We shouldn’t be talking about stuff like this here. It spooks the noobs.
How feasible is rebasing bazzite onto a different distro?
They fact they based it on Fedora in the first place seemed like a stupid choice, but I’ve been biased against Fedora for a long time lol.
IMO they should have based it off Arch or Ubuntu to align with the Steamdeck or SteamOS
I dunno, the concept of an immutable OS is definitely interesting, and I don’t believe Arch or Ubuntu currently offer that.
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.
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
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)
Could Valve make Gamescope work with Flattpak ?
See. This is why I game only on Windows. There’s never any controversy or issues there. /s
I’ll see myself out now.
I was this 🤏 close to a reflexive downvote
Dammit - found Bazzite one week ago and love it - now its embroiled in a controversy.
Same here. Nobara was too glitchy so I switched to Bazzite and love it so far. Sigh.
If it helps at all some of the comments in the linked discussion mentions it’s at minimum a year out
Did he elaborate on why? Is it really that integral to have 32bit tools?
Yes, and from what I understood:
- Steam is still 32bit. Two-thirds of Bazzite’s user base use the OS on handhelds requiring Steam’s gaming mode front-end. Installing Steam as a flatpak removes the ability to boot into gaming mode, and so alienating two-thirds of Bazzite’s user base.
- It will kill support for older games that are still 32bit. Wine’s WoW64 isn’t ready yet, and even so, building custom Proton for 32bit support (e.g. Including all the 32bit libraries inside of Proton itself) on top of the Proton provided by Valve is going to be very messy.
- OBS requires 32bit packages to capture video data from 32bit games. If 32bit is no longer supported, this’ll kill streamers playing older games (OBS is probably the most widely used software by streamers and game recorders).
- It would kill VR on Bazzite, as VR still makes use of 32bit features (I’m not sure why or which ones, but that’s what’s said).
Oh wow, if steam is still 32 bit, forget the offshoots, fedora itself won’t be worth using. I’m on fedora but if I can’t run steam, then I’m finding a new distro.
On the flip side, what’s the reason they want to drop 32-bit support, given steam depends on it, which they should understand means it’s integral to the size of their current userbase?
People just ditching Fedora for another distro is exactly what is being warned about on the linked forum thread, should the Fedora team decide to go through with it.
As for the why; the Fedora team says that 32bit libraries are annoying to maintain and that they can cut it out to save on time and resources. They consider 32bit old and no longer relevant.
However, others have said that if 32bit is still being used (also for none-game-related projects) then it’s still relevant and should still be maintained. Also that Fedora should develop according to what the user base wants, and not pull a Microsoft/Apple and force want they want on the user base.
…not pull a Microsoft/Apple and force want _they_ want on the user base.
This is why I personally stopped using anything from Canonical.
Hear me out… But should we be asking why there are so many things, steam included, that are still on 32b libraries?
Because there’s no incentive for valve to spend time on that i guess
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.
Your compatibility layers can be 64b, however, and support those 32b games that don’t even run natively on that hardware anyway.
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.
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!
💪💪💪💪
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
That’s fair, but as a Linux beginner, I was happy to have more software than I needed at the start rather than not enough. If you know what you are doing, I could see how you could have a different opinion.
God fucking damnit, I finally find a Linux OS that gels with me and I find this shit…
If this happens, give Fedora itself a try. The only issue I’ve had with it is that my video card drivers didnt work right out of the gate and took a little bit of playing to get perfect.
Been with fedora for years, but fedora is the problem, so that would be pretty pointless.
Fedora is literally the source of this problem. Bazzite is based on Fedora.
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.
I thought the Steam Linux client was already native 64-bit?
If not, maybe this is the kind of push needed to get them to actually go full 64-bit?It’s still 32bit. i’ve heard it guessed that Valve does this on purpose because so many games are still 32bit and Wine/Proton/etc aren’t fully compatible yet. What does it matter if Steam works and most of the Steam library does not.
Seems like a good reason for the Wine / Proton WoW64 subsystem to improve.
I would be shocked if Fedora went through with it. If anyone remembers canonical tried to do this with you one to some years ago. They backed down then after push back as well.
You one to
What. The. Fuck.
Glad I didnt install bazzite.
what did you go with?
I think I can hear Bringus sobbing somewhere
I should’ve figured people on Lemmy would love his content lol
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.
Why would they not just use an Arch base like the real SteamOS does?
Fedora and Red Hat are innovating image-based operating systems. Universal Blue builds on that work.
It would take effort to port that work to Arch. Arch is also a rolling distro, not updating means not getting security updates. Fedora’s release cycle allows them to get more stability, they don’t have to be using the latest version.
That’s reasonable. Thanks!
I used EndeavorOS in the past which was a successor to AntergOS, both arch based, with gui installer and easy nvidia driver setup, they both worked like a charm without any issues (unlike fucking Manjaro).
