Flock 2025 Fedora's Gaming Renaissance: The Bazzite Effect

Hello. Hello. Hello everybody. How we all doing? >> Are we Are we awake or are we just excited for lunch? >> Who want who who wants to hear about gaming? >> Good. All right. Awesome. I think we're in the right place. >> All right. We'll go ahead and do introductions and we'll kick everything off. >> So, a little bit about you. >> Sure. Sure. So I'm a core maintainer on Basite. Um I am a technical account manager as my day job for Red Hat. So um specifically on Anible uh don't know why I'm giving a talk about you know bootable containers but here we are. Uh I enjoy spending time with uh my family and friends and I'm addicted to video games. One in particular which is called Deadlock. If you've not played it I will give you an invite. I promise it's great. >> You say that now but then everyone asks and uh you won't have enough. Um, [laughter] so I'm anas. I'm a post-graduate student in Denmark in computer science where we actually have rights. Did you know that? [laughter] Unlike the US. Uh, and I'm also the guy, >> don't panic everybody. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I'm also the guy that does a lot of the integration that we do with uh, Windows handhelds. And we have one right here. We have uh, this one is made by Sus and it's called the ROG. and you can have a look the next few days. Uh, and of course we make it work with all of the RGB modes because that's what matters most, right? >> RGB and frames from what I hear about gaming. >> If if you put the lights to be red, that's 10 extra frames. >> That's true. Does make it faster. >> True. True. >> So today we will talk about Bazite which is a gaming distribution that is I guess we are >> taking everyone by storm. So what is Bazite? >> Sure. Well, one quick question. Who has heard of Basite at least in this room? >> All right. Who uses Basite? Sorry, I should have said keep your hands up. [laughter] Who has contributed to Basite? Oh, more than more than you would expect. But that's good because that's why we're here. We want more people to be involved as well as us be involved in the upstream. And that's why we're here. But a little bit about what it is. So, Basite is for all intents and purposes a readyto-use operating system to allow you to focus on what is important, which is playing video games. It supports all different devices and it is bleeding edge while also being bulletproof with the technology that it is built on. And what is really important about that is essentially that it stays stable and makes it a easy entry point for anyone who wants to start using Linux either on their desktop, tablet, handheld, anywhere they want to use it. >> Yeah, essentially we ship the latest and greatest test kernel. We also get a lot of upstream stuff that are not there yet in uh they haven't gotten into stable yet and we test them ourselves and we make sure they work. Then we package them all together and we beam them right into your computer. Uh so yes, you can turn almost any device into a console and the way we do that is that we combine some bleeding edge technologies and we were the first to kind of integrate them in this way. So we got a lot of uh market share because of that and one of them is boots. So essentially the idea behind that is we take all of these bleeding edge technology, we package it all together and then we say if it works on my computer I will just ship my computer. So we turn it into a container and then we put it into a a registry and our users fetch that. >> Exactly. And one of the biggest benefits about that is that it allows us to have upgrade reliability and the ability to be able to customize it in a very simple way. And and I think it's it's a normal container just add a little bit of water which is the kernel there. There you go. >> But uh this also creates some limitations right because a container and especially when we deploy it users cannot make changes to it easily. So for that we rely on flatpack and flatub to provide our users with safe applications from their original vendors so that they can enjoy the software they like while getting uh the best stuff right you know. >> Exactly. Yeah. the the focus of of utilizing FlatHub in the way that we do is that it allows us to be able to have provide economic stability to folks that are focusing on the open source. One of FlatHub's things that they want to do is they basically want to potentially allow for payment on their platform, which would be hugely beneficial to the open source ecosystem. It allows more control for developers to be able to package things and really ship things the way that they would like to. And it allows us in the Fedora ecosystem to really focus on the system level stuff and making sure that everything integrates well together. I I think it's a beautiful way of being able to do get the benefits from both sides. >> Yeah. So if you ask me, it's beautiful that I never have to worry about the applications that my users are using. I can just focus on the operating system. >> Yes, absolutely. >> And uh we also do a lot of uh bleeding ends integration. So we have our own user space program to do that and uh I personally developed the kernel in tandem with that and you can see it here and uh this allows you to control everything that your Windows handheld has because we have to remember these things were made to run Windows right so when you want to control the RGB well the Steam Deck does not have RGB right so correct yeah right now if you bought a legend OS with Steam OS you cannot control the RGB >> that's uh not that great and uh we also had Uh yes and we are also pragmatic right so I focus on and you focus on yes creating an operating system that bleeding edge and works well but we are also pragmatic right our users use what they use >> right exactly I mean to be