this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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libre
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The struggle for libre computing cannot be disentangled from other forms of socialist reform. One must be willing to reject proprietary software as fiercely as they would reject capitalism. Luckily, we are not alone.
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Yeah I did some research and discovered that. I'm going to look into other distros, thanks!
fully recommending bazzite too, if you hate it its easy to rebase to other bootc distros without data loss (still backing things up is a good idea regardless)
bazzite is just a braindead distro, its so hard for the user to mess it up and it has a lot of useful scripts in it. also a lot of the devs are queer and they just purged a maintainer that said some transphobic shit
Hey hey hey if I were to give bazzite a look, do you think the KDE or the GNOME version is more suitable for someone like me who is used to Mint?
Coming from Mint - I would recommend KDE.
Technically Mint's Desktop Environment, Cinnamon, was originally forked from GNOME 3, but altered to more conventional desktop paradigms.
GNOME 4X has its own unique desktop workflow vision it forces you into, and you can use shell extensions to make it behave like a traditional desktop, but they tend to break often during new releases.
KDE offers a conventional desktop like Cinnamon by default, with many settings to change if you want to fine-tune and personalize your workflow.
If you like the Steam Deck, KDE is the desktop environment it uses.
it really depends what you prefer imo. personally i like kde more than gnome (mostly cause its more like windows by default) but a ton of apps use gnome's rendering software for themeing. i also tend to prefer kde's suite of apps (krita my beloved)
Bazzite is the best option for a SteamOS-like distro.
Personally I've never used SteamOS itself but it looks identical to it from what I've seen and as a PC OS Bazzite is perfectly functional and it's really decent. I prefer Mint and I main that on my laptop myself but I run Bazzite on my handheld and I recommend it.
This came up with another poster not that long ago, so I'm going to re-post my long responses to them as to why I advocate hard for Bazzite, even for desktops. Just making sure to use the desktop image so it doesn't boot into Game Mode like a console/Steam Deck.
A very good read.
All my complaints about Bazzite are just griping from someone with change fatigue who is very rigid in their thinking. I think it's a really great distro and the install process is fantastic - it really sets the bar for other distros. I think most people would love it and I'd like to be able to love it too but I'm just too curmudgeonly and I know it.
But enough about my character flaws. For everyone else, they should absolutely give it a try if they are curious. Also all my gripes are minor compared to my complaints about Microslop. You can't go wrong with Bazzite.
What distro are you using if I may ask ? Why/When did you decide on it ? Currently on Fedora with KDE (and I think happy) after using Mint for about a month.
I'm either a terrible person to ask about distros or I'm perfect to ask as a very average PC user, so take that as you will.
I'm running mint on my laptop and I've got a handheld running Bazzite.
Mint was the default so I landed on that and it was good enough for me so I'm sticking with it because I can't be bothered to hop but I probably would have started at Zorin or PikaOS if I knew what I do now. For the handheld, Bazzite is the no-brainer option because of how it's perfectly suited for compatibility and ease of use. Both distros I started with when I switched to Linux and the pain of switching hasn't been outweighed by the pain of dealing with the small annoyances of staying yet so I doubt I'll be hopping to anything else for the time being.
I'm the most basic Linux user ever.
Did you find KDE very different from Mints Gnome?
I used Cinnamon when I was on Mint. I did like cinnamon it was easy to customize which was nice.
Funny enough I dont think I ever used original gnome in a live environment. I considered using Fedora with gnome but my friend recommended KDE (And there are a fuckton of customization options for KDE which is a plus in my book)
I have played around with my friends steam deck, and messed around with it's desktop mode and quite liked it. That's why I initially was like "Hey maybe that might be a fun little experiment to slap it on a laptop." without thinking about things like "it's built around AMD drivers, Dirt Owl you goober"
Bazzite was another one I was thinking of! That or Pop_OS.
If anyone wants to suggest an OS I'm all ears!
Now is not the right time to try Pop_OS. They've just switched from GNOME to their own desktop environment, which is not really ready to go.
Source: I just switched away from Pop_OS to Fedora about a month ago.
Thanks for the heads up
My current go to is EndeavourOS, it's very intuitive for an Arch (btw) based distro.
Hehehe, hopefully it wasn't too painful a lesson.
Bazzite is very close to SteamOS and the desktop environment is utilitarian but nice. It's very solid.
I think if I was shopping for a new distro I'd take a close look at PikaOS and it seems like it might be up your alley. It appears that it's very good for gaming and it's part of the new Open Gaming Collective initiative so I'd expect that PikaOS is gonna stay on the cutting edge of Linux gaming since there's other really good gaming distros behind the initiative such as Bazzite.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: