Bazzite July 2025 Update: Bazaar, Z13, Kernel 6.15, Steam Hardware Survey

Bazzite
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IMHO there is some usecase for that, but forcing people to do it via CLI is also fair enough.

Anyways, currently rebuilding my image. You need to remove bazaar krunner-bazaar to remove the new store. Recovering discover seems to need the packages plasma-discover plasma-discover-flatpak plasma-discover-notifier plasma-discover-kns based on fedora pkgs page.

Currently building after a failure from only removing bazaar, as it creates a conflict where krunner-bazaar wants it but that’s included in removal list. Also getting off my lazy ass and adding the calendar fix as well. It’s just about done and doesn’t seem like there’s any build issue aside for that krunner-bazaar bit.

Edit:

In the meanwhile, I gave the app a test. Here’s my short review I guess.

Summary

It seems like it just considers not being able to refresh flathub list (my wifi derped for a bit) to be an error instead of saying that that’s the issue. Took reopening three times for it to load? Subsequent refresh took quite a while to do, a few minutes where it just sit there spinning.

There needs to be work done on splitting the refresh process, because if I saw it spinning like that I’d just consider it a slow unresponsive app, probably would have just closed it because there’s no user feedback about the refresh process besides the spinning icon. Some boilerplate text that shows what it’s doing a la Windows boot screen and Steam login screen would help.

The UX is… Whatever, I always ignore curated app list in every app store. Search is identical to Discover so that was mostly… Fine. Was trying to search “Chrome” to test it, but it reloads every letter I type - I don’t like that kind of “flashing screen” behavior, even if I’m not epileptic. IMHO it should wait for a bit after the letter is typed to reload, and it shouldn’t immediately load the top result because that just causes the right pane to having “flashing”-like behaviour. I don’t like how there’s no “Back” icon on the search page either - for a minute I was confused because the Curated Flathub Installed tabs disappeared (and I don’t really get why Flathub needs its own tab since there’s already a Curated tab).

The installed page feels so empty. I feel like it could just use two columns. Ideally, I would say it should looks like the Extension page of Chromium browser where you have a short description of the extension to remind people what the thing was. Also, no check for update button? I have to do the lengthy process lf refreshing the whole app just to know if I have any update? Why?

On a separate note, I really do like the app Add-ons/extensions management being very accessible though - was an annoyance for me on other app stores. Not sure why it error’d when I tapped Edit Permissions. I have Flatseal installed, but I guess it wants me to uninstall and reinstall it from Bazaar?

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Not a fan of how technical gibberish all the error message so far - my eyes legitimately just glazes until I realize it’s just saying it’s not interfacing with Flatseal. When you can’t connect, just say “Connection Error” or something like that, and when Flatseal can’t be accessed, just say “Can’t connect to Flatseal - please reinstall the app” or something in that line. Ideally it should also just have a button that does so (and for any error’d app that came due to the transition process as well IMO).

Overall, seems alright. Seems like obvious Beta software so I’m not sure why it’s pushed on Stable already, but this is a Fedora-based distro after all so it isn’t too surprising. Hopefully it gets fixed eventually but it isn’t really an issue for me since I’m not going to be using the thing anyways ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Edit2:

Readding it seems to be broken? I’ll try removing the packagekit extension, it might be the issue.

❯ plasma-discover
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover: OdrsReviewsBackend: Fetch ratings: false
adding empty sources model QStandardItemModel(0x5620c6d72450)
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover: Discarding invalid backend "packagekit-backend"
Error when fetching the last update time QDBusError("org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner", "Could not activate remote peer 'org.freedesktop.PackageKit': unit failed")
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.rpm-ostree: Starting transaction to check for updates
[1]    10467 segmentation fault (core dumped)  plasma-discover

Edit3: Seems like plasma-discover-offline-updates plasma-discover-packagekit plasma-discover-rpm-ostree causing the issue. Removed it and everything else works fine now.

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Hm, for some reason if I launch Discover immediately after booting and going to Desktop Mode, it will run, but a lot of the time it still ended up crashing. If I wait a bit, it just won’t run at all. Running from konsole always returns the same error as above, no matter how much I stripped back (just flatpak and kns now, the latter of which is the one I care about).

Is there something else being done with packagekit that’s breaking Discover? What do I need to do to fix it?

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No idea, we only removed the package so far, reinstalling it should be enough.