honest being in the in the gaming space uh you you there are certain things you just cannot ignore if you want to have success and ship something that that people want to use you need to be pragmatic in certain ways one of those ways is we ship Steam Steam and also Gamecope is the package which is actually an open- source package that we contribute to upstream which allows the Steam Deck to have the UI that it does. And so it's it's one of those things that is very very important from a community building aspect because we are a gaming focused um project. We decided to go on Discord because it is the largest you know started the way that Discord started and I remember this back in I think it was like 2015. My goodness, it's been a while. Um, is the whole point was that there were really no good alternatives in the space at that time. You know, there was TeamSpeak and Ventrello and like it was really difficult to be able to actually just get going and or Skype, you know, but then Microsoft killed Skype. So, what do you do? So, and then the other focus that we have from a pragmatic point of view is that we we need Nvidia to work. Nvidia again is the other 900 lb gorilla in the room. Nvidia is a lot of what laptops, other things ship with. So, we absolutely need to make sure that we can support Nvidia out of the box as much as possible. Simplify that on-ramp because at the end of the day, we just want people to focus on playing games. >> Well, to be honest, we try to make Nvidia work. [laughter] >> That is true. We we do our best, you know. Of course, >> and it works fairly well. And that's the best way you can describe it. >> Yes. >> Yeah. [snorts] So uh the other question, oh of course we are also not doing this just ourselves, >> right? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean sitting on shoulders of giants is is really the best way that I can put it and I I absolutely love this uh came from the community of basically our mascot sitting on top of a giant robot cuz that's really what it is. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, we're here at the Fedora conference um talking about our project and we really take a lot, you know, and and repackage it and like it's really really important that we give back. And so a lot of the ways that we do that is by working with other projects alongside Fedora, whether it's, you know, the CloudNative Computing Foundation, Red Hat, you know, Universal Blue is our umbrella project for all of these different things. And really like it's it's something that you you literally just cannot do alone. I you know we even work upstream with some of the folks that work on Steam OS. You know it's like I said it it's it's one of those things that if you try to do this stuff alone you're just you're going to fail. Like yeah we just uh take Fedora, slap gaming on it and get all the credit. [laughter] >> Yep. But you might ask why gamers, right? >> Yeah. I mean, and and I asked who uses Basite, but who plays video games in this room? Raise your hand. >> That's a lot of people, right? Like, this is why we're targeting gamers is because there's a lot of them and it's growing. It keeps going. Like, the fact that, you know, I I was looking at at the statistics over time of, you know, like I took some time. I was like, okay, well, how do I prove this point? You know, even more so than I already have. But it's like you can see that year-over-year since 2015, which is what I was talking about, there was 2 billion. It's almost doubled. Like that's crazy, you know, the amount of growth that people are self-reporting it, you know, and as far as like age demographics is concerned. I think that was something else that I was really interested in was like, you know, what is the breakdown because like, you know, I grew up playing video games. You know, I I am a millennial. I'm I'm younger. So like you know I had consoles in my you know in my house and everything like that and really to see the proportion of how you know the breakdown of like people 65 plus I mean I've seen you know grandmas and grandpas having Twitch streams that are literally playing video games like it is an acceptable hobby. It used to be more niche and now I think it's really become a more widespreame adopted type of thing. Yeah, it it's not just 12 year olds anymore, right? >> No, no, you you cannot make that argument. It's just not a thing you can do. >> And actually, most of the users that uh of Bazite that interact with us are adults, right? >> Yep. >> A lot of them are fathers actually and they buy this handheld and they want to play some games while having their baby in their lap, you know. >> Yep. Exactly. while it's sleeping, they just uh reach over to their >> I've got two I've got two 5-year-olds at home, so I am in that demographic. >> Yeah. I mean, they're not sleeping in your lap anymore, but uh >> they're running now. >> Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. While they're running around, you game on your Steam Deck. Yeah. And you can see that it's actually growing. The Linux uh uh market share of gaming is growing and it's growing rapidly, right? I mean, there's there's two key pivotal points here, which this was a an article that was shared from Gaming on Linux, which is um if you haven't read any of Liam's articles, they're absolutely amazing. And and I saw this and I was like, wow. So, like this is when the Steam Deck was released in 2022, and you can see a huge bump here of users of Linux. And then, you know, I don't know what this part is, but like the fact of the matter is is that this graph is trending upward, which is a good thing. And then the OLED released and there's a lot of excitement around that. And then um I'm trying to remember Antheus around timing wise like when did the ally and the Lenovo Legion go kind of get into the mix? >> So the Ally