Bazzite/Ublue Needs a Native Image Manager & Updater

Bazzite
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I’m not part of the Bazzite team—just a big fan of the project—but I think it’s time to develop a dedicated client for managing and updating system images. Something like “ublue-updater” could make this process much more seamless.

Here’s what such an app could do:

:counterclockwise_arrows_button: Easily update system images through a simple, user-friendly interface
:brain: Auto-detect your GPU (NVIDIA, AMD, etc.) and install the correct image automatically
:repeat_button: Switch between different ublue images based on your hardware and preferences

This tool should ideally be distributed as a Flatpak and hosted on Bazzite’s own infrastructure, not GitHub. Why? While we all appreciate Microsoft’s GitHub, putting all our eggs in one basket is risky. Bazzite has already experienced issues from a GitHub error, which disrupted updates for thousands of users.

By moving to an updater with independent hosting, the ublue team would have full control over update distribution and image management—making it much easier to switch to alternate servers in the future if necessary.

And to top it off, a tray icon for quick access would be a fantastic addition to the user experience.

I’ve even put together a proof-of-concept image to illustrate the idea.
What do you think?

bazzupdt
bazzupdt1536×1024 67.1 KB

1 Like
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This feels kinda whack. How much of this is made with LLMs?

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Well, I’m not against people using AI to clean up an already written idea or to check spelling and grammar.

That being said, I think you’re right, em dashes are always a dead giveaway.

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Hi, I’m not an artist, so I wrote the text and my idea, and the AI created the image. I asked it to make my message shorter, because otherwise no one would read it and it added the formatting as well.

I think it had the opposite effect, and I don’t know if anyone will take care of this. Nobody is talking about the idea, only about the AI :frowning:

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jorge has talked about this idea for a while now. still waiting on someone with the know how to get the want to. right now the images use ujust commands to update. I think that would need a gui first.

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I would love this, it’s my only gripe with bazzite atm. I like being able to chose when my os updates, and right now bazzite offers very limited support for this. What I think could be another great solution to the problem would be to maybe include this directly into bazzar. You could then manage all your updates (apps and system) in a single centralized space like fedora silverblue lets you do in the gnome software center.

My main problem with bazzite really is about stability of the system, and the fact it updates in the background without telling me. I have to search a lot more if I find a bug in the system (which happens from time to time). So for me, having the option to update the system manually through a GUI would really help out this issue. If I encounter a bug right after updating my system, then I get a pretty good idea of what caused it.

You could still keep the default behaviour of updating automatically, but bazzar could send a notification in gnome/kde to tell you about it.

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Aurora uses KCM however this only works well on KDE Plasma images since it integrates with Plasma’s settings and not in GNOME.

As for an image switcher, I know there used to be proof-of-concept prototypes to rebase to different Universal Blue images throughout the project’s history, but nothing ever really happened especially since these were around when base images for different desktop environments were still maintained which isn’t the case anymore due to the main focus of consuming Bazzite, Bluefin, and Aurora. Not to mention any potential hiccups that may occur between rebasing to completely different images.

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Hi, the key point is to add an image switcher for NVIDIA drivers that automatically selects the correct image based on the GPU in use. Gamers frequently swap GPUs, but there’s currently no intuitive way to handle this.

An automatic switcher would reduce the number of brand-specific ISOs by providing a single default image that switches depending on the installed driver. Right now, inexperienced users can get stuck with the ISO they originally downloaded and may be confused if they later buy a different GPU brand.

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Yes please create it and PR it in. That is the best way to do it and not just wait that maybe someone else does it.

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