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I’ve just, finally (after hours of search), managed to restore Discover by disabling the rpm-ostree auto installation of “recommended” packages and layering the plasma-discover plasma-discover-flatpak plasma-discover-notifier plasma-discover-kns packages… I was having the same problem as you, in my case, it was installing all the recomended packages for plasma-discover which includes PackageKit and its correlates which was making discover crash…

So, my tip is: you shure that it is not installing any PackageKit related package on your image?

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Enjoying the updates! I’d like to inquire about system fonts in Gnome - I am not seeing Adwaita Sans (Inter) being used in my system at all, see the below example. Gnome 48 was quite an exciting update and I’d love to know if disabling these was intended

image
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That font should still be present, we just have different defaults to match Valve’s SteamOS theme. You can select it with gnome tweaks or any of the other tweak flatpaks

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Is Bazaar accessible via Gaming Mode (SteamOS), or provide integrations to add apps to non-steam games?
In my opinion this would be a good differentiator / advantage vs using Discover. If I could install a flatpack app or game, and it be available in Gaming Mode (SteamOS) by default.

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My guess is that that IS the issue, but it could be that there’s some lag between me fixing the recipe and the actual image being pulled by rpm-ostree. Or that it IS still pulling in packagekit automatically. Idk I’ll puzzle it out throughout the week, don’t have much time for it during workdays.

Thanks for the confirmation though.

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One piece of feedback here (I’ll hold my peace on Gnome’s UI idiosyncrasies in Bazaar): Removing Discover (or any program) without any user input (or even notification) is not good.
One might even call it Microsoft Behavior, if one was feeling mean-spirited.

I thought I was going insane for a few minutes when I couldn’t find it.

Please give us users a clear warning next time?

Thanks, and keep up the good work!

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I agree with the majority here. Don’t get me wrong : I like how fast Bazaar is. However it has some strange design choices, small software glitches, the app icon looks meh and the curated list leave more to be desired.
The discover store was more than ok. I agree that removing it would prevent users from doing mistakes and removing stuff they shouldn’t, but it makes things more complicated. For starters, KDE exclusive plugins are no longer a click away, but I have to go deep into the desktop to get what I want.

Bazaar sounds good for Gnome, but not for Plasma. And the way it replaced discover without being told left a bad taste in my mouth. I think the best solution would be to create a ujust script that allows users to switch between (or install alongside) Bazaar and Gnome/Kde store (depending on the DE used.)

Other than that, There needs to be a “news teller” or “what’s changed” screen or in the terminal window to know what was changed and when, not figure out by ourselves.

(On that note, why do you still bundle Flatseal when Plasma already has a flatpak permissions menu? It makes sense for Gnome, but not for Plasma)

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You can find the first mention that Discover/Software would be replaced 3 months ago here.

It was also in our testing branches exactly as it shipped here for the last month. We would like it if more of our users participated in the testing branches.

Lastly we worked with multiple content creators to showcase Bazaar early on, Gardiner Bryant did a longform video on it over a month ago:

This is not something we’ll be exploring as our intent is to continue to grow and improve Bazaar and move away from legacy packaging. Ultimately if you want the old experience all I can recommend to you is spinning a custom image.

This is somewhat of a feature, Discover listed theme installers that are fundamentally incompatible with image based operating systems due to running arbitrary scripts that attempt to write to /usr. These had almost no moderation and were a possible security risk.

When running ujust update or the System Update app you’re always given a full list of changes before you reboot. You can also run ujust changelog at any time to see the latest GitHub release changelog, or follow along with our updates here in discourse.

User-friendliness. Even on SteamOS KDE flatseal is the application of choice for most users. It being present gives users a tool they’re likely already familiar with and it’s something Bazaar will be integrated with going forward.

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You might be happier with the GTS image which is a lot more static. The latest and stable images are where the new features and improvements land. It is up to the core development team to decide when to bring them in. Bazzite and Bluefin images tend to lead the way and Aurora lags a little behind usually. This the way development works for uBlue.

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Important to note that Bazzite does not offer a GTS experience, there’s not much point in low-and-slow on a gaming distro where users are interested in playing the latest games and having the best performance,

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Yeah, you’re right. This is really more of a communication and cadence issue for Bazzite to address. No running with :scissors:

Bazaar now in Aurora beta stream
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It’s still pretty reliant on people being active on the forum or stumbling into them. I think it’d be better if Bazzite could just include an RSS notifier that pulls from here and Mastodon (for quick notifs) a la what Manjaro has (had?).

