I've been looking forward to KDE Linux since it was called Project Banana.
It does take a lot of inspiration from the SteamOS playbook. Immutable, Arch base, and containerized Flatpak as the package manager. It goes a step further with encryption of mutable data and a recovery partition.

I think immutable Linux is probably the way forward for "normie" users. Linux purists will turn their nose up, but sometimes people just need that little bit of a barrier to protect them from themselves.

Oh, bit of a question since you're testing it out. Did you install the Flatpak of Steam? How is that working out?

Originally posted by Haruspex:

Oh, bit of a question since you're testing it out. Did you install the Flatpak of Steam? How is that working out?

Flatpack installation through Discover is the only way to install apps and including steam.
There is no pacman, apt-get, emerge etc.

It works surprisingly well. Feels really polished, functional and I dare to say pre-build and enterprise use case ready. And that’s how it’s advertised on the front page. Or at least what their goals are. It’s a 100% maintainable and desktop ready right now. Even more so, than many well established distros. Especially compared to ones allergic to proprietary software.

Originally posted by C1REX:

Flatpack installation through Discover is the only way to install apps and including steam.
There is no pacman, apt-get, emerge etc.

Yeah, it doesn't have any of the regular package managers, but there are ways to install stuff besides Flatpak including...

• Nix package manager
  
• Homebrew package manager
  
• Distrobox/Toolkit
  
• Snaps
  
• Appimages

You're right though in that Flatpak is the most obvious and intended way for most users to install stuff.

My question was mostly about performance of the Steam Flatpak vs installing it natively. I've been daily driving Bazzite, which has Steam already integrated into the system natively, but other than that it shares a lot of the same philosophy as KDE Linux with it's immutable base.

I might wait to see if someone forks KDE Linux into a more gaming-focused distro with native Steam integrated, kind of like Bazzite but with an Arch base instead of Fedora.

Snaps are... problematic.
https://www.linux.org/threads/snaps-are-terrible.31522/

Like wheels, Canonical is not to be trusted. If using Mint or the *buntus, use the Debian edition, or switch default to flathub in the Discover frontend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkUaafdbxIM
https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/

immutable would definitely be the way to go, people like familiarity, too much customisation is a turn off. Valve want their own OS to establish complete dominance in PC gaming, capitalism style. They can make a $3000 steamos pc too with a 5090 to fund Gabes Yachts.

Originally posted by C1REX:

Originally posted by Haruspex:

Oh, bit of a question since you're testing it out. Did you install the Flatpak of Steam? How is that working out?

Flatpack installation through Discover is the only way to install apps and including steam.
There is no pacman, apt-get, emerge etc.

It works surprisingly well. Feels really polished, functional and I dare to say pre-build and enterprise use case ready. And that’s how it’s advertised on the front page. Or at least what their goals are. It’s a 100% maintainable and desktop ready right now. Even more so, than many well established distros. Especially compared to ones allergic to proprietary software.

What so, ♥♥♥♥ just runs, you install some drivers via the web and it goes? It'd need to be something like that where you don't have to touch commands. Win11 is currently, login to microsoft account, click skip to 50 things, turn off all the stupid news ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and you're about ready.

Originally posted by Haruspex:

My question was mostly about performance of the Steam Flatpak vs installing it natively. I've been daily driving Bazzite, which has Steam already integrated into the system natively, but other than that it shares a lot of the same philosophy as KDE Linux with it's immutable base.

I might wait to see if someone forks KDE Linux into a more gaming-focused distro with native Steam integrated, kind of like Bazzite but with an Arch base instead of Fedora.

Steam should work about the same regardless how it's installed. It's binary so you can't optimise the code. Games are binary so you can't optimise them.

There can be some difference in performance between distros but mostly due to proton version, GPU driver versions and kernel patches to a smaller degree.
I've tested multiple distros and I haven't noticed any real difference at all. Not even between Bazzite and Gentoo compiled for Zen4.

This guy has tested few distros (Nobara, Bazzite and CachyOS).
He's noticed some difference in some games but in 16 games average he's got about identical results between them. Including CachyOS that is theoretically optimised for speed but realistically completely average like any other distro.

https://youtu.be/fqIjUddUSo0?si=Bi0K4X7Zyc9m9zir&t=877
Final results at 14:37

Originally posted by Skyblue:

What so, ♥♥♥♥ just runs, you install some drivers via the web and it goes? It'd need to be something like that where you don't have to touch commands. Win11 is currently, login to microsoft account, click skip to 50 things, turn off all the stupid news ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and you're about ready.

Some distros are ahead of Windows in that regard.
I don't need to install a single driver in Linux. No GPU driver, no chipset drivers, no WiFi drivers, no bluetooth drivers, no printer drivers. 100% of drivers automatically installed on my PC.

Windows doesn't even install my Ethernet card leaving me without Internet access after installation. Forcing me to download WiFi/LAN drivers without internet access. nice.

The KDE Linux distro from this topic doesn't need command line. It's designed to not need one unless you want it like in Windows.

Originally posted by C1REX:

Originally posted by Skyblue:

What so, ♥♥♥♥ just runs, you install some drivers via the web and it goes? It'd need to be something like that where you don't have to touch commands. Win11 is currently, login to microsoft account, click skip to 50 things, turn off all the stupid news ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and you're about ready.

Some distros are ahead of Windows in that regard.
I don't need to install a single driver in Linux. No GPU driver, no chipset drivers, no WiFi drivers, no bluetooth drivers, no printer drivers. 100% of drivers automatically installed on my PC.

Windows doesn't even install my Ethernet card leaving me without Internet access after installation. Forcing me to download WiFi/LAN drivers without internet access. nice.

