The Bazzite team is focused on making gaming on Linux as easy as possible and preloads a suite of applications to make it as turnkey as possible for normal users. When the team finds a new utility or application that they think would benefit most users, they add it in and users get it in the next update. For gamers, this is great!
As someone who uses Bazzite as a workstation with a strong gaming and game development foundation, the quiet addition of new applications can sometimes feel annoying as new apps and packages are quietly introduced in the next update. In those cases, if a user wants to uninstall them, sometimes that’s not possible except by making custom container files or image recipes to modify the image.
The proposal would be a “minimal” variant of Bazzite for each spin (deck, gnome, KDE). This would come with all the drivers, packages, and tweaks that make Bazzite a great foundation for playing games and using GPU-heavy applications, while only bundling what are the most necessary or common applications, like the Steam client, Bottles, desktop environment common utilities, and a browser. This image would receive system updates as usual, but the application suite would be updated conservatively. The full featured version would be what is currently available.
You already have Fedora Kinoite that you can add your handful of apps to. Seems like a duplication of effort IMO to provide Fedora Kinoite but rebranded as Bazzite.
If Bazzite is aiming to provide a turnkey gaming distribution that means pre-installing common gaming apps.
I’m inclined to agree with Invid. Personally I think having a preset image loaded with all possible gaming enhancements, both on a handheld device and a traditional desktop computer/laptops, is what makes Bazzite appealing, and the addition of new apps is their way of enhancing users’ experience.
IMO “Bazzite Minimal” for PC can already be achieved with BlueBuild + UBlue base images + Blu (formerly Fsync) kernel + bazzite-arch distrobox. While I think it would be very convenient to have a “Bazzitification” script to configure Bazzite-exclusive goodies (such as Waydroid, which takes a lot of work to get up and running normally) on the go on non-Bazzite images, I don’t think it makes sense to create a minimal branch with few computer necessities.
I am currently using Bazzite on my desktop that I mainly use for gaming, while on my laptop, that I mostly use for audio production and occasional Matlab usage, I run Aurora. I also have Steam installed through a Ubuntu distrobox and it runs perfectly fine for the couple of games that I play on the laptop (mainly Civilization 6).
I don’t know how much gaming you do but if you want a more lightweight base image I strongly recommend Aurora (or Bluefin if you prefer Gnome).
As someone that regularly wants to remove some of the apps installed on Bazzite, isn’t your sister project of Bluefin/Aurora sufficient to cover these use cases.
Especially if you get the HWE version that uses the Bazzite kernel anyway.
I use Bazzite on my handhelds, and Bluefin on my personal/work laptop. Especially with the DX options.
Just redirect people that want Bazzites Minimal to Bluefin/Aurora
For me, it’s not about storage space. If I cared about storage space, I wouldn’t be such a fan of flatpak and containers.
I care more about my system feeling clean and fresh. I don’t want apps or unnecessary entries in my applicaton grid, even if they just consumed a few MBs.