was the first one that was released and it was actually released two years ago. Exactly two years ago. >> Uh but [laughter] it uh it's actually two months before. So it was released in May. Yeah. What happened? >> Oh uh it's seems like someone has a question >> or a comment. >> It's not a question but I wanted to actually say why there is the gaps that are doing going down. >> Sure. >> Because they um at that time it was always that the simplified Chinese language was going up on Steam. >> Oh. >> And they are usually Windows users. So this is why why it is going going down. Awesome. >> I thought that this was the one because of that, right? >> Yeah. >> So, they correct for that every year. I don't know. >> No, I appreciate the context. That's awesome. Yeah, absolutely. >> But the AL had a rough start in Linux. I think for the first half year, it did not work really well. And actually when we came together and really started working on Bazite and that was around in March 2024. So Bazette itself started around uh here right in 2023 during the summer. So, but we really started working on these Windows handhelds around the end of 2023, right, with the launch of the Legion Go. And by last April, actually, we had pretty good support for them. And after that, it's been let's add more and more and more. >> It's been all gravy from here. It's any handheld that a community member comes to us with. Uh, you know, like you've been working on the MSI ones and uh trying to get those. But we'll we'll talk a little bit more about uh day one handheld and support and that sort of thing uh in in the future here. So, >> but also there's a very big reason why gamers are important and for you guys as well, right? Because they are the pickiest of users, right? >> Yes, they absolutely are. like like I for all intents and purposes think that Linux users are finicky, but interacting with the gaming community, I would argue that they they rival that or maybe exceed the pickiness of Linux users. And [clears throat] so I think it's it's very very important for us to make them happy because if they are happy, then they're going to provide tech support to their mom and their mom is going to be like, well, what should I use? And it's like, well, Linux, why not? It works great. It's very, very easy to use. But also if we make these enthusiasts happy that they want to use the latest and greatest and we give it to them and they like it. >> Absolutely. >> Well, your mom, you know, if you have an office, the the secretary, the accountant, you know, I don't think they will have a problem with that, you know, if the enthusiast is happy. So, first we have to win over the enthusiast. And I think we are doing that. >> Absolutely. >> And after we do that, that's where you come in and you can have uh the other one. So we can also talk about a bit. >> Yeah, absolutely. We're going to we're going to talk about the impacts of Basite. Why why are we here? Why are we on this stage talking to all of you about this and and really I I was trying to come up with a catchy tagline and we're trying to be the gaming default that's built on Fedora. Just full stop. That's that's what we're trying to do. >> Yeah. So we actually work with a to make sure a lot of different devices work on bas right right now we have some support for seven manufacturers and I think for at least 70 skus from all of those manufacturers when it comes to handhelds right uh and we also support desktops and while our bread and butter is AMD we also do Nvidia and Intel uh which are quite hard to work with and sometimes we have to do some dirty fixes to make sure that they work and our users are happy, right? >> But this is why we need all of you because we're all trying to solve the same problem with with Nvidia and Intel and other vendors. Like that's that's really why we all need to come together and work on this [snorts] >> and we are also having explosive growth as you can see here. It just keeps growing. I'm always amazed. Right. >> I I just I can't imagine. So I joined the project only I'm trying to remember exactly when I did. It was a few years ago. It was before we actually had even Steam Deck OLED support at that time. Uh because the OLED was a very new device. So I pretty much that's probably when I joined and the fact that we have 17,000 which we use Fedora count me. Thank you by the way. [laughter] We are able to track our daily active users and we have you know almost 20,000. I mean 17,000 is is a lot of users and then 14 million polls which are basically polls on our um container registry to show you know how often people are updating and and interacting with the OS in any way and it's it's really surprising to me and then also just the growth on on GitHub in general has been extraordinary. >> Yeah. And if you think about it, like I thought Bazette was very big last summer, you know, and this is not even on this chart, you know. I thought it was very big in December and since December we have almost triple X size, you know, and those are the users that actually turned on the device and they connected to internet, right? Those are the only ones that are counted here. So actually we have a lot more. Uh but this gives us a a reference point. >> Yep. >> Yeah. These are our um statistics from from last month roughly. Yeah. April uh to May. And as you can see, we utilize Cloudflare as a way in which that we are able to distribute our images. And um we had 370,000 unique visitors to the website just by itself. And then the total data served just last month was 594 terabytes. >> And that's just for the ISO, right? >> Just that is just for the ISOs. and our ISOs are big and please help us make them smaller. >> But that's my point. And then and then the caching, you know, like thank you Cloudflare. It's made this a lot easier to to be able to handle. So yeah, it's it's absolutely amazing. Um the the amount of growth that we've received >> and the e eress in Cloudflare is completely free. So yeah, >> maybe not for long. We'll see what happens. >> Yeah. [laughter] I call this the broke boy stack, you know. