Question about Best Practice for System Updates with HTPC

Bazzite
1

Hi all,

I was curious about best practices for doing system updates on an HTPC install of Bazzite.

I’m not a complete Linux noob, just versed “enough to be dangerous” (which I know is never a good thing in Linux). I’ve just spent an hour rebasing my system after updating via Desktop Mode from went from the Sept. 7th release to the Sept. 8th release. I don’t know why, but this both nuked any and all output from my GPU (Hellhound 7900 GRE) and got me stuck in a black screen boot loop where there would be a blip on the screen showing the Bazzite logo and then black screen for another minute or two before another blip.

Linux and I have never been friends, mainly because I’ve often found updates will break things and in the past, not having the knowledge/understanding to fix whatever broke, I would often end up reinstalling. Bazzite being immutable saved me on that front today which is awesome.

Preamble aside, I was curious what best practice is for updating a Bazzite install:

  1. When do you typically update (whether Gamescope or via Desktop)?
  2. How do you go about it?
  3. What do you update and avoid updating
  4. Any other advice?

My habit with my Steam Deck has been to update whenever there’s something available in Gamescope, and then drop to Desktop maybe once a week or so to update everything there. With this HTPC, though, it seems that may be misguided so any advice would be appreciated as I’d love to avoid this issue in the future. Thanks!

2
  1. Whenever you want, but keep an eye out for announcements for updates. (You can also receive desktop notifications for new updates following this guide).
  2. Steam Gaming Mode and Desktop Mode do the exact same thing, but since Steam doesn’t easily allow us to show an output of what’s happening or use our own changelogs (you only see SteamOS’s changes). Desktop Mode shows a real-time output of the upgrade.
  3. I update everything at once like it’s intended. If a Flatpak application breaks, downgrade it with Warehouse temporarily.
  4. Don’t sweat it, like you’re aware of, rollbacks and rebasing to older images exist to return from a bad system upgrade or an upstream Linux issue plaguing your hardware.

You also don’t have to be up to date all the time especially if this hardware is mostly just used for gaming most of the time. You can make your own schedule for it if you feel comfortable doing that, bi-weekly or monthly works. Not really something built-in, but like a reminder on your phone or similar.