Woke Linux Gamer
Update:
Okay, I keep getting the same freeze again with the proprietary nvidia driver too. My suspicion is now heavily on Secureboot being enabled. Some Arch people kept warning me about this back in the day.
I’m going to use Bazzite without it and probably rebase again to open driver if there is no more freezes.
Thanks. The downloader gives me an option to rebase, which I find easier to use. It shows me an option to download from ostree-unverified-registry, but I chose to do it from ostree-image-signed:docker instead. Don’t know why the signed image is not shown on the downloader by default. That said, after switching to nvidia from nvidia-open, the driver version still remains the same. Let’s see if I get freezes again in the upcoming days.
Also, there are two applications that I use outside of flatpak - a firewall(Safing Portmaster) and another password manager, for which I have to install using the rpm installer.
The password manager has no problem installing using the rpm-ostree install <name.rpm> command. However, Portmaster installs, but won’t work because of the following error which I found from journalctl.
Jul 05 16:28:23 bazzite systemd[1]: Started portmaster.service - Portmaster by Safing.
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite portmaster-start[5786]: Error: failed to exec lock: open /opt/safing/portmaster/core-lock.pid: read-only file system
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite systemd[1]: portmaster.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite portmaster-start[5860]: Error: please set the data directory using --data=/path/to/data/dir
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite systemd[1]: portmaster.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Someone has supposedly a work in-progress script to make this work, but I don’t think I’m qualified to scrutinize if doing this brings down the security of the system in any way.
And I don’t know if many other rpm installers have the same trouble installing in atomic distros because it’s a read-only file system. For now, I’ll have to live without my favorite firewall.
I tried two distros in the past week after your recommendation - Bazzite and Nobara. Bazzite is just like you say and all’s good most of the time and I’m getting used to an atomic distro too. The only problem I seem to be having is that my GPU Freezes very often even while just browsing and I have to force-restart to recover.
journalctl shows me this error. [drm:nv_drm_gem_alloc_nvkms_memory_ioctl [nvidia_drm]] ERROR [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID …] Failed to allocate NVKMS memory for GEM object
I don’t know if this is because Bazzite uses a slightly older Nvidia (open) driver(570.64) and kernel(6.14.6) or because of something else.
However, I don’t have this issue on Nobara and it uses the latest 6.15.4 and Nvidia (proprietary? akmod) driver (570.153). Correlation is not probably causation, but this might be one thing to consider.
And I’ve had issues with nvidia-open drivers in the past, but surely a lot of them seem to have gone now.
Well, it’s just 4-5 lines that you’re going to have to type and it’s just a one-time thing. Surely, it’s not that intimidating.
Bazzite seems to be based on Fedora Kinoite, an atomic desktop. Now, I haven’t used atomic desktops. Although I wanted to, I ended up not doing that for the following reason.
From what I understand, you can’t easily alter the base image of the system and everything else is a flatpak. This seems fine, but if you end up having to install an application for which there is no Flatpak, how would a non-tech savvy user do that? Still have to use the terminal at that point, I’d bet.
Case in point, even the other day, I came across this application called ‘syncplay’ for which there’s no flatpak alternative and thankfully, Fedora repo had it.
I also hear that if you end up installing apps this way(Layering as it’s called?), the update times become slower. You may shed some light on this.
Also, while it may not be as good as a snapshot system of the atomic desktops, the regular Fedora nonetheless shows the last two kernel installations on every boot so you could revert back to one if an update goes wrong.
I also have to mention that I always have my important files backed up on HDD or cloud that in the worst case scenario of losing my files on any update, (which hasn’t happened so far btw), I can always restore them. In case of Steam games, it shouldn’t be a problem if you have a fast internet connection. You should download them back in no-time. That is another reason I can still live without having to use a stable atomic desktop.
A lot of people here have already given good advice. I shall add my experience, recommendation and some tips (may incidentally repeat some of them).
In terms of other software you use, make sure you have alternatives that work on Linux.
If you happen to have any software that you don’t have a good alternative or that only runs on Windows, then you’ll have to stick to dual booting.
Fedora only comes with FOSS by default. So, you’ll have to install Nvidia driver and proprietary multimedia Codecs separately by including RPMFusion repo.
You can download the free and non-free repo files from the RPM-Fusion site(Graphical Setup) and install them through the Software Center. After adding the repo, you might have to enable them in the Settings of Discover Software Center. Enable all of them except those containing the words ‘testing’, ‘Test’, ‘Source’, ‘Debug’ and ‘google chrome’.
After that, it’s just a few lines you type in the terminal (Konsole by default) for installing driver and codecs. Make sure to update the system and restart first before doing these.
For Nvidia driver, type:
sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia
For optional CUDA support, type:
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda
For Video acceleration support, type:
sudo dnf install nvidia-vaapi-driver libva-utils vdpauinfo
For Codecs, type:
sudo dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg --allowerasing
Steam is also included in the non-free repo. You may install it by typing:
sudo dnf install steam
NOTE: Every time the video driver updates, you will have to do a follow-on update for flatpak runtimes. You might see a bunch of ‘Application platform’ and ‘Freedesktop’ stuff which you’ll have to install. If you fail to do this, you might suddenly find flatpak applications not working properly.
__GL_CONSTANT_FRAME_RATE_HINT=3 steam
If your system is frozen, try switching to TTY by pressing (Ctrl+Alt+F3) and going back to GUI by pressing (Ctrl+Alt+F2)*. *Could be F1 in some cases.
To check what errors you got during the recent boot,
journalctl -b 0 -p err
Apart from the driver installation and some troubleshooting, you generally won’t have to use the terminal if you’re averse to it.
Switch to
Tuta/Proton Mail for email,
Proton/Tresorit Drive for storage,
Mullvad (or i, proton) VPN or (Rethink DNS for firewall) I am not sure if you can use both Rethink and VPN at the same time. I assume there is a way.
OsmAnd for maps,
Newpipe for youtube frontend(Grayjay on Linux),
Bitwarden/KeepassXC for Password management,
Aegis for TOTP
Fdroid, Accrescent, Aurora for App store.
Molly FOSS for Messaging.
I dual boot Fedora KDE and Arch.
I’ve used Mint before and I’ve little to no qualms with it, but I wanted to move away from X-11, which has no GUI isolation. Hence the switch to Fedora, which has a smooth Wayland experience and also happens to have SELinux out-of-the-box.
Update 2:
Unfortunately, even with secureboot disabled, I kept getting freezes. Got 3 freezes and I felt done with this. Replaced Bazzite with Nobara again.
Nvidia driver worked for a while. But, after I temporarily switched back to another atomic distro I’m dual booting on a completely separate drive(which requires secure boot for nvidia driver to work and it did work), Nobara stopped loading nvidia driver despite clearing all secure boot keys and installing the default one in UEFI/BIOS and turning off SecureBoot.
Apparently, the efi also has to be modified again. I didn’t bother doing it and reinstalled Nobara again since that will reset the efi anyway. Now, the driver is working again. I swear to any seemingly non-existent higher power that I’ll never use any distro that requires secure boot. Lol. I’m gonna reinstall Arch on my second drive now.
That said, I’d probably recommend Bazzite to anyone not having Nvidia GPU and it’s a pretty impressive project. It even comes with Wallpaper Engine baked in. My friend and I were having a hard time making it work on their system. We were trying some solutions we found on github and some C++ file didn’t have a particular header or something. Took a while to get it work and it was kinda messy later on too with the plasma shell crashing cause of it. Having additions like this would surely make life easier for regular users who would not want to deal with that mess.