What you gain in stability you sacrifice in flexibility and control.
While I don't completely agree on flexibility, I can at least understand where you're coming from; there's simply stuff you can do on traditional distros that have yet to be properly supported on the 'immutables'. However, even after giving it some genuine thought, I still don't quite understand how control is sacrificed. Would you mind elaborating?
Honestly, Bazzite seems to fit like a glove:
- RTX 3070Ti
Nvidia can be an ass to work with on a lot of distros, but Bazzite delivers the right drivers OOTB.
Needs:
- Gaming
Bazzite is setup for gaming OOTB; it's bundled with Steam and Lutris, makes use of custom kernels/schedulers to optimize performance for gaming and contains many other goodies like excellent controller/peripheral support.
- Coding (Mostly python)
Provides a specialized DX (i.e. Developer Experience) image that comes with all the goodies you might expect.
- Video editing
Has a built-in just script that downloads, installs and sets up Davinci Resolve for ya: ujust install-resolve
- Music composing
This is the only I'm not 100% sure yet because you haven't provided explicitly yet what you'd like to use. But, I can't image it would be harder to get this running on Bazzite compared to other distros.
And last, but not least:
I'd like my main recreational machine & distro to be low maintenance
Through utilizing the bootc model, Bazzite is as low maintenance as they come.
It has been my pleasure fam! Enjoy your ride on Bazzite and please consider reporting back on how it went 😉.
I get the impression you've been enticed/subjected to some confusing technical jargon without noticing. Please allow me to shed some light.
Idk, there so much “mint and Debian are stable” but like… what’s the even mean?
Stable can mean a bunch of different stuff that may or may not be closely related. In the case of Debian, it's the name of its default release; the one in which packages are frozen for two years except for security patches. (Note that this naming scheme is not unique to Debian.) As such, a Debian installation will be unchanging for these two years, earning its stable designation (which, to be clear, just meaning unchanging in this context). Finally, this unchanging environment should provide a ton of stability (i.e. stuff just works), which is also referred to as stable. These three distinct meanings of stable are probably the ones you'll come across the most.
Is fedora 42 or bazzite going to be crashing regularly? Cuz… I doubt it?
The bold part is a clear demonstration that you understood stable to mean strictly robust; i.e. the third meaning discussed above. And to be clear, Fedora does a decent job at providing a reliable experience. (Bazzite even more so.) But not all three meanings of stable apply to it:
bootc model.So, to answer your question, Fedora and Bazzite will not crash regularly. And, while Fedora might fall a little short of providing as robust of an experience as you might find on Debian and Linux Mint (assuming you won't FrankenDebian your installs), Bazzite may actually rival (and perhaps even eclipse/surpass) Debian and Linux Mint in this respect.
Seems easier to just go with fedora 42 or bazzite or whatever
For your purposes, I agree that going for the Bazzite-route seems to be the easiest.
but now idk what bazzite being immutable even means for what I can’t change and why that’s a big deal so idk.
This is a nuanced discussion that probably deserves more attention, but I'll keep it short for the sake of brevity. In Bazzite's case, strictly-speaking, immutability refers to how most of /usr's content isn't supposed to be changed deliberately by you. This is enforced by the system (in part) by making those files read-only.
In practice, though, there's very little you actually can't do with the system:
bootc/rpm-ostree is possible, it's actually discouraged in Bazzite's case. Thankfully, there's a plethora of different means to the same end. Furthermore, sysext have come a long way and might become our go-to eventually.It TDE secure (for personal use)?
Depends on your threat modeling. Though, unfortunately, none of the DEs/WMs on Linux offer perfect security; this even applies to a hardened distro like secureblue.
So, practically-speaking, it probably ain't great. But we aren't used to great anyways 😅.
A bit of tinkering. Thoughts?
Obligatory "There is not a single distro that's the absolute best for each and every one." disclaimer aside, my personal favorite is definitely secureblue for being a hardened-by-default distro that adheres to the ~~'immutable'~~ reprovisionable, anti-hysteresis paradigm while enjoying a healthy stream of improvements pushed out by an active group of contributors.
Thanks for reporting back!
Glad to hear that it has been a pleasant experience overall!
The "force me to enter a password any time I open my browser"-thing seems like unintended behavior. Pretty strange. Glad to hear that it has been resolved, though.
Perhaps you've already undertaken what I'm about to say, so please feel free to ignore this if that's the case: Have you reached out to their Discord server in hopes of resolving the issue? While their documentation is pretty great, it's possible that it ain't sufficient. Whenever that happens, the Discord community can (and probably will (at least in my experience)) step up and provide excellent guidance when prompted.