was easier than windows install
You can grab flatpak and snap support on i easilyt, half my apps are from flathub, and debtap for debs (I wanted to maximize flexibility) I use faugus launcher for non steam games, works well with pirated stuff (opens stuff that wouldnt open otherwise, and is instant)
Bazzite is still currently a great distro.
If Fedora drops support for 32bit packages, Steam, Proton, and more will no longer work, and all Fedora derivatives become useless for gaming.
Other than Bazzite, openSUSE Tumbleweed and Kubuntu Minimal are both great choices.
So was Bazzite founded by someone’s mate Baz or what?
Hear me out… But should we be asking why there are so many things, steam included, that are still on 32b libraries?
I mean the answer is pretty easy: video games generally have a long shelf life and no maintenance at some point after they’re released.
That explains the games, but not the steam binary right? If the steam binary didn’t break, and 32b games did, that’d be a lot less of an issue.
Your compatibility layers can be 64b, however, and support those 32b games that don’t even run natively on that hardware anyway.
I really feel for the Bazzite developer over the possible Fedora decision. That just plain sucks. Fedora was never a big gaming distro though. Hindisght is 20/20 and all that, but why pick that one as base in the first place?
Bazzite is based on Universal Blue, which is based on Fedora Silverblue, which is the first immutable, atomic Linux distro. The immutable nature of Bazzite is the point of it’s existence.
What’s the immutable part of Fedora, compared to other distros? Asking because, well, dropping 32bit support is a significant change and something that would make dummies like me not understand what’s immutable.
The underlying system is managed by OSTree, which handles the entire system instead of individual packages. You cannot simply change any part of the system, it’s all or nothing. This means stability, security, and effortless rollbacks if anything goes wrong. If you really want to tinker, you can create layers that sit on top of the base system, but it still doesn’t modify the system. It’s a very different way of thinking about how the system works. It’s like working with containers.
When Redhat went Fedora, I learned Debian and Ubuntu. When they decided to flush CentOS, I GTFO even professionally and stayed out of their ancestral distros.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m down with change and updating, but they are very focused on making things better/easier for themselves without worries about who they’re supposed to be supporting.
See. This is why I game only on Windows. There’s never any controversy or issues there. /s
I’ll see myself out now.
Throwing a tantrum isn’t how to get what you want. This is a common behavior in the OSS world from wannabe BDFLs. Linus Torvalds or Guido van Rossum earned that title through merit, not through the simple luck of your side project going viral.
Bazzite is just Fedora Atomic with some extra preinstalled software. If it dies, it’ll hurt the community of Linux gamers who picked it for whatever reason, but it won’t make Fedora maintain 32 bit packages forever.
Nobody’s throwing a tantrum. They’re just saying they can’t reasonably serve their purpose if they lose 32-bit support. A project so heavily based on other projects is subject to upstream whims, and they probably don’t have the manpower to do anything about it.
I think I can hear Bringus sobbing somewhere
I should’ve figured people on Lemmy would love his content lol
the return of HoloISO never booting up
Instead of shutting down why not choose another distro base
The only notable thing about Bazzite is that it’s built on top of Fedora Atomic, making it immutable like SteamOS.
Without that, it’s just a regular old distro with some opinions about which software should be preinstalled.
That would require redoing everything. It would be a massive project, and honestly since there’s already other gaming oriented distros out there, what would be the point? It’s not like Garuda or PopOS is shit.
Probably a lot of time and work to do so, they’ve spent a lot of time learning what tweaks Fedora needs.
Why not ride streams coat-tails and switch to arch?
I’d not really paid attnetion until this thread and assumed it was an Arch derivative becase of Steam OS. TIL
The tiny bit of gaming I do is in my main install is LMDE using Steam, it works fine.
I went from Windows to arch after waiting for a while for steam to release the desktop os. No real problems gaming aside from anti-cheat.
Or Debian. It still supports MIPS64 officially and 68K unofficially. x86 isn’t going anywhere for a long time.
Makes sense
After Bazzite I went to Garuda, is also gaming focused and has a handy helper app that helps you install common software, run updates, and more.
If you need a new distro it’s worth a look.
I went to Garuda
THERE’S DOZENS OF US, DOZENS!!
Hell yeah brother, make it 11 of us!
💪💪💪💪
I go with CachyOs Ik ik the compiler optimizations only give a minor difference and maybe major in latency but am just comfy with it.
I just like how minimal is the distroCachyos has some great default setup choices too. Limine with btrfs + snapper, all preconfigured… spot on!
Ohh yeah true I forgot they offer alterntive bootloaders that arent grub
Grub was really the only option if you wanted a snapper rollback though.
But now Limine is the new choice for me.
Systemd-boot doesn’t play with snapper.
True but systemd-boot also worked for me on opensuse?
Interesting. I wonder if opensuse wrote up their own solution to this. I did find a post from Cachyos Petr last year responding that he’d like to see more how opensuse boatloader is managed.
I only ever used grub with tumbleweed.
Why not just install the CachyOS kernel onto Fedora (like me)? I then deleted the stock kernle and now make sure to use --exclude=kernel* when updating. Works like a charm.
