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Coworker wants to try Linux with gaming, Bazzite or Mint? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by iByteABit@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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A coworker of mine asked me to help him install Linux, he hasn't tried Linux before but he's sick of Windows.

He is very much into gaming, so gaming support is the first priority. He is also a developer/tester so I suppose that he will also want to have access to dev tools, languages, and other packages like that for personal projects.

My first go-to when recommending to newbies is Mint because it's simple, tried and tested, but I have been hearing a lot about Bazzite lately and see that it offers a very nice gaming experience. However it scares me that there's no typical package management like apt or pacman as I browse their docs, instead it relies heavily on Flatpaks and brew, or even podman images. Will this be a problem as he uses the OS for general usage besides gaming in the long term, would it be better to just go with Mint and set that up for gaming instead?

Feel free to also recommend other distros, but keep in mind that while he is technical, he is still completely new to this so I want things to work out perfectly for his first experience.

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[-] UNY0N@lemmy.wtf 2 points 1 day ago

I have been using bazzite for over a year, and I am very happy with it. It works very well for gaming, and I have had zero troublehooting outside of getting some mod managers to work.

But immutable distros are different, in general you can't just install GUI programs if it has no flatpak option. (for CLI stuff there are distroboxes). There are ways, but depending on what you want to do other than gaming, I would check first. Also there have been some episodes of drama among the maintainers, which makes me worry a bit about the future of the distro.

Mint is a great distro too, and from what I hear it for sure it will work well for gaming. I'd say the main differences are:

Bazzite:

  • immutable, so you never have a broken setup
  • lots of gaming setup done out-of-the-box
  • some package installation restrictions
  • some maintainer drama

Mint:

  • flexible to use various methods of package installation
  • No drama (?)
  • Not immutable, so it can break if you fiddle with stuff and are careless
  • no out-of-the-box gaming setup (but it is not a giant project to setup)
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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