Ubuntu 12.04. I really tried to use it as a daily but wine wasn’t as good back then, a lot of apps I wanted to run were also platform specific. If a package wasn’t in your distros repo you had to try and build it from source which was really difficult for someone just trying to start with Linux. I tried again with Ubuntu 16.04 and it was better but still wasn’t quite there.

Fast forward to now and I’m actually dailying Bazzite 42. I’m not sure if wine has just improved a ton or proton has helped out a lot but windows compatibility has improved so much in the last decade. As much as everyone hates Electron for being heavier than native apps I would prefer an Electron app over no Linux version. Actually a lot of the apps I want to run now ship Linux versions so I don’t even need wine for most things.

Flatpaks and appimages with Gear Lever have made installing apps on Linux as easy as Windows and MacOS. It might not seem like it but it’s come a long way

I’m running a self hosted Gitlab instance right now but thinking of switching to Forgejo. Anyone tried both and have thoughts on each?

Hmm I’m using it on Bazzite with KDE, which is based off Fedora 42 atomic. I haven’t really noticed any issues with it, though I haven’t printed anything in awhile

I use PrusaSlicer from Flathub. I was using PrusaSlicer on Windows before switching to Linux. I’ve been using it since the original Slic3r stopped getting updates. Because it’s available as a flatpak it should work on pretty much any distro and immutable distros

As someone unfamiliar with Incus is this kinda similar to Proxmox? I would love an immutable version of Proxmox. This seems pretty cool

Bazzite has a KDE version too. I think it is more popular then the GNOME version of bazzite actually. At least according to the results of the latest steam survey

I’ve seen a lot of comments online of people saying they’ll leave Windows 10 once SteamOS has general availability. I fear that’ll lead them to having a bad experience with Linux because they’ll be expecting a desktop OS but instead receive an OS that turns their computer into a console. There’s a couple features Bazzite has (like printer drivers) which you might want on something replacing Windows 10 but you probably don’t care about if you have a handheld or a steam machine

Bazzite doesn’t have this issue. Waydroid actually comes pre-installed as part of Bazzite

I’ve been running Bazzite for months and I have extremely happy with it. I switched from Windows and only use Windows for SteamVR now. I use atomic distros almost exclusively now.

If you like to customize and tweak everything about your OS than an atomic distro probably isn’t for you. You probably want something like Arch.

If you need/want an OS that is incredibly reliable at the cost of disk space and customization, than an atomic distro might be for you. The main thing an atomic distro provides that a traditional one can’t is reproducibility. Since the distro is a base image with packages layered on top you should be able to repeat those steps and arrive at the exactly same image. The system partition is then made immutable so that it stays in this reproducible state. This prevents users modifying system files and creating a unique system that can’t be reproduced. This should make bugs easier to track down because each install of the distro is always identical. You can still add packages by layering them on top (think of each package you layer as another “step” in the image build process. By tracking the steps you have added it keeps the image reproducible). Its pretty similar to how a dockerfile works.

Bazzite also keeps the previous version of the OS, so if an update fails you still have a working computer. Like others have said you can create snapshots on traditional distros so this isn’t really a unique feature, but it is nice it has it by default. I swear Bazzite also used to have A/B partitions as well which is really nice if your OS somehow gets corrupted, but my computer doesn’t seem to have them anymore.

The other nice thing about an atomic OS is because it locks down your system partition the main way to install applications is either flatpaks or appimages. These use more disk space but should always have the correct dependencies (which fixes another whole class of errors). You can also use flatpaks or appimages on a traditional distro but an atomic one enforces it. If you can’t install an application as a flatpak or appimage you can use package layering or distrobox to install it. Distrobox allows you to have a traditional distro in a container and integrate its applications into your main atomic OS. If something goes wrong with the container you can delete it and rebuild it without affecting your OS. You can also have a different container for each app so if something happens to one container you don’t lose all of your distrobox apps. Also something you could do on a traditional distro but don’t need to.

All of this leads to a really stable base os and the main advantage of an atomic OS: You should always be able to boot your computer. The downside is everything you install needs to be in a container so that if it causes an issue it doesn’t affect your base os booting.

This reminds me of Proxmox and how you really shouldn’t modify the host because you risk making your system unbootable and jeopardizing your containers and vms. Its much safer to have a stable, solid base and do riskier stuff in container or vm that can fail and be rebuilt. Proxmox would actually probably be a good candidate for an atomic distribution.

WASM in the browser is cool but I think WASI is going to be the big game charger to come out of WASM

I believe SteamOS is designed only for the steam deck, I wouldn’t recommend it as a general purpose OS for a desktop or laptop.

I would recommend Bazzite, it’s like a general version of SteamOS. It comes with a version that boots directly into steam’s big picture mode (like SteamOS) or one that boots into the desktop (I run this on my desktop)

It also has improvments like nvidia drivers, printer drivers, package layering and because it’s built on top Fedora Atomic you can rollback the system to a stable snapshot if an update doesn’t work with your system.

I’ve been running on my desktop since September (I was in the same boat as you) and it’s been really good. A lot of the stuff I would’ve had to configure and mess around with is already setup for gaming

You might like Bazzite. Its like a general purpose version of SteamOS with layering and printers

I just did this in September. I would second bazzite. I have a Nvidia GPU and I haven’t had a single issue with it. Bazzite is atomic/immutable which makes it more difficult to modify the system or add packages but honestly I haven’t actually needed to modify the system or add any packages. It also has A/B partitions and stores the last OS update so if something gets corrupted or an update doesn’t work you can roll back really easily. I know some people will say if you want to use Linux you need to be comfortable with using the terminal but I haven’t had to touch it.

Back in 2016 I ran Ubuntu on a laptop and I remember having to install everything from apt and tweak stuff. I also remember accidentally messing up my system and having to do a fresh install. Flatpaks have really changed it since then.

You can checkout https://flathub.org to see what apps are available in the built in app store. You can also look at https://protondb.com to see how well specific windows games run on Linux and any tweaks that might help them run better.

I still have a windows partition though since SteamVR doesn’t work on Linux and discord screen sharing doesn’t work on Wayland

I switched to Bazzite on my main PC at the start of September and it’s been great. I only use Windows for steam link vr streaming

I don’t mind paying for RustRover for commercial use as an individual but only bundling it with the all products pack sucks. I’m not paying $300 for RustRover.

I have PyCharm 2023.2 with the deprecated Rust plugin and it works great. I don’t think that’s restricted to Non-commercial use. Also VSCodium exists with the Rust Analyzer plugin so that’s another alternative