Original question by @POTOOOOOOOO@reddthat.com
Does what I want and gets out of my way.
Bazzite just works, it runs every game I have with zero fuss, it’s easy to run Windows programs / emulators / local LLMs, AND it’s basically unbreakable.
I can’t claim it’s the best, but it’s the best for me right now.
On a gaming laptop I’m using Aurora because KDE Plasma btw (:
Bazzite has a KDE version too. I think it is more popular then the GNOME version of bazzite actually. At least according to the results of the latest steam survey
Yep I use KDE-flavored Bazzite and actually forgot GNOME was even offered! It works deliciously. Came over from Windows last winter finally and boy, the UI alone is just so much nicer.
I had avoided KDE for years due to some multi-screen resolution issues back in the day.
I’d be running gnome, and install a half dozen plugins to make it look and feel closer to Windows It was just a personal preference. Every other update some plugin I was using would be broken. I’d replace it with another plug-in or uninstall it and wait for a fix. Fight fight fight fight fight fight. Some number of years later I tried KDE again, and I realized that it did exactly what I was trying to do in Gnome but it did it out of the box.
I don’t have anything against Gnome. The same way I don’t have anything against OS X’s “window manager” or even Windows 11’s “window manager” they’re just not my preference.
Bottom left navigation, thin, stacked app indicators, bottom right tray. Fractional scaling, widgets.
I tried KDE over a decade ago before using Mint for a while. Then I saw someone’s laptop running vanilla GNOME and thought it looked nice. But a couple of years ago I realised that GNOME’s insistence on hiding settings in “tweaks”/gsettings and generally making it harder to do what I wanted was getting in the way. KDE still has the configurability that I loved when I first started using Linux and GNOME 2, without being an infinite config hellhole like the niche WMs
I haven’t bothered to actually search or troubleshoot yet, but since I’m here - have you had any problems with power management failing to automatically turn screens off when idle?
I don’t get consistent behavior there it seems (AKA it leaves them on when it shouldn’t), but that’s I think the only significant oddity I’ve found in the ~7 months or so I’ve been running Bazzite. And like I said I’ve done basically nothing yet to try to solve it, just wondering if you’ve seen it. I have the issue on a desktop and a laptop, using entirely different monitors (not even same brand) FWIW.
I haven’t had any problems like that, but I generally don’t leave my screen on. So perhaps I would have this issue, but just never notice it because of how I use the device.
I’m very conscious of energy use, I almost always manually set my laptop to sleep if I’m leaving it idle for a while.
It isn’t, it is the least bad
Mint is Ubuntu minus everything that makes Ubuntu annoying. That’s why I like it.
I considered to go back to Debian but… eh, I’m too old and impatient for that. Nowadays I mostly want things that work out of the box.
Do things not work out of the box on debian?
From what I remember*, there was always some rough corner. Such as the wi-fi, or the graphics card. Sure, Stable was rock solid, but you always needed something from Testing; and Testing in general was overall less stable than Ubuntu or Mint.
*This was years ago, so it might be inaccurate as of 2025.
All the good parts of Ubuntu have long since been integrated upstream. And Debian’s release cycle has increased a lot so you’re not stuck with old versions anymore.
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To each its own in accordance to their needs. Debian is great unless you want to add proprietary stuff like GPUs. That’s the whole reason so many distros (e.g. Ubuntu) raised to fame and gained popularity while being based on Debian… That, and the fact that until recently Debian installation guide was not updated and called to download an ISO to be burned in 1-2 CDs… that was so f*ing unclear. Of course you can use a pendrive, but if the guide talks about CDs… that’s just confusing to newbies. None pointed that out, but to me is like being even less friendly than Arch :P Just my opinion. That said, I have been using Debian based distros for most of my time, even today (desktop PC with MX ‘ahs’.)
NixOS. My entire config is source-controlled and I can easily roll back to a previous boot image if something breaks like cough Nvidia drivers. I also use it for my home router and all self-hosted services.
maniacally laughs while trying to avoid eye contact with 19k lines of nix config
I don’t know that it is objectively the best - but its the best fit for me right now (LMDE).
I’ve been enjoying EndeavourOS over the past three years. It works wonderfully out of the box at default settings, and was really easy for me to use and set up to my liking with minimal know-how needed.
It also works really well on the variety of machines I have in my home. My desktop, modded Chromebook, and my husband’s laptop.
It’s allowed me to get more familiar and confident with the command line, and enough so that I’ve switched to Sway from XFCE (and previously KDE).
This week alone I’ve used Arch, Ubuntu, OpenSuse, and Fedora. Its Arch. By a short way, and mostly thanks to the wiki. Tbh they are all converging, and I go with KDE variants when I use a GUI and no distro does too much to customise it
I’m convinced it isn’t.
For a long time I considered Gentoo the best, because I know my things around there. A month ago I said goodbye to my last Gentoo installation in favour for Debian trixie (the next stable release). Gentoo was too time consuming despite the binary repo.
If it would be my job to maintain a Gentoo system I would gladly accept, but there should be a need for it by the users. Otherwise I would just recommend Debian stable or Fedora.
My favourite is Debian over Fedora, because I often don’t need the latest versions of a software. And there is flatpak.
Tried CalculateLinux or any of the other Gentoo respins?
Toorox was the best Gentoo respin. Nothing more than a pure straight gentoo respin. Sabayon was superb before they started to try too hard. Redcore started to try too hard too. Calculate did a little bit of try-hard, but managed to retain enough modest sanity to remain good (at least, still true of the last few times I saw it). Even Funtoo started to go a little wonky.
But if you ever start to think Gentoo’s too easy and not taking up enough of your time, you can always go the other way, and jump ship to Exherbo.
I have seen at least one person moving from Gentoo to Exherbo. Would I leave Debian behind for it? No, not currently, but maybe there is time for an experiment in the future.
I’ve tried Sabayon briefly, but not seriously. At the time, it was interesting to have more pre-built binaries. Looking back now, the Gentoo binrepos are the better solution, I think.
I’ve tried Exherbo more times than I can count, but never managed to make it my daily driver. It really needs that kind of commitment to make the best of it. With Exherbo, you’ve really got to go from 0 to >9000, with nothing between, becoming a developer of it straight away.
And yeah, +1 Gentoo+binhost. Though I do miss the USE=“-*” approach to gentoo (like I did in 2011(ish)), adding things only as needed, per package. Great education. And keeps the system very tight to just meet needs, and no more.
Oh, and also…
Would I leave Debian behind for it?
No need to leave. There’s BedrockLinux, or just distrobox.
~ for the latter of which I was shown this article (titled “I stopped distro-hopping because this tool lets me run everything at once”) earlier today on libera.chat from someone who know’s Bedrock’s been my daily driver for over a decade, with Bedrock being how I ended my distro-hopping, and DistroBox being another way to end distro-hopping. ~ We’re now ((at least) two ways) past the days of having to pick just one distro. ;D
I should generally make more use of things lile podman and systemd-nspawn. Thx!
I guess running Bedrock Linux inside podman wouldn’t work, I guess. Not sure how well nesting works with containers.
Hrmm. While I’ve never bothered with containers, I don’t see why bedrock wouldn’t work in a container. Could be easy to test… set up a container with whichever distro, and try run the BedrockLinux hijack installer script on it… Don’t blame me if somehow it escapes the containment and eats your whole system … (~ I don’t see why/how it would ~ should be safe ~ but like I say, I don’t have experience with containers.)
Because I like compiling everything from source for a 0.2% speed improvement
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Void made Linux fun again for me. It gets so much right with the rolling release model.
Because I can hit “next” a couple of time and have a working install