Ik
My go-to too.
Isn’t Garuda also based on Fedora?
Edit: I was thinking of Nobara.
Honestly go for EnOS. Garuda is neat and has a good default setup, but they’ve gone a little far with their modifications imo
Honestly go for EnOS.
Is that the whole name? Because searching shows YenOS, EndeavorOS, EventOS, EndlessOS and one ENOS based off Xubuntu (a single 2020 mention for a 0.4 version)
EnOS is generally EndeavorOS
Oh? I’m still a Linux noob, educate me.
I just don’t like their candy design that much and it’s effort to undo post-installation
I assume you are taking about desktop environment stuff? I installed the xfce version and it’s been pretty streamlined.
Well, I’m talking about their pre-installed software and custom theming
There is a lite version, but sure whatever you prefer.
Yeah, but it’s still more work to remove KDE and things… EnOS has an installer that allows you to cherry-pick your preferred packages
Ugghhh, I just got it set up with arr stack on my media computer. Can someone more familiar with the trajectory of the project tell me the odds of this actually happening? Or is it more of a PR move to get people’s attention on the Fedora project?
Well, no. If it actually happens, Bazzite can’t exist. Valve only releases 32bit of Steam for the official client. If support for 32bit is removed from Fedora, then gamers won’t be able to use Steam on Fedora or its downstream distros.
Can’t Bazzite just permanently branch away from Fedora?
And what if Valve starts releasing 64bit version?
According to that thread, when Ubuntu tried this, Valve refused to provide a 64bit version. But if they suddenly decided to, then I think the answer to your question would be obvious.
So it’s actually the whole cause of the issue? If Valve shifts to 64bit then there would be no issue? Or is there a limitation that would then prevent 32bit games from working?
Obviously yes or obviously no?
Wouldn’t the Steam Flatpak still work?
Steam in a flatpak sometimes runs into permission problems. That was supposedly fixed years ago, but every so often a game pops up that doesn’t work without getting hacky. Native just doesn’t have those issues.
Just migrate to cachy! It’s everything bazzite is but better!
I use Cachy and love Cachy, but it’s fundamentally very different from Bazzite. Bazzite is an immutable distribution. Cachy is a rolling release. Those are like polar opposites.
As reiterated by the OP, the proposal is just a proposal and was proposed with heaps of lead time probably because they expected it to be controversial.
As also mentioned, heaps of volunteer time is spent maintaining the packages where most are barely used (even for gaming).
However, it does not seem like there is a viable alternative. Many comments say the suggested alternative, WINE’s WoW64, does not work for all games.
I can see both sides here. Fedora maintainers says “this is so much work!” and (mostly) gamers saying “But older games will stop working!”.
The response from the Bazzite guy does seem overblown to me. I would think the first step is to work out the impact, as I haven’t seen anyone quantify what proportion of games are affected and if there are alternatives like emulation.
Older games? What are you talking about? They say in that thread that Valve doesn’t release 64bit versions of Steam. That means any games through Steam using the official client would be unplayable.
The two solutions I’ve seen presented in the thread for the Steam problem are to run Steam in a flatpak or a distrobox. I’m not sure if using distrobox has the same issues as flatpak.
I want to say no, but I’m sure if I did somebody who has tried that would pipe up with a problem they found.
The flatpak should still work. Though I agree it’s a problem.
The flatpak has its own issues. Namely, that Steam was never meant to be run like that, so you run into bugs the native version doesn’t have.
WINE’s WoW64, does not work for all games.
Ok but is that because of fundamental limitations, or just because of bugs?
One’s easier to fix than the other.
If it works like real WoW64, then 16 bit applications won’t work ever but 32 bit applications that don’t work will be because of fixable bugs.
It seems to me that 16-bit applications are already basically broken with 32-bit wine if you’re running a 64-bit kernel, by default it places extra restrictions over what the hardware already does to prevent apps from loading 16-bit code entirely.
https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/FAQ#16-bit-applications-fail-to-start
Guessing that’s why they don’t feel it’s that important to continue supporting, seems a VM is the future for these apps.
Yeah most 16 bit stuff is old enough that there’s already a mature reimplementation of the game engine or old enough that it’ll run nicely in a translation layer or VM
I’m wondering what the problem even is. I mean, can’t you just put all the stuff relevant to 32 bit gaming into a ‘retro-gaming’ package and be like “there, now if you want updates, better find maintainers”?
If you have an old game, chances are you won’t need many new features. Only problem could be other packages or the kernel becoming incompatible. I don’t know how relevant that is in this instance.
only problem could be other packages or the kernel becoming incompatible
Yea dependency management without updates is like 80% of the work that goes into package maintenance
Dammit - found Bazzite one week ago and love it - now its embroiled in a controversy.
Dw, this will pass - there is too much passion in the project, and too many with stakes in it too. If it is installed on so many people’s systems, we will have many people eager to see this continue also.
If it helps at all some of the comments in the linked discussion mentions it’s at minimum a year out
Same here. Nobara was too glitchy so I switched to Bazzite and love it so far. Sigh.
