[helle253]

man, i was JUST thinking about switching out windows for bazzite, because the only thing i use my windows machine for is video games...

might need to hold off on that, as much as it pains me, with all the weird & sloppy updates windows is pushing out.

[waisbrot]

I would still recommend trying Bazzite today.

If we take the post as truth (it's not clear to me whether we can), then Bazzite will get iffy kernel updates that will particularly break handhelds. But desktop will be more stable and you could even turn off automatic updates for 6months and see how things look after.

I think Bazzite has a very smooth experience for Windows gaming and even if you decide that you don't like it or that the distro really is falling apart, you'll have gotten the best Linux-gaming experience and can evaluate other distros more clearly.

[vurudlxtyt]

Just install another distribution—Bazzite has some conveniences in setup, but doesn’t fundamentally provide anything that you can’t get elsewhere, and a lot of those customizations you probably won’t need.

I decided to try Fedora Kinoite for my gaming machine (to have something with less “maybe not maintained one day stuff” out of the box and a long term community of maintenance), and have been happy.

[bsder]

As I understand it, the primary advantage of Bazzite is that it handles "odd" (read: "nVidia" or handheld) hardware out of the box properly.

If you have normal hardware, something like like Fedora Kinoite should be mostly equivalent.

[ta9000]

I’d recommend trying Linux Mint with Steam.

[dismalaf]

Mint needs to die. It's the most ancient, archaic distro ever.

Replacing something that's SOTA with something that still uses X11 and years old software isn't it (it makes Debian Stable look modern).

[tomth]

I've had issues with Wayland, even in 2025, but never with X11. X11 may be old, but it's stable. Mint is for normal people, not us. I do have it on my travel laptop though, because well, it never has any issues.

[ta9000]

Yeah, sorry, I’m a normal person I guess.

[morshu9001]

I tried Linux desktop for the first time in like a decade. Didn't know Xorg was deprecated for real, as in most distros moved to Wayland. Was surprised that the one hold out was Mint. And learned the hard way that Mint didn't work on my fairly normal PC, due to an Xorg issue.

This is the thing so many people recommend?! No wonder Linux is unpopular.

Also there like 20 competing ways to install packages now. Used to just be apt.

[esseph]

> Also there like 20 competing ways to install packages now. Used to just be apt

This is very incorrect. There's been far more for 35+ years

* apt/.deb

* yum(dnf)/.rpm

* Tarballs

* Ports trees

* Flatpak

* Snap

* Etc, etc, etc

[morshu9001]

Flatpak and Snap are new to me, and that's the annoyance. Like I get if there's some technical advantage to a snap, but apt can install snaps too. Also idk what .appimage is.

rpm was a thing that existed but wasn't a Mint way of installing. Tar, yes. I can see why you'd consider a tar a package, but I was thinking of things actually designed for packages, and tar isn't really an extra thing to learn and deal with. Port tree, idk never heard of that.

[esseph]

> Flatpak and Snap are new to me and that's the annoyance.

These were designed to solve different problems.

PS - Just avoid snap. Fuck snap. All my homies hate snap.

Flatpak otoh is software basically delivered in a container with some security restrictions. It works great, but you may want a GUI problem called "flatseal" to enable access to certain parts of the host filesystem, device access, etc depending on specifics of what the particular application is supposed to do. That's a bit of a security boundary (good).

Flatpak does solve several big issues with the minor and only occasional need to use flatseal to enable access to say something in /proc /dev etc

Snap happened in 2014

Flatpak in 2015

So you've got about 10 years of catch-up ;)

[yjftsjthsd-h]

(Even if they're all true) Do any of those things matter to a user? If the goal is to ditch Windows and have something else that can run Steam and a web browser and maybe some other applications, being "ancient" sounds just as likely to mean "stable and actually works"

[ta9000]

The stability is why I prefer Linux Mint for gaming. Everything just works, even on my modern hardware.

dismalaf: I definitely don’t care about gestures on my desktop computer.

[dismalaf]

One immediately noticeable thing is the lack of gestures on X11. Touchpad and touchscreen gestures just work in Wayland, most DEs implement them OOTB, even Hyprland has them.

Imagine going from a modern OS to one that doesn't have touchpad gestures in 2026. Yeah there's workarounds but having to config that isn't a good user experience.

[queenkjuul]

I don't use a touchpad on my workstations, my gaming desktop, my servers...

[ta9000]

The latest version (with support through 2029) was released last month. It installed and runs flawlessly.

https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_zena_whatsnew.php

[dismalaf]

It's literally based on a 2 year old Ubuntu LTS... This is what I mean. It's very outdated.

[ta9000]

So what’s your alternative?

[tapoxi]

Bazzite or Cachy

Mint won't even boot for me because it doesn't support my year old GPU (9070 XT). That's a huge miss when someone is looking at an OS primarily for gaming.

[dismalaf]

Fedora Workstation, Fedora Silverblue, regular (non-LTS) Ubuntu are in my experience best for newbs. After that Debian. After that Arch.

For gaming specifically, I've heard good things about Nobara (dev is a RedHatter, though it's his personal project) and CachyOS.

[queenkjuul]

just use ubuntu