Should be manageable and it is probably less than you would imagine. Just checked real quick: the isos load from download.bazzite.gg, which is a Cloudflare IP. So they are either using it as CDN or even more likely use Cloudflares R2 storage for isos - which would mean they pay for storage (~15$/TB) and operations, but not for egress. This is seems ideal for few but huge files.

So for a single iso (~7 GB) they would pay 0,105$ for storage monthly and additionally 0,36$ per million of class B operations (reads/downloads). Of course they host more than one ISO, but for this example it would have been downloaded about ~150000 times to reach the petabyte.

So yeah, the ISO download is probably less of a problem. (Disclaimer: lot of assumptions, check in with a bazzite dev for clarity)

I'm surprised they don't have torrent downloads for it. That would save on bandwidth costs and it's more reliable since torrent clients verify the checksum and automatically redownload any corrupted blocks.

Cloudflare would host it for effectively free

This whole thread had me wondering how much I'm costing them so I could at least pay my share. A quick search got me this page to donate. There's some information about how they are using that money, but it doesn't seem like they've spent much, and it makes me feel like they've got funding from somewhere else that covers their hosting costs.

Along with what others have said about it being a great ootb experience for anyone looking to play games. It is also immutable so you can't fuck it up too easily. And the very popular YouTube channel gamers nexus has started doing their Linux testing exclusively on bazzite. I think the latter is playing one of the biggest parts, while the previous two points are specifically why they choose bazzite.

As I understand it, it's atomic Fedora with virtually everything you might need to game on Linux baked in (no need for layering) and more or less preconfigured. Off the top of my head, proprietary Nvidia drivers, Steam, Lutris, Hero launcher, support for Xbox One wireless controller dongle, plus a number of useful tools like Tailscale. An app with a catered list of gaming-oriented flatpacks, one click updating. Also a lot of effort into replicating the Steam Deck experience for handheld devices or devices connected to a TV.

I believe they also do Aurora, which is similarly geared toward workstations with a ton of container-related tools like distro box readily available to easily use containers instead of layering where possible. The same tools may be available in Bazzite but I never checked. I have Aurora on my laptop and use a dedicated gaming device with Bazzite.

I'm not a Linux veteran by any means but I was hopping distros looking for something I could install on my family's computers I tried atomic Fedora. When using it for myself, I became frustrated with the number of tools I use that needed to be layered or run in a container and eventually found myself on Bazzite and Aurora. So far so good.

Besides the reasons others mentioned, it's also popular as an OS for gaming handhelds, like the Steam Deck, Lenovo Legion Go, ASUS Ally X and what have you.

Imagine you like video games. You install Bazzite. You have Steam, with only a little checkbox (to allow playing on linux). It works, you can play, you have a "playstore" if you need something. You have really little to do if you don't go outside Steam and the playstore.

It's the "just works" distro for people who want to play games.

A lot of things are built into it to be easily installable with less user effort. Has nice defaults. I use cachyos on my pc but on my handheld a lot of stuff wasn't working by default, like the handhelds buttons/joystick. On bazzite everything works by default. (Think it's one terminal command to install what is needed for controls in cachyos, but it didn't work by default) You can still download whatever using rpm ostree, as a user idr know the difference. Grabbed gparted that way. Bazzite has the ujust command which gives you a lot of options for modifying and installing stuff easily like waydroid, emudeck, plugins, etc.

Also prefer gnome with extensions on touchscreens and handhelds, while everything else comes with kde and it's apps by default. Kde isn't bad at all and only 1 extension on pc (window thumbnails to pip any window) has me staying on gnome, but gnome works so much better for touchscreens and smaller devices.

It’s the most plug-and-play Linux has ever been from my experience.

For general user maybe but honestly I would prefer kinoite ,I don't like bazzite replacing all their apps with gtk4 libadwaita while KDE written in qt apps looks much better that's why I switched to kinoite

What about steamOS for a steam machine that has all AMD hardware so Nvidia drivers will not be an issue.

I'm building an htpc that will never be used in desktop mode just couch gaming used by kids too. Still trying to decide which os to go with.

Just want to know what the downsides if any of installing SteamOS if I just want valve to handle it for me.

I'm out of the loop here, what's the context?

its closest to nixos in functionality, but basically its just a very simple distro that doesnt require much work to maintain and comes with lots of useful premade scripts and configurations for gaming and making immutables easy to work with. if thats what youre looking for thats what its good for.

If you've got actual work to do, don't.

I've got Bazzite on my TV PC, and it's pretty cromulent for that, but Flatpak alone doesn't have everything I need to do actual work.

If it's doing what you need it to do, no reason to rock that boat! It is fun to try out other distros without distro hopping, just to see what's out there. That's what a good thumb drive is for!

Bazzite is good for gaming, do you game?

It's been working perfectly for me with no tinkering.

At most you might have to switch to the closed driver image

I put it on my gaming desktop and ROG Xbix Ally X and love it. Works great. The Windows Rog Xbox Ally X portable experience sucks. Also I'm not missing the intrusive updates and AI junk jammed into absolutely every Microsoft product.

It's been flawless for me with similar performance (slightly better in some areas) than Windows.

probably not