Huh? Last time I checked, SteamOS literally removed user-installed (non-flatpak) packages.

I agree that it’s a pity that the first couple of flatpak packages take up a lot of space for what they are. But that shouldn’t bother most modern systems.

Ah okay, thanks for clarifying!

FYI, DistroWatch isn’t a very reliable metric for gauging the user base of any given distro. Heck, strictly speaking, I’m unaware of any metric that does this any justice besides the opt-out DNF Count Me found on Fedora-based distros. And we will use exactly that to discredit DistroWatch!

So, Fedora (1112^[1]) has put out a number (relatively) recently; 961k users. And Bazzite (770) outright displays it on their website; 90.8k users. Like, Fedora is roughly 10 times as big as Bazzite. But their respective DistroWatch rankings don’t quite reflect that.

I don’t agree with the sentiment that Linux Mint is underrated either. As you note, it is quite popular and is mentioned a lot in the discourse.

However, I don’t think that CachyOS and Linux Mint are the most popular distros; that undoubtedly goes to Ubuntu. And, if anything, I’d think that Linux Mint is more popular than CachyOS.

Yet, if we’d limit it to the distros used by gamers, then CachyOS probably does take the crown for most used distro (aside from SteamOS). At least, there are metrics that suggest as such.

Sorry for the late reply

No worries fam 🙂.

thank you for taking your time!

It has been my pleasure 🙂.

I have “defaulted” back to Artix, having fixed the NIC issue.

Glad to hear that you were able to return back to your home.

And I agree, Gentoo is what I dream of being able to handle, but all the USE flags KILLED me when I set it up for the first time a month or so ago. xD I do want to get back to it at some point though.

Good mindset! I’m sure you’ll manage whenever you get back to it 😉.

Hmm…, not sure if it satisfies your requirement, but you can basically create your desktop from Emacs. You may find an example below.

See exwm

You can access those past images/snapshots even from a new install ;) .

As it seems to have been some time since it started, I’d suggest trying out the oldest still accessible snapshot/image.

Others have basically already pointed out how you should go about diagnosing the problem. Which, by itself, is already very valuable.

Below, I will try to touch upon some tips and tricks that are worth noting in this context, assuming Bazzite*.

• Pinning a specific deployment to return back to. As we’ll be doing some time traveling in a bit, it’s definitely recommended to pin your latest deployment (just in case) before you do anything else. See this entry in Bazzite’s documentation on that.
• Rolling back to images from a certain day. So, IIRC, all of the uBlue products keep around 90 days worth of images you can rollback to. See Bazzite’s documentation on brh for more information. With this (and some effort), you can literally pinpoint the exact date from which you started to have problems with gamescope/game mode.
• Looking into the exact changes between two deployments. So, after you’ve identified the last properly working deployment and the first deployment that started misbehaving, you can invoke the rpm-ostree db diff command to see what has changed between the two deployments. Note two things on this:
  • That the hashes coincide with the ones you actually want to compare.
  • The command catches only changes in packages. However, a config diff applied by Bazzite’s maintainers will not be shown here.
• Asking help from community channels. You can even start here. But basically, a project’s discord/discourse is undoubtedly better equipped in helping you out. See this entry on Bazzite’s documentation for links.

Wish ya good luck fam 😉!

Alright, excellent. Thank you for the reply!

So, IIUC, you want a clean slate. Furthermore, you want plenty of tinkerability. And, finally, OpenRC enjoys a preference.

Still, I want to limit our search (for now) to (relatively) upstream distros on which OpenRC is known to work pretty well. We have to start our search from somewhere and this seems to be the most sensible starting point at this point.

If you’ve dismissed Artix, that basically leaves us (in alphabetical order) with:

• Alpine
• Debian
• Devuan
• Gentoo

IIRC, most (if not all) of these offer very minimal images. So, hopefully you’ll enjoy those.

Thankfully, these are meaningfully different from eachother (for the most part). So choosing between these shouldn’t be too much to ask.

FWIW, Gentoo comes undoubtedly with the least amount of defaults and thus behaves the most like a blank slate.

I am most fond of Arch

But what is it that you like about Arch in the first place?

I found that I’m more comfortable with OpenRC as init and process management.

Like, do you want to limit your options to distros that are well supported by OpenRC? Or, is this simply a preference kind of thing?

the Artix forums also seem to house at least some transphobia

Do you want to engage in distro-specific forums or was your engagement in there mostly out of necessity?

as opposed to configured by me.

Excellent, so you’re a builder/tinkerer that prefers a clean slate to work from.

Assuming you’re involved with the development on AstrOS, thank you first of all for your efforts and secondly for providing your perspective on the matter!

Imo it generally does too much.

Oh, I can definitely see that; probably the consequence of retrofitting an OCI/Docker image into an OS 😅. I suppose that its relation with (rpm-)ostree doesn’t help either.

Systemd-sysupdate being simple as hell makes it just way more solid.

That’s some cool insight. Thank you.

I think it also depends on grub and stuff

I believe it did, yes. But, AFAIK, systemd-boot has been supported since earlier this year. I believe that change has also been instrumental in the relatively recent activities surrounding so-called sealed images.

I remember hearing even all the Fedora-based atomic distros don’t use UKI, so they are vulnerable to initramfs modifications

This has been a thing for the longest time. But the situation has been changing since about a year ago. That work has eventually led to the release of so-called sealed bootc images. Which, in turn, has led (some) projects to start active development on that. From what I know, projects like secureblue are even dogfooding their respective UKIs as we speak.

So, we’ve come a long way and it wouldn’t surprise me if many projects will ship their respective sealed images (alongside their regular images) before the end of the year.

However, there are some glaring issues that need to be addressed, most prominently of which is the loss of layering. Sealed images don’t support layering and probably won’t either. Of course, many different alternatives exist, including system extensions, creating your own custom image with those packages baked in, going the RakuOS-route and probably many others I’m unaware of or forgot about. But, AFAIK, none of the alternatives are as mature as layering has become.

What problems does bootc have? I’m genuinely curious*.

IIRC, it’s another brain child of Mirko Brombin; the prolific designer that’s also prominently involved with Bottles, Singularity Desktop/OS and Vanilla OS.

I wish it the best. Especially since Flatpak’s sandboxing didn’t have any competition up till now. At least, AFAIK*.

Aight. We seem to have found the culprit. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.|

I mean why would it say a stable image has a testing id and bootloader if its not testing

I’m not familiar with the Bazzite Update Tool. I tried to find it on GitHub, but failed 😅. But, if I’d have to guess, it looks at the same wrong place that fastfetch does.

A couple of issue trackers I found that may (or may not be) related:

• https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/issues/5255
• https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite-dx/issues/209
• https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite-dx/issues/198

Question: Could you paste the output of rpm-ostree status?

Yo OP, in case you couldn’t get GPU passthrough to work; vm-curator makes that a piece of cake, somehow even with a single GPU.

Beyond none of its branches actually satisfying my preferences, I feel like the way it handles major version upgrades is way too involved. I suppose it makes sense; it’s paying back the accumulated debt of a couple years worth of bliss…

Having said that, my experience on Fedora Atomic is (almost) equally blissful without requiring any of that whenever a major version update strikes.

Don’t get me wrong; I definitely do believe Debian has its uses on desktop Linux. But I can’t shake off the feeling that they’re definitely more niche compared to say Fedora.

You’re right on malware finding its way onto the Snap Store. I find it hilarious to see that the employed tactics are basically identical 😜.

However, FYI, the hate on Snaps is a lot more broad than that.

OP, got some specs? It will make it easier for us to give good suggestions. Thanks in advance!

It has been my pleasure 😊.