Though, for the Game Mode, it’d need to somehow be included in the Bazzite Decky plugin? Seems a lot of development, but it’s clear that even three months and a couple of creators still leave a decent amount of people who pays attention to these things blindsided.

I get why you’re saying this, but this is the kind of way to gets people from not liking Gnome to actively being hostile against them.

I get it, that IS the only real way of doing it, but that is a huge jump from just casually using Bazzite to maintaining their own repo on github.

It’s kinda like the way that some of the Fedora people says that if we needed 32bit packages so much we could just maintain it ourselves. Putting in the work IS ultimately the most reliable way of having your usecase be maintained, but it doesn’t feel great to be told to make the jump and do it yourself.

I think this is a valid opinion, but at the same time, it goes against what a lot of KDE users (that actively chooses KDE) expects. We know about these risks, but the flexibility and simplicity is worth it to us. Security is an issue, but people don’t like it when it comes at the expense of their hassle.

Additionally, this feels like a tacked on reason. It kinda reminds me how people would cite security as a reason for why certain policies gets passed (see the classic “think of the children” policies). Realistically, it’s not like this change would get reverted if KDE’s plans to properly silo their customization stuff is implemented either.

Anyways, for me ultimately the issue is the signaling that comes from the way this change was implemented. Bazaar, in my own testing, feels pretty buggy and beta quality. Additionally it just gets mentioned a few months ago, and then suddenly it replaces the upstream defaults instead of having a proper transitional period.

I’m not sure I really enjoy the direction Bazzite and the whole project is moving towards and the way it’s been communicated. I remember the “good old days” when something like Kate was eventually removed because upstream uses Kwrite. It’s a simple policy where things are kept vanilla where it isn’t necessary and opinions are kept to a mostly additions or behind-the-scenes stuff. It gives a feeling of “something stable you can rely on.” That was why I was particular about Universal Blue visions page back in the other thread - the project feels like it’s slowly becoming just another distro.

I still quite like Bazzite as a whole, but I really would like it if any changes that’s noticeable has a longer lead up between being announced, implemented, deprecated, and then removed. “Move fast and break things” and “software makers deciding what users want” are sentiments that a lot of Linux users refuged from and are pretty sensitive towards, but longer planning and communication would do a lot in mitigating it (that’s why I suggested a “roadmap page” because it’d make finding plans and deprecations way easier as well).

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I don’t know how many times we have to explain that we target people who are not Linux users because they don’t care about toolkits. I have yet to see a single major youtuber complain about any of the things you mention. We don’t optimize for the 4% we optimize for the 96%. Most of whom aren’t even using the desktop mode anyway.

This is a forcing function to destroy the traditional linux app model, we are doing it on purpose.

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I’m not convinced that additional messaging would be anything but ignored the same way the existing messaging was. Every ounce of this change happened in plain view in GitHub and the change was telegraphed for 3 months, at a certain point we’ve done all we can.

The true reason is that these stores have stagnated and improved nothing in years. They are traditional distro package installers with flatpak tacked on top as an afterthought. We are moving away from this because it is our intention to drag the Linux desktop kicking and screaming into its cloud native future. I see no value in a store that thinks it’s okay to show a normal person three different copies of the same app because that user might want an RPM or might want a different flatpak repo nobody uses.

I’ll go as far as to say the only place in the desktop world where you can see someone not only aware of what a UI toolkit is but concerned enough about it to post on a forum is in the Linux world. Normal users, the kinds of users that make up the 96% that don’t live this life, don’t care. I don’t care either.

Lastly, the amount of support requests from users wondering why they can’t install a theme has been sky-high. This wastes user time, it wastes our time, and it benefits nobody.

That is because unlike the stores they replaced it has no decade old design decisions holding it back and preventing it from getting better. Bazaar with user input will continue to improve long into the future.

Ultimately this is the reason I’m such a fan of the cloud native model, the barrier to entry for someone taking my job is as close to zero as possible. You don’t have to like what I do and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to do it yourself. You have more choice here than ever before.

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I must also add that this is not a Gnome project so that would be very foolish.

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I got a little thrown yesterday as I went looking for Discover :slight_smile: came here seen that we have a new App Store, Bazaar, and I must say, its way nicer, I can see many non techies loving this, I like it so much I’m thinking of installing on my Fedora Laptop, the old Discover store looks so drab in comparison, Bazaar really fits in with OS nicely.

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