I need some help here from the experts.

Some background below, but here’s the question:

Can I run KDE and Gnome on bazzite? How can I install and manage multiple images? I feel silly asking this, but I’m just not finding the correct documentation.

Background:

I have been running KDE desktop Bazzite on my PC for a while now, and I’m loving the robust and easy system (not to mention the ease of gaming). But I have found that one program just doesn’t work correctly, and I had a game (Stellaris) freeze my system several times.

I ended up installing EndeavorOS on an older PC to experiment, and found out that the program in question (openAndroidInstaller) requires a Gnome portal to access my hardware. (Long live the Terminal!) Now I suspect that perhaps the game freeze wouldn’t happen with Gnome either. So I want to have both on bazzite, but can’t figure it out.

  • pelotron@midwest.socialEnglish
    3·
    8 months ago

    I wondered this same thing and investigated installing Hyprland on Bazzite but didn’t really find anything. I suspect you’d layer the installation into the os with rpm-ostree, but I didn’t end up trying it.

    • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
      1·
      8 months ago

      Yes you just layer all the packages. With an additional WM it is not a huge deal. But when doing entire GNOME on Kinoite that will make updates incredibly slow.

      So using blue-build would be recommended here.

  • whatsgoingdom@rollenspiel.forum
    1·
    8 months ago

    Not much info on how to achieve it, but some info why it might be bad can be found on the ublue discourse site. (Search for KDE gnome) Basically it seems to mess up configs to have both DEs installed or rebasing from one to the other.

  • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
    1·
    8 months ago

    Hahaha yes this is totally possible but not what you need.

    Just do rpm-ostree search portal and install the gnome portal on the KDE base.

  • thayer@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    You should be able to layer the xdg-desktop-portal-gnome package, which will also pull any dependencies.

    To answer your general question though, yes I believe you can easily install at least minimal versions of each DE with little impact to rpm-ostree performance. They don’t need to be separate images, though that’s possible too by rebasing and pinning. I would just layer the necessary packages to load a GNOME environment (start with rpm-ostree install gnome-shell). This way everything stays up to date with the active image. Pinning would require you to rebase with each image update and then unpin/pin the old/new images…too much work.

    For example, I’m running GDM under Kinoite simply because I was having unresolvable issues with SDDM and LightDM.

  • ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    I’m not sure about the bazzite part, but running both kde and gnome is not typically recommended. Kde changes a bunch of theming and miscellaneous settings whenever you launch it, and gnome doesn’t change them back automatically. If you only care about running one game rather than daily driving gnome you should be fine though

  • Inevitable Waffles [Ohio]@midwest.socialEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    I am running Bazzite and Stellaris. I have no issues with stability or opening the game. Have you checked your hardware fundamentals and done things like disable steam overlay?

    • UNY0N@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      8 months ago

      Update: I turned off steam overlay, and set the in-game video setting from borderless full screen to just full screen, and that did it!

      So much frustration, and such an easy fix. Ugh. But at least it’s working now. Thanks again.

      • bsergay@discuss.online
        1·
        8 months ago

        Thanks for the update! Glad to hear it’s fixed; also thank you (on behalf of the community) for sharing the fix. If I may, I think this would be a classic example of the XY problem. Anyhow, wish ya a great day!