So anyway, any beginner tips?
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You’ve chosen an immutable distro based on rpm-ostree. If you want to install a program/application/app then flatpak is the way.
Heroic Launcher works great for installing GOG/Epic games but if you want to install a game or other program from an offline installer then I still fall back to Lutris.For more in-depth read up on rpm-ostree and flatpak
Yeeeah, for a fresh Bazzite install I’d agree that “swap Lutris for Heroic” is solid advice.
In Bazzite flatpak is the way so much that you will open Discover and only see flatpak, so if this was really, really beginner tips I’d suggest not learning what any of that means for as long as possible and just relying on Discover for your apps until you hit a roadbump. This guy seems well informed enough that is not a problem, but hey.
I’m also mildly annoyed that ujust is important enough to still need that terminal splash screen but not enough to be baked into the config tools by default in GUI. So weird.
That’s either another thing you should try not to learn about if everything works fine out of the box or something you really should look into if it doesn’t, and that’s not great.
Meh, I’ve found that Heroic works just fine for most offline installers. YMMV of course.
Heroic I find is great for offline installers. I actually prefer it to Lutris I think. You set up your application and it creates a prefix. Before selecting the executable you press the “run installer first” button and it runs the installer on the prefix. Once it’s done you select the executable and it’s set up and good to go.
The Lutris method, IIRC, is you create the prefix, select the installer to run, then you modify that to target the new executable after. It’s not difficult, but the Heroic experience is slightly more streamlined I think.
The best tip I can give you is to get rid of windows, and, well, you’ve already done that :)
Use alternativeto.net … not necessarily for just Windows programs alternatives; but it is also great for looking at popular utilities for any task in Linux.
Some programs I use a lot were not suggested anywhere else (e.g. Pluma as a basic text editor and Pinta for basic image editing).
Nice, thanks!
A lot of games are going to work without you having to do anything and some will need some tinkering. In that case, https://www.protondb.com/ will be your best friend, telling you exactly what you need to do to get things running.
That being said, some games simply can’t be run under Linux. They might work in the future as compatibility improves but some won’t. If it’s an issue for you, you might want to dual boot windows as a workaround.
Personally, I recommend quitting Windows cold-turkey and not dual-booting at all. If a game genuinely doesn’t work without dual-booting, you don’t need it. No game is so important that it’s worth compromising your security, privacy, and property rights over.
Unfortunately some of us need windows for more than games, and there aren’t Linux alternatives
Yep, and the more people do this then the more likely it will be that games support Linux (or are at least tested to work with WINE/Proton.
Im a wuss and have an older laptop running windows for some things. Its really just me being lazy and not wanting to bother with the high hanging fruit.
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I’m so used to terminal that I’ve installed most of the apps I’ll use using it
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I’m curious why you chose Bazzite then? I’m not saying it’s the wrong choice, but it does seem like a strange choice if you’re comfortable, well unless this is for a console-like computer, not a desktop.
Other people recommended it to me, simple as that
I’ve seen some folks complain about its size, but it’s like 8 or 9gb. Small price to pay if you ask me for how turnkey it is. Besides storage is cheap now.
Especially when you consider Windows is like 20-30GB
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If you do dual boot, turn on the BIOS password to prevent Windows from messing with your bootloader.
Funnily, sometimes the pirate version of a game works whilst the official one does not…
My best advice is:
You should never blindly copy and paste commands form the Internet into your terminal.
But...
If your hardware is old and proprietary (designed for Windows), you might someday need to copy and paste a command from the Internet into your terminal.
Joking aside, the key is to try to understand what it does, first.
And feel free to ask the community for help if you need it.
Edit: Nevermind. Your choice of immutable distro makes it less likely you’ll need this advice. Nice.
+1 for Bazzite! I converted last year, and have never had to go back. My tip would be to make good use of ProtonUp-QT that should have come with Bazzite by default. Use it to get Proton GE which in my experience has been the best compatibility layer for Steam games. You can also batch update with that tool so that when a new version of GE comes out, you can set games en masse to the new version.
