Hi everyone,
I’ve been making some improvements to the Bazzite website over the last few days and am looking for feedback. If you have a few moments, I’d love some critiques of what we have here:
Anything I can make clearer, look better, or fix. Much appreciated!
Site looks amazing! This project is full steam ahead and I thank all those involved with Bazzite.
First of all, I think the site looks awesome! Very well done, and all the polished bits like animations and effects are fantastic. I especially think putting game compatibility info up top is smart, since that’s often people’s biggest concern about using Linux for gaming.
The only real feedback I have isn’t necessarily for recent changes, but for the site more broadly.
Occasionally when I’m talking with friends who are fed up with Windows for one reason or another, or have expressed some interest in alternative OS for their Steam Deck, I send them a link to the bazzite website. Then during later conversations I get the impression that they didn’t really understand what it was, or why it differed from any other Linux distro.
Maybe they’re tired of me recommending linux to them, or maybe they’re just never going to actually read through the site, but in at least a few instances they’ve come back later and said they ended up finding a YT video about Bazzite and after watching ended up installing and trying it.
So my theory here is that the site has a “glanceability” problem. As much as I generally loathe the format of youtube thumbnails, one thing I’ve noticed is that every youtube video about Bazzite has a thumbnail that shows a very clear shot of a handheld device running bazzite, rather than a logo, etc. Of course the website is a totally different medium, but I feel like part of what is driving engagement on those videos is what’s lacking on the site and leaving casual browsers sometimes confused.
Maybe there’s some way that you can include a photo or animation near the top of the scroll showing Bazzite running on both a steam deck and a desktop pc, and also show both Steam Deck UI and conventional desktop like KDE? It seems like once people get the idea that it’s a single OS that can run on all these different platforms, pre-configured for gaming, then they’re excited and want to know more. I know the banner/top of the page literally says exactly that in text, but the unfortunate reality is that many people just don’t stop to read things 
Maybe I’m making a bigger deal of it than is necessary, but it definitely seems like people aren’t “getting it” when kinda mindlessly pulling up the link and scrolling around.
Just to be clear though, overall I think the site looks awesome!
I’ve been thinking about that for a long time, the problem is good art of the various handhelds or an HTPC with transparent backgrounds and all the other trimmings is very hard to find. Especially in a royalty free manner.
If a community member here wants to help with this, it would be awesome to get some chibi 3D models of various handhelds and a little living room HTPC setup. I think we could display them on the website in a fun manner with WebGL. I think the screens just need a logo on them.
the website is literally an incarnation of everything that is wrong with modern web design. it’s huge, the fonts are huge, the graphics are huge, there are tons of totally unnecessary animations and graphics everywhere, you have to scroll several pages just to read a paragraph of text. i bet on average each paragraph of text here pulls in another library and megs of graphics and takes 4 pages on a 1080 screen. no package version information is provided about gnome, kde, the kernel or any other packages. no explanation is given of what silverblue is, what an atomic desktop is, or how this distribution will be radically different to administer than a normal fedora distro. graphics driver version?
if debian is one extreme this is the other
I’ll say that your first point is slightly valid despite the fact that it will not change that dramatically to your liking. It’s exactly what you described it as, modern web design and websites are no longer designed for ancient hardware and slow internet connections anymore (despite some people still having to deal with those ancient issues unfortunately).
This is the part of the response I’d like to address:
no package version information is provided about gnome, kde, the kernel or any other packages. no explanation is given of what silverblue is, what an atomic desktop is, or how this distribution will be radically different to administer than a normal fedora distro. graphics driver version?
From looking at the communication channels we have and watching Youtube channels cover it, some who don’t use Linux regularly, our target audience is new users to Linux and don’t care about any of that. We essentially follow a rolling release model based on the Fedora point release that is out and can adjust packages as we see fit. Having to regularly update the website because we updated the Mesa drivers or Nvidia released new drivers is a waste of time. As for desktop environment package versions, look at upstream Fedora and assume we’re using that because we most likely are.
ok, so it’s a flashy useless ad website for noobs, got it!
in that case its perfect
I actually love the site, modern and it looks very pretty, love all the reactive and animated parts of it but until I started dailying fedora kinoite, I really didn’t understand half the things the site said. It’s got quite a bit of “if you know, you know” wording, which when read by anyone with even a tinge of knowledge in the subject, it just clicks, but everyone else (even people who might have used linux for years but never knew about OCIs or immutable distros) it’s technical jargon.
