I recently set up Bazzite on my friend’s system after switching from Linux Mint due to some Nvidia driver issues. Although the hardware problems are not there anymore, the distro is now facing problems installing certain programs for software development that they had no problem installing in the previous distro. I think there are issues related to the immutability of the distro, though I am not sure since I am new to Linux too. Additionally, my friend is worried about higher storage consumption and slower performance in certain applications.
I realise the distro is primarily meant for gamers and my friend is not much of a gamer themselves, however they told me they appreciate its friendlier KDE interface so I wish to avoid switching from this distro again if possible. However I fear that they may encounter more errors in the future and that I may not be available to help them out whenever needed, so I am in a bit of a conundrum.
Thus I intend to ask here if it is possible to arrange something for easing development related tasks e.g. VM, distrobox etc. or whether it is easier to simply switch to some other compatible distro.
I’m sorry to say this, but switching distros would be the better option. Bazzite locks down a lot of parts to ensure it works for games. There’s ways around it, but the effort is so much more compared to any other popular distro. Plenty of distros either come with KDE or have a version that has KDE.
Maybe rebase* to
https://docs.getaurora.dev/dx/aurora-dx-intro/
before nuking and going a classic Linux distro like others have suggested?
(Personally I’m not sure if I could go back to non-atomic, having the option to just boot the old image if after an update sleep mode is borked or something is just too good.)
I realise the distro is primarily meant for gamers and my friend is not much of a gamer themselves, however they told me they appreciate its friendlier KDE interface so I wish to avoid switching from this distro again if possible.
KDE lives on probably every single version of linux, most downloads have an option to have it as a pre-loaded download version (https://kubuntu.org/ , https://fedoraproject.org/kde/ , etc : https://community.kde.org/Distributions )
Even if your chosen version doesn’t come with KDE, you can usually rip out the existing UI, and install KDE through the package manager.
Actual professional software developer here with 10 years of experience. I work on linux for linux targets.
You wanna play around? Use whatever you want with the latest and greatest packages and tweaks, you will encounter issues, learn how to solve them, that is for fun.
You wanna work? Use a serious distro with proven stability, I use debian for example. Yes installing nvidia drivers is a touch less user friendly than on bazzite, but when I update I don’t have surprises and when I boot up in the morning i don’t have to wonder if today will be debugging and coding for my product or for the damn tool i am using to develop it.
I use debian for example
There are dozens of us!
(Deb stable is all I work on. Everything else is what I play around on.)
As another software guy, I second this advice. Resolving a driver issue on Debian Stable or a Debian-based distro (for example) is typically much easier and would cause many fewer problems down the road than going to a less predictable OS to solve a driver problem. The underlying OS contains so much more software than a driver that the likelihood of introducing problems when changing the OS is way higher. I used to solve hardware issues by changing OS back in the 2000s when I didn’t know any better. Once I learned enough to keep a stable base OS and modify just the bits that need modifying, I stopped reinstalling. My main machine was last reinstalled in 2014. It’s been running Ubuntu LTS since then. Its hardware platform has been changed multiple times.
If you want to do both at the same time without knowing which side any given task will fall under use NixOS
there is a bazzite-dx image that may be more accommodating to software developers. though, bazzite and the bootc/atomic distros are more geared towards containerizing software as opposed to installing a bunch of packages to the system.
distrobox and devcontainers may work for their use case but they would likely need to learn more about what that would entail.
generally people seem to like the atomic distributions once they understand them. i know I prefer them.
Actual Developer and 20+ year Linux expert.
Don’t just immutable distros for development work. Hands down.
If you’re expecting the normal workflow of being able to install any tool or library you want without jumping through hoops…that ain’t immutable distros.
If you’re new to Linux as well, you’re going to have a bad time.
Actual developer and 30+ years Linux expert.
Don’t use anything but immutable distros for development work. Hands down.
Just develop in containers and have one container per project. Doing anything else will lead to broken projects as you can not properly control dependencies per project otherwise.
It is not harder to work in a container than on the real system.
OP is a beginner with Linux, as they stated.
Also, don’t come into the comments to be a dick, okay? You’re disregarding what OP said, and just coming in here to interject your own nonsense because it makes sense to you. This thread isn’t about YOU. We need less of people like you in general in these threads, and more people who READ THE OOST and respond accordingly.
Hey, something I can maybe help with.
Flatpak IDEs on the main system are not very useful for development. I got rid of mine entirely. I am developing firmware so it might be a bit different from your case, but what I did in have a single arch distrobox where I could install everything embedded-dev-related that had to work together (JLink, nordic tools, code-oss, etc…) on that. Then a few standalone debugging tools like STLink and Saelae logic2 could be installed to the home folder by default and Code could still find them from the distrobox (but they could be installed in the distrobox also). It doesn’t even need to have an init system, but I ran into a few problems like having to manually chmod usb devices to give STLink access. Udev rules are also hit or miss in /etc/udev/rules.d, e.g. the STM udev rules just don’t work, but nordic does.
High storage consumption is likely negligible (or at least nitpicky) since storage is so cheap nowadays. Your SSD doesn’t care if it has 15GB or 20GB of system programs, especially when development codebases and SDKs, games, and media will likely make up 90% of space and almost never share libraries even on traditional systems.
ujust setup-virtualization, distrbox ,homebrew are ur friends
Yeah, I thought one of the main reasons to use distrobox and the likes is for dev work having cleanly seperated environments.
the distro is now facing problems installing certain programs for software development
What programs? What kind of errors?
I think there are issues related to the immutability of the distro
Unlikely. That only applies to the OS partition.
they told me they appreciate its friendlier KDE interface so I wish to avoid switching from this distro again if possible
Pretty much every distro will have KDE Plasma optional.
Thus I intend to ask here if it is possible to arrange something for easing development related tasks e.g. VM, distrobox etc. or whether it is easier to simply switch to some other compatible distro.
Hard to say without knowing what the problem is but switching distros rarely solves anything.
In terms of immutability, Bazzite by design makes it very difficult to install things that aren’t in the app store/flatpal/homebrew. It is an OS dedicated to gaming, and tries to make it as hard as possible to mess that up. I’ve ran into similar issues when I try to do some non-gaming things, or more advanced gaming things on it (like installing a fan patch). It’s not a good OS choice if you want to do more than game and surf the web.
