Mastodawn

Someone just pointed me at https://bazzite.gg/ and while it's marketed towards gamers, I feel like this has a lot of potential for everyday use?

Bazzite is image based meaning that after every update the previous version of the operating system is retained on your machine. Should an update cause any issues, you can select the previous image at boot time.

Images of the operating system are retained in our repositories for ninety days and can be switched to via the terminal. Nvidia driver update broke something you needed? No worries, rebase to the last known good release and pin it so that it's retained as long as needed.

and

Bazzite focuses on hardware compatibility out of the box

I haven't tried it yet!

#Linux #Bazzite

Bazzite - The operating system for the next generation of gamers

Bazzite makes gaming and everyday use smoother and simpler across desktop PCs, handhelds, tablets, and home theater PCs.

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datum (n=1)

Someone else just pointed me at https://fedoraproject.org/silverblue/ https://www.xda-developers.com/replaced-my-linux-desktop-fedora-silverblue-feels-futuristic/ in a similar vein!

#linus #Silverblue

Fedora Silverblue

An immutable variant looks, feels, and behaves just like a regular desktop operating system, but your updates are delivered as full images of a working system. This makes every installation identical to every other, and it will never change while in use. What's more, Silverblue will always keep an older version of the system around for you to boot back into, should you need to, allowing you to try new programs, desktops, or even complete version upgrades fearlessly! <br /><br /> The immutable design makes a Silverblue system more stable, less prone to bugs, and easier to test and develop. Applications are installed via Flatpak completely independent of the base system, and CLI tools can utilize the power of containerization with Toolbox. <br /><br/> Silverblue comes with the popular GNOME desktop and follows the standard 13 month release-cycle, making the experience very similar to that of Fedora Workstation.

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Huubje 1d ago

@datum professional "Linux guy" here. For the average user or person that expects normal desktop use, this offers little benefit. I usually advise against niche technologies unless you know for certain it will solve a pressing problem, or if you just think something is cool.

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datum (n=1)1d ago

@Huubje the two selling points are hardware compatibility (though I'd hope the projects' successes would be applicable in other distros) and built in snapshotting, which for some average users on Apple is a big deal to have built in.

You and I know there are a dozen ways to backup but average user just wants to be able to "undo the update that just broke things" or "give me back what I had last week before I overwrote" without a chance it goes haywire because they built it themselves.

Those are not quite verbatim tasks I've helped people on non-Linux through, and are killer features.

(Hardware compatibility is almost table stakes.)

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Huubje 1d ago

@datum that's the thing though, nearly everyone is served by the combo of an up-to-date kernel and if necessary proprietary drivers. For a lot of distros that come with less headaches this is just a box to check. A boring distro with a slow release cycle also prevents a lot of the issues you are thinking of.
The only place something immutable actually makes a lot of sense is if you manage a lot of similar devices or are (perceived to be) responsible for the state of a lot of devices you don't have access to. Valve provide a good example of this, imagine if they had to support every Gamer™ that copied and pasted something into the terminal.

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datum (n=1)1d ago

@Huubje See this https://furry.engineer/@arcticEdge/116677316194765138 for example. "It just works reliably" isn't a technical checkbox but it is a killer pseudo-feature in this year of our plague 2026

Then again maybe a post about some other distro or a BSD would've had people chirping in with "confirm works fantastically", and if so, yay for the state of FOSS OSes!