I am fascinated by discussions around so-called immutable Linux distributions, especially how the community debates whether operating systems like Bazzite are suitable for different kinds of users. Bazzite has become the most popular member of the Fedora Atomic family, even outpacing Fedora’s own offerings of Silverblue and Kinoite (see: countme stats). As it grows in visibility, people are starting to question what exactly sets it apart.

Consider a recent post in /r/linux_gaming that asks:

Does [Bazzite] really make a difference or [is it just a] normal Linux distro?

This question captures a deeper tension I’ve seen across the Linux community: what counts as a “normal” distro in the first place? And if Bazzite isn’t normal, in what sense is it not normal? And is that a good thing or a bad thing?

After following many such discussions, I have noticed a pattern of opinions that generally emerges.

For Linux novices and people transitioning from Windows, I often hear the opinion “I like Bazzite because I can install it on my gaming PC and it just works.” From Linux enthusiasts and tinkerers, I encounter the sentiment “I do not like Bazzite because it is difficult to install my favorite tiling window manager and apply my custom kernel tweaks.” Finally, from grizzled Linux veterans and cloud-native developers, an opinion is shared not unlike that from the novice: “I like Bazzite because it just works and when I need to customize it, I can do so in a reproducible and containerized way.”

Bazzite and other bootc-based operating systems can be tweaked in the exact same ways as non-bootc systems; however, the steps required to implement the tweaks differ. Bazzite is more like a Dockerfile that happens to boot on bare metal. If you approach it like a container (i.e., immutable by default, reproducible, layered) the approach starts to make more sense.

So, is Bazzite a “normal” Linux distro? Kind of, yes. It’s just Linux. But in practice, it reshapes what we expect from a desktop system by applying ideas that originated in the container and cloud-native world.

bootc and Nix⌗

In my mind, the goals of bootc and NixOS are not too dissimilar: declarative builds and atomic deployments of Linux systems. I run a few NixOS machines in my homelab and I love Nix for what it brings to the server world. But if I were setting up a desktop computer for a friend or my parents I certainly would not choose NixOS. I’d choose Bazzite or Fedora Silverblue or any of the many bootc images out there.

Fans of NixOS can rightly point out that Nix gives you unmatched power and control. But it also requires you to learn the intricacies of a domain-specific functional programming language. Not to say that the knowledge you gain in mastering Nix is not valuable, but much of its value is self-contained within the Nix ecosystem.

In contrast, bootc-based systems build on a different foundation: OCI containers. If you understand Dockerfiles or podman, you will kind of already get it. And what you learn by creating and maintaining a bootc image applies directly to containerized infrastructure elsewhere.

That’s the real magic of the bootc approach and the Universal Blue project more broadly. It bridges the gap between desktop Linux and modern infrastructure practices using familiar tooling around OCI containers. If you’re new to those ideas, learning them on the desktop has transferable value.

Universal Blue often gets flak for describing its projects such as Bazzite as cloud-native, a term that can sound meaningless or jargony if all you want is a Linux computer to run your games. And if you’re already deep in the Kubernetes or container world, the term cloud-native feels too vague to be helpful. But behind the buzzword is a simple truth: these tools and ideas scale. They bring consistency, composability, and reproducibility to the desktop, just as they have in server environments.

So, is Bazzite just a normal Linux distro? If normal means “has a desktop, runs Linux applications, and can be customized,” then yes; it shares those traits with many other distributions. But if normal means doing things in the same way we’ve done them for decades (e.g., running sudo apt-get install steam and accidentally removing your desktop environment) then no; Bazzite offers something different.

I will gladly choose that difference.