Linux @lemmy.ml Gunpachi @lemmings.world 3 wk. ago

I'm going to reinstall linux on my computer. What is it like to run something Silverblue based these days ?

I have been using CachyOS for more than 6 months at this point and I'm pretty happy with it. Among the many distros I tried, this is probably my favourite arch based distro. I initially installed it because it offered Hyprland desktop, and I didn't want to bring over my messy config nor did I want to start from scratch. But sometimes when I want to game or when I wake up my computer from sleep the display would just keep blacking out and won't let me use it until I restart the computer (I am using an AMD GPU btw). This issue has been happening on Plamsa 6, and Gnome as well. I have tried various fixes from the ArchWiki but it's still there. Other than that I really liked the Distro.

It's not like changing distros can solve my moitor blacking out problem, but I'm going to try something based on Silverblue for a change. Yes, I have tried the Ublue project in the past, it was good but I couldn't get into the whole immutable thing back then, so I hopped back to my staple Arch/Tumbleweed and carried on. Fast forward to today.. I'm thinking about trying Bazzite or Aurora as the idea of having a low maintenance system is now very appealing to me.

I'm not necessarily a hardcore gamer but I do play games every other day and also run some LLMs locally every now and then. I'm not sure which one I should go for between Bazzite and Aurora. Maybe someone who has run both can give their opinion.

27 comments

I can vouch for Bazzite. Been running it on my desktop and laptop (both amd gpu's) with virtually no issues or hiccups. The desktop is even dual boot, despite that not being advised.
- Been on Bazzite myself since the F38 Beta.
  
  I haven't had to so much as perform a rollback even once on my AMDxAMD desktop.
  
  In fact the upgrade from versions isn't even a worry anymore.
  
  I played some games, turned off my computer at the Fedora 40 launch and magically it upgraded to Bazzite 40 the next time I booted up, with 0 effort on my part.
- I have an older laptop with an Nvidia GPU, and it runs Bazzite mostly fine. There's a few annoying things, but that's mainly a product of Nvidia + X11. Playing games on it works just as well as my Steam Deck, and I've even rebased a couple of times due to (usually upstream) bugs that affected my specific setup.
  
  I can also vouch for Bazzite, and it's the distro I'm using as a comparator as I'm looking for a replacement on my main desktop.
  
  ETA: I've also dabbled a little with Silverblue and Kinoite, and they feel just as solid and "complete."
- +1 for Bazzite. I stopped hopping around when I tried it with Fedora 38, been using it since.
  
  I've had one problem related to kernel 6.9.x affecting Steam game stability on my old hardware ( i5 2500k). Newer systems have BIOS settings that mitigate the issue. It's not a Bazzite specific problem. However, I was able to roll back and pin a previous image that uses kernel 6.8.x. Will unpin and update once I see a fix deployed.
  
  Is it related to the issue described in the post attached to this comment? The linked comment also links to an issue page with details about the issue the poster experienced. If so, then that issue should actually be fixed in kernel 6.9 (which still has not been added to the Fedora 40 repos), and not caused by it.
  
  An extension of this issue is present in 6.8.9+ before 6.9, which is why I ask if this seems to be related (since the versions are pretty close in time and Fedora doesn't even have 6.9 yet).
Yes, just yes. Try it. If you want, I can elaborate further.

I've been using it for about a year now, and I just can't imagine going back to a traditional mutable distro.
I've never encountered any personal issues (capabilities, convenience, breaking things, annoyances) as a casual user.

I would recommend you Bazzite, but you can always just rebase to Aurora if you want, it literally takes just 2 minutes.

Just search for Fedora Atomic here on this community, and you will find dozens of great experience reports.
- Bazzite is awesome. Installed it yesterday, first "distro" that just works with everything out of the box, including Logitech Keyboard/Mouse and fan control. Had to switch to X11 with dual monitor setup and nvidia, but anything else is just smooth. No tinkering, no going back because that one programm doesn't work properly. Love it!
- Rather than rebasing, would there be a way to to layer the Bazzite Optimizations (Kernel & scheduler Optimizations for gaming, not Lutris etc) on top of aurora-dx?
  
  I recently switched to bazzite. What i ended up doing was using bluebuild and making my own github repo. Which takes the newest version of bazzite upstream and strips out flatpaks i dont want or certain packages. And installs some i want. The documentation could use some work but its a great concept
  
  https://blue-build.org/learn/getting-started/
  
  https://github.com/Steamymoomilk/yboxproworkstation
  
  And my repo if you need insperation and or help with configuring bluebuild feel free to ask!
  
  Im still trying to figure out how to make it automatically take distrobox assemble distrobox.ini and setup my distroboxes
  
  And to answer your question with bluebuild you can take bazzite-dx and set that as your image in recipe.yml and then specify what packages you want added via brew, flatpak, or rpm-ostree or removed
I've used silverblue on my gaming rig for over three years now. It has been a completely uneventful experience, so I really like it.

The only pain point I have is that compiling kernel modules is an utter disaster and it's ridiculous that there is not a seamless mechanism for this yet. Every kernel update (and there are tons) requires me to rebuild my third party modules, but you need to do it in a toolbox and the kernel headers version must match the running kernel version, which is actually more annoying than it sounds.
- Every kernel update (and there are tons) requires me to rebuild my third party modules, but you need to do it in a toolbox and the kernel headers version must match the running kernel version, which is actually more annoying than it sounds.
  
  Boy, I doubt that.
  
  My Windows 11 machine doesn't require any of that.
I'm running Aurora DX on work and personal laptops. Also a gaming / media center box, which uses a custom ublue-silverblue based image that has ZFS modules installed (the box is also used for local homelab backups)

As long as you can get to the flatpak/container mindset, the atomic distros are absolutely brilliant.
I dont get it, I had the same issues on AMD too. Fedora likely wont change that, both Distros just use mostly upstream packages.

Also instead of Silverblue I honestly need to recommend uBlues silverblue-main base image, which has "batteries included".

Or you try wayblue, which is a project shipping many Wayland window managers with some defaults.
If you want full system control and a rolling distribution with a good security setup, stay with openSUSE Tumbleweed. Immutable distributions like SilverBlue, Aeon,...are not recommended for everyone, only for those who don't want to administer their system and who have good hardware and a good internet connection.
In easy terms, it's a bit like running a phone OS. The further you deviate from the default, the more issues you'll have.
It's the opposite end of the spectrum to Arch.
Running bluefin here and loving it although I am forced back to x11 for work
I'm using nobara right now, but somewhere over the last year my bluetooth has stopped working.
This has led me down the road of a reinstall, nobara had been great for gaming but now that I'm looking at spending more time developing I'm also looking at an immutable os. There has been some really enlightening discussion here.
I tried Bazzite for a couple of months. After the 3rd or 4th update, Wayland started acting up, so I had to fall back to Xorg. So I ended up going back to Fedora Workstation. Other than that, when it was working, it worked great, dGPU or integrated, just worked. I did find it somewhat slower to boot, and the same for opening software, but nothing that I would have considered a deal killer.

Now, that's just my personal experience, I've also read of people that have had nothing but a very solid experience.
If your problem seems to be the one I'm thinking about use this answer from askubuntu.com

I just switch to silverblue yesterday and first that seems to be really cool. I'm really a fan of fedora and this immuable one is really nice. But with this particularly you couldn't use the answer shown above (in fact some devices are authorized to wake up the device so it's why it auto-reboot), because you could change anything in /usr I'm actually trying to find a way to resolve it but for now I couldn't find... Tell you more once found! 🤞

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