If you have any specific rewording advice I’d love to hear it
Sure! I’m no writer so please excuse any mistakes, and these suggestions should be taken lightly, if they seem wrong or would be worse you’re probably more correct.
For “fearless upgrades” the mention of libostree should go to the end of the paragraph just to put less emphasis on the technical side, and I wonder if it would be better to contextualize it as “A/B updates” (like how android calls them), not sure if more people would be familiar with that or not.
In “run your favorite containers” I love the beginning bold passage and that should remain untouched, the area mentioning distrobox and ptyxis I feel should be rewritten to abstract away from them, while linux users love to know that it’s using distrobox and instantly understand it, most people don’t know how it works or what it is along with the ptyxis terminal. I would suggest the wording be adjusted loosely not to mention distrobox at the start, call them containers that can run any distro-specific packages (.deb/.rpm/aur), along with many CLI tools, ending with mentioning the actual software that does it like “Thanks to Distrobox, ptyxis-Terminal, and Brew”. The flatpak and flathub section is great but might need minor adjustment due to changing how brew is mentioned previously!
Steam gaming mode and Waydroid are explained really well but KDE and GNOME might benefit from mentioning briefly they way they differ visually and daily use, like how other multi-DE distros like manjaro differentiates them, something to inform new users on their differences (GNOME is already worded better than KDE on the site for this), and dropping the “built from (fedora atomic name)” to the end just to again make it less prominent for the people that don’t know what that is.
“Hardware Enablement” is a little clunky as a sentence, if the previous bubble’s title could be renamed to “GPU Support” and this part is called something like “Additional Drivers” I think would be more correct and understandable.
Lastly a minor nitpick that “build your own” should go under the download section and start with “Or […]”, just on the off-chance that people scrolling think they have to do that instead of the pre-built images.
Thank you for your time and I hope this feedback helps the site improve!
Edit: (minor grammar changes) and maybe flatpaks and flathub should be highlighted first and foremost in the software section since it should be prioritized due to it being easier for the user, less space than a distrobox container, more convenient and better supported, etc. This is how it’s shown in the documentation for software management already so I feel like this being reflected on the site (which most people are going to read) would help new users, so instead of the “additionally” highlighting flatpak and flathub, the entire first section should highlight it and “additionally any other packages[…]” and that becomes about distrobox and the rest
I agree completely, and I came to post similar feedback.
I know from being around these forums for a while that Bazzite can be installed on an Asus ROG Ally.
However if I was an owner of one of those handhelds visiting the Bazzite website, I would have absolutely no idea that Bazzite is of interest to me.
This is the only mention of ROG Ally anywhere on the main page, and it doesn’t even mention that Bazzite can be installed on that device:
I suggest that before the Play your favourite games section, there should be a new section expanding on the devices from “brings the best of Linux gaming to all of your devices - including your favorite handheld”.
I want to keep the “Built From” bit since it’s the only place it’s explained, but here’s my attempt at catering/explaining to people who’ve never used these.
Thank you so much for taking all these considerations in mind, and taking the time to have them come to fruition!
Love dropping “libostree” for atomic, and the wording change to explain what that is, brilliant and simple.
I love the hint that GNOME is more for that “MacOS like feel”, I do feel there’s just a BIT more detail than necessary but honestly that’s such a “me” nit pick that it doesn’t matter. The KDE one is basically perfect, explains easily that it’s more traditional and akin to windows.
The “Additional Drivers” is exactly what I had in mind, hope others agree it’s an improvement! Along with the change of moving “build your own” under downloads, and that it now inherits the color of the download section rather than “our team”.
Lastly I appreciate how you’ve worded the software section very well, took my very simple description and translated it perfectly into something cohesive! It even includes the BoxBuddy utility which isn’t included in the prod site currently! I’d only like a comment on if you’d think it’s worth doing that last-minute idea I had to generally mention flatpaks/flathub first on this section. This would only really benefit anyone who hasn’t heard of it (users migrating from non-linux OSes, everyone else probably expects no less) about the kind of “appstore of linux” that should be their first lifeline when trying to install something, but I think that needs further deliberation from other forum members/maintainers? (Probably a bit too complex/large a change to mention on the site).
I hope all these changes will help new users more easily understand bazzite and its quirks at a glance, and again a big thanks for taking the suggestions to heart!
Not ignoring this, just figuring out how we want to do it.