I’m using GNOME, so I have ProtonPlus
Nice! I recently tried KDE Plasma and I’ve been really impressed not just with the polish but with the look and feel that still kind of reminds me of Windows without being Windows.
I’ve seen Plasma, Xfce, and GNOME. I like the last one the most, so I’m using it on all of my systems.
I can’t stand GNOME, but I understand that other people like it.
Love me some Plasma. I’m still running the default styles after over a year as well. It’s just nice.
I really should spend some time experimenting with customizations though
Yeah, it’s like all the good parts of the Windows UI (whichever version you like best) without the bad parts, and also customizable so you can make it work best for you, and not what some corporation decides is best this year.
Mess around until it breaks. It’s fun.
Also checkout “ricing linux.” (There is a unixporn community here that can help you)You can blindly download and install things from the internet on Windows, you can’t in Linux. If you try, it’ll be confusing at best, destructive at worst. If you want to install something, best to look for it in your GUI software manager (the “app store”)
If you’re up for the challenge (it’s extremely tedious to set up, partially thanks to its horrid instructions), you can try installing winapps. It’ll save you a lot of time with running Windows programs
This is not totally true. Deb packages will just activate the package manager and will mimic the feel of installing something on windows.
Bazzite is based on fedora atomic, which means I don’t get debs and have to deal with flatpak, brew and distrobox
Okay, I kinda do get debs through the last one… I think. I’ve never used db before, my experience comes mostly from Ubuntu and Pop_OS!
Yea, and appimages are a lot like a single .exe
I did the same a few months ago. Installed bazzite just like you. Then installed fedora 42 workstation over it one week later.
While it’s designed to be plug and play, I found bazzite frustrating. But then again, I’m a Linux vet and I’m a tinkerer. I like to customise system configuration files. Immutable distros just weren’t for me.
But if you’re happy then that’s all that matters. Happy gaming!
Obligatory fastfetch is right there post
Neofetch came preinstalled, so I’ve used it
I guessed as much, I only say so because fastfetch was on the terminal prompt too - could it be both are preinstalled?
IIRC on Bazzite neofetch is just a symlink/alias to fastfetch due to muscle memory and the overall prevalence of neofetch.
May be, tbh I didn’t even read the MOTD until now
Less a specific linux tip but look into Ventoy, it can carry multiple bootable ISOs and its just useful (reduces the amount of ISO Sticks to 1)
i would suggest looking into alternatives to Ventoy, as the community has been actively discussing the ‘blobs’ of precompiled code. What this code does is unknown so you are trusting that there is nothing that could be harmful. I personally wouldn’t trust it until the below thread provides more clarity.
So, this one is a bit controversial but, when something doesn’t work try running it from terminal.
Unlike windows, Linux doesn’t tend to do “pop up errors”. Running in terminal gives these alerts, and can often give you a hint as to why it isn’t working - be it a missing library, a permission error, or something internal you can quickly search. Usually, someone has a fix!
Also, if it’s a decent application, it probably logs stuff somewhere. Check /var/log for software installed system wide. If the logs are not there, check the install dir etc. If there’s a README around, check that out first.
Good luck!
I did something similar a few months ago! But honestly it took me forever to pick between GNOME and KDE. Ended up going to KDE for certain things I wanted to customise.
ONE OF US ! ONE OF US !
is this your production machine? If yes, dont type random commands until you know exactly what they are.
I know it’s Linux and you can try many things as you want, but unless you are very experienced, dont do it on your main laptop.
It is pretty difficult because you can do things like installing new enviroments or try out different hacks for free. If you really want to tinker, do it on a 2nd laptop or just in Virtual Machine.
As this is bazzite, an immutable distro, the neat part is: if you reach finding out phase after fucking around, simply reboot and chose the previous version during boot. Very convenient for people who like to mess around with their systems :D