The KDE Linux distro from this topic doesn't need command line. It's designed to not need one unless you want it like in Windows.

So how easy is it to just switch from windows to a distro, you just install it and setup dual boot?

Originally posted by Skyblue:

Originally posted by C1REX:

Some distros are ahead of Windows in that regard.
I don't need to install a single driver in Linux. No GPU driver, no chipset drivers, no WiFi drivers, no bluetooth drivers, no printer drivers. 100% of drivers automatically installed on my PC.

Windows doesn't even install my Ethernet card leaving me without Internet access after installation. Forcing me to download WiFi/LAN drivers without internet access. nice.

The KDE Linux distro from this topic doesn't need command line. It's designed to not need one unless you want it like in Windows.

So how easy is it to just switch from windows to a distro, you just install it and setup dual boot?

Dualbooting (from the same drive, at least) has it's own unique annoyances. I would just make a USB live disk with persistence, and run from it to try things out first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOccwpM2cRk

Originally posted by Skyblue:

So how easy is it to just switch from windows to a distro, you just install it and setup dual boot?

I don’t recommend doing it on the same drive with Windows. Possible but not worth the risk for new people.
But if you have a second drive it’s dead easy. I’ve got few cheap ssd from amazon (they start from £13 for 250GB) and ask an installer to just use one of such extra drives and to do everything automatically. In most cases it’s easier than Windows.

Right thanks both, I wasn’t going to do it on the same drive anyways. Testing it with a USB stick sounds like a good plan, so thanks and the vid about persistence.

I really hope this Immutable crap doesn't become a trend, its literally the Windows ARM/S Mode of the Linux world, noobs have been using Ubuntu for ages without ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ their system up I'm sure they'd manage now too without having to promote lockdown.
Package manager/software availability is one of the most important thing you should consider when choosing a distro, even if you don't mind using flatpak why would you ever limit yourself to only what is available on it?

Originally posted by tyl0413:

I really hope this Immutable crap doesn't become a trend, its literally the Windows ARM/S Mode of the Linux world, noobs have been using Ubuntu for ages without ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ their system up I'm sure they'd manage now too without having to promote lockdown.
Package manager/software availability is one of the most important thing you should consider when choosing a distro, even if you don't mind using flatpak why would you ever limit yourself to only what is available on it?

I disagree, sooner or later beginning linux users will screw something up, especially if you point them in the direction of terminal and they start copy pasting commands that they found on online forums. Whether it's ubuntu or something else is irrilevant.

It's not meant for power users, they already have a plethora of distro's to choose from.

The main advantages of immutable is enhanced stability/reliability, and easier maintenance/troubleshooting in case something goes wrong you can always rollback to previous stable states. So it does has it's usecases and i completely understand why steam os and bazzite chose this implementation.

Give the people flatpaks and appimages and the majority of regular users won't even care whether it's immutable or not.

Originally posted by Zef:

Originally posted by tyl0413:

I really hope this Immutable crap doesn't become a trend, its literally the Windows ARM/S Mode of the Linux world, noobs have been using Ubuntu for ages without ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ their system up I'm sure they'd manage now too without having to promote lockdown.
Package manager/software availability is one of the most important thing you should consider when choosing a distro, even if you don't mind using flatpak why would you ever limit yourself to only what is available on it?

I disagree, sooner or later beginning linux users will screw something up, especially if you point them in the direction of terminal and they start copy pasting commands that they found on online forums. Whether it's ubuntu or something else is irrilevant.

It's not meant for power users, they already have a plethora of distro's to choose from.

The main advantages of immutable is enhanced stability/reliability, and easier maintenance/troubleshooting in case something goes wrong you can always rollback to previous stable states. So it does has it's usecases and i completely understand why steam os and bazzite chose this implementation.

Give the people flatpaks and appimages and the majority of regular users won't even care whether it's immutable or not.

Same for Windows.
This is why Windows became unusable, because they started designing it for phone and Chromebook users than existing PC users. Do not ever cater to the "wider/modern" audience.
Only people who use Linux are those who are tired of all this modern bs, if you bring this to Linux you destroy the only advantage Linux has.
Firefox is a perfect example, normal people do not and will never use Firefox, they use Chrome, only people who use Firefox are those who hate Chrome, but since Firefox started adding spyware, ads and all the other ♥♥♥♥ that Chrome has now everyone abandoned Firefox and its going to die soon. How many times does this have to happen before devs learn their lesson?

You're saying its just options, if it was that thatd be fine, but thats the problem, Flatpak doesn't want to be just another option, its whole existence is so that it eliminates every other packaging format. Just for that (ignoring all its technical flaws for a moment) I must be against flatpak because its literally trying to be the Windows Store of Linux, a decade ago everyone on Windows was against the concept of a centralized top down distribution model with various technical limitations but today on Linux of all places its celebrated?
There already is quite a few software with is exclusive to flatpak, that is unacceptable.
What do you think happens if these immutable distros actually become popular? Do you thinking anyone will care to maintain real packages anymore?

Originally posted by tyl0413:

I really hope this Immutable crap doesn't become a trend, its literally the Windows ARM/S Mode of the Linux world, noobs have been using Ubuntu for ages without ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ their system up I'm sure they'd manage now too without having to promote lockdown.
Package manager/software availability is one of the most important thing you should consider when choosing a distro, even if you don't mind using flatpak why would you ever limit yourself to only what is available on it?

SteamOS is already in big portion immutable and I believe that’s the way for mass adoption and for big brands laptops having pre-installed Linux.

Immutable are not here to replace regular distros but to give more options.

I don’t believe that having preinstalled vanilla Arch (even with KDE) would work well for Dell, HP, ASUS, Valve. Random system update being able to nuke the system wouldn’t be good.