Look, I’m a Debian user for 15 years, I’ve worked in F/OSS for a long time, can take care of myself.
But I’m always on a lookout for distros that might be good fit for other people in my non-tech vicinity, like siblings, nieces, nephews… I’m imagining some distro which is easy for gaming but can also be used for normal school, work, etc. related stuff. And yeah, also not too painful to maintain.
(Well, less painful than Windows which honestly is not a high bar nowadays… but don’t listen to me, all tried in past years was to install Minecraft from the MS store… The wound is still healing.)
I have Steam Deck and I like how it works: gaming first, desktop easily accessible. But I only really use it for gaming.
So I learned about Bazzite, but from their description on their main site I’m not very wise:
The next generation of Linux gaming [Powered by Fedora and Universal Blue] Bazzite is a cloud native image built upon Fedora Atomic Desktops that brings the best of Linux gaming to all of your devices - including your favorite handheld.
Filtering out the buzzwords, “cloud native image” stands out to me, but that’s weird, doesn’t it mean that I’ll be running my system on someone else’s computer?
Funnily enough, I scrolled a bit and there’s a news section with a perfectly titled article: “WTF is Cloud Native and what is all this”.
But that just leads to some announcements of someone (apparently important in the community) talking about some superb community milestone and being funny about his dog. To be fair, despite the title, the announcement is not directed towards people like me, it’s more towards the community, who obviously already knows.
Amongst the cruft, the most “relevant” part seems to be this:
This is the simplest definition of cloud native: One common way to linux, based around container technology. Server on any cloud provider, bare metal, a desktop, an HTPC, a handheld, and your gaming rig. It’s all the same thing, Linux.
But wait, all I want to run is a “normal” PC with a Linux distro. I don’t necessarily need it to be a “traditional” distro but what I don’t want is to have it running, or heavily integrated in some proprietary-ish cloud.
So how does this work? Am I missing something?
(Or are my red flags real: that all of this is just to make a lot of promises and get some VC-funding?)
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Hi I’m the guy who posted the report. Your quote is exactly what it is, we use cloud native server tech to make Bazzite. Things like bootc, podman, OCI containers, etc.
all I want to run is a “normal” PC with a Linux distro.
That’s exactly what’s happening!
I don’t want is to have it running, or heavily integrated in some proprietary-ish cloud.
It does, just not ours, Valve runs that part. 😼 I’m happy to answer specific questions if you have any!
Hello Jorge, you rock man! Thanks for all your Ublue contributions. I saw your YouTube video and article in the docs and now I’m planning on installing Bluefin on a thumb drive to use on my work laptop. On my desktop I’ve been running Bazzite for a year, it’s been rock solid. Except for that one time when you did an oopsie with the keys 🤣, at first I felt inconvenienced, but then when you took full responsibility, I immediately thought you made a mistake like any human would, but you fixed it like a real hero. I want to use a distro made by people like you.
Thank you so much for everything you do.
It used to say “container-native”. They recently changed the wording, but there was no technical change.
It’s a Linux distro that runs locally, like any other. It has no particular tie-in with any cloud services. If Flatpak, Docker/Podman, Distrobox, Homebrew, etc. are “cloud” just because they involve downloading packages hosted on the internet, then I don’t know why you wouldn’t call “traditional” package managers like apt, dnf, zypper, etc. “cloud” as well. 🤷 So yeah, I feel your confusion.
The big difference compared to something like Debian or vanilla Fedora is that Bazzite is an “immutable” distro. What this means is that the OS image is monolithic and you don’t make changes directly to the system. Instead, you install apps and utilities via containers, or as a last resort you can apply a layer on top of the OS using rpm-ostree.
The only thing cloud-related about any of this is that atomic OS images and containers are more common in the server space than the desktop space.
I must have seen a dozen posts ripping into Bazzite for “cloud native”. This is a dumb decision that they need to run away from.
Founder here, the more I see this whining the more I want to keep it on the website.
It’s the accurate definition.
What use is misleading accuracy? Why double down on confusing people?
Part of the stated goal is to push forward cloud native and this model for the Linux desktop. If people want to learn about it there are resources available to do so.
The issue with this kind of buzzword is the multitude of definitions in use. You assume people are familiar with and agree upon yours, thus making it the correct one. But the meaning of words isn’t just dictated by what some people think it means, but by the way many people use them. Thus, Buzzwords used in many contexts primarily to sell something by vague association with something trendy (“cloud”) suffer from a dilution of meaning.
In this case, the OP was confused whether the word means that their system will be running in the cloud rather than their machine at home. So however “correct” your definition may be on paper, it brought no benefit in describing your product.
And that is the heart of the criticism: Don’t rely on snappy buzzwords just because you have one definition for them. Explain that definition too, in case people like the OP don’t know which one you use.
Doubling down on being obtuse does nobody any favours. If people communicate “this term is confusing”, refusing to change it is your right, but spiting good intentions is still immature.
I got to buzzword and then I gave up reading. I’m going to go ahead and continue to double down on it until I don’t see comments like this.
Multiple definitions have been provided, there is an entire cloud native computing foundation of which members of it are part of Universal Blue, and it’s an incredibly common thing in any professional paid Linux job. I understand a small subset of users (Most of which are going to be Windows Gamers) might think cloud native means it’s running in the cloud, but the website quite literally links to something that says that’s not the case, and I’m okay suffering a few people not getting it.
I got to buzzword and then I gave up reading.
No and I stated it clearly in the OP.
I even looked up “cloud native”.
Cloud native computing is an approach in software development that utilizes cloud computing to its fullest due to its use of an open source software stack to deploy applications as microservices. Typically, cloud native applications are built as a set of microservices that run in Docker containers, orchestrated in Kubernetes and managed and deployed using DevOps and Git Ops workflows.
That term is extremely vague at best.
And guess what: If I just looked up the definition and ran with it, I would just shrug and toss the whole thing out. “Do I want to run my games as microservices in Kubernetes? I guess some niche group of people want…”
The whole reason we have this thread – and where I’ve learned what Bazzite is about (mostly from its users) – is because i did not fully trust the buzzword, and I already knew something about Bazzite in the first place.
That’s how “accurate” it is.