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. We are doing the ISOs in Cloudflare and then we are doing the images in the GitHub image registry and they don't have any limits yet as well. >> Y >> hopefully they don't start thinking about that. [snorts] >> This was actually a uh a picture that um uh Kyle who I wish was able to join us. Uh he was the original creator of of Basite and um absolutely amazing human being. I I love him to death. But like he actually was able to attend a framework conference um and we've been actively working with framework in order to be able to get Basite and any universal blue umbrella project working um with them just out of the box. So when you install Basite it just works. And this was actually at the same event that um the framework desktop was being announced at. And basically what we found there that was really cool is the fact that they were so excited that they slapped our logo up there and they're like declaring that it is the year of the Linux gaming desktop. >> I know it's a joke. We've been hearing the year of the Linux desktop, but I I really think that >> with the with the growth that we have seen though and and the excitement around the project, I I really do think it's true. Um, I've even had friends and colleagues of mine who are like, "What am I going to do when Windows 10, you know, goes away because I don't want to go to 11." And like I didn't have a solution for them before and now I feel like I do, which is great. >> Yeah. And also on that event, we also had a booth and Kyle set up a little >> Yes, absolutely. Um, so this was our booth. It's very very purple when we've got the Fedora logo on there as well as uh Bazite because we we can't take all the credit for all the things that everyone in this room does and and and I really think it's it's just amazing to see them put us on display and I think Framework is one of the most innovative and awesome companies in the space right now as far as creating hardware like it it I just I am so happy that we are able to work with them directly. I also asked Kyle did they just put a sticker on a tile but he told me no this is actually a custom bazite tile and that's a custom Fedora tile. Yeah. So >> done by them. >> Uh we are also getting a lot of mainstream attention right. >> Yep. >> Absolutely. Yeah. We uh what's been very surprising to me is the fact that um the mainstream attention that we have gotten has from been from like general tech publications and articles. And it was funny because when we did this presentation at scale, we talked about how um basically we hadn't gotten on droatch yet. And actually like a week or two maybe before scale, they finally added basite as on to droatch as being one of the places that you know that should know about it I guess. And all of these articles have predated that which I think is really interesting. So there is a very strong appetite for um the desire to do gaming and to do it in an open-source and and and maintainable way. >> By the way, in DRWatch, we are not getting that many clicks. So we need you to go there and to [laughter] so we can get on the top page. So people that don't know anything about Linux click on it and we we stay on the top forever. >> Yeah. [laughter] Join the ranks of MXC Linux, you know. >> Yep. Exactly. >> Yes. One of the other um really amazing things too uh next slide is um >> the idea that we've been getting so much attention uh like without even us trying to do it >> which which I think is so interesting is the YouTuber community around gaming um and even these tech channels have been posting about us and talking about what we do and why why it's good for the space and everything like that. Like everyone continuously talks about how they want to have Steam OS for the desktop and then we have these videos come out and talk about this and it's like well yes this solution already exists and it's built on Fedora. That's the coolest part about that. And one of my favorite videos is installing Linux on Apple's stupid trash can [laughter] which I think is so great. >> Uh my favorite one was uh the controller one. >> Oh the Wait, someone installed on a controller? I didn't see that one. >> The there was a VR handheld that only worked with glasses and it didn't have a screen. >> Oh, wow. That's awesome. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I remember being in Athens and trying to like communicate u with the video creator to make it uh happen, right? >> Yeah. Absolutely. >> And they managed to get it and it was a beautiful video. >> Yeah. [laughter] Absolutely. >> Yeah. So, >> and again like it's also been community attention in other places too. So like you know on on Mastadon on the Twitters on the what or X I guess I don't know. Um but like the fact that we've also been seeing you know this sort of stuff um being talked about in the community as well on these different platforms really makes me feel like we must be doing something right. [laughter] >> Yeah. And these are some pictures from our users. absolutely rabid community that we that we have built and I I one of my favorite ones is the one in the top left here which is basically so the story behind this one is um there's been a very active contributor in in our community and he wanted to build a custom gaming you know desk and uh PC and everything like that and set up for his daughter and he said in his post he was like thank you so much Basite for allowing me to be able to do this in a, you know, open way and not forcing my my daughter to have to suffer through installing Windows and and using Windows on her PC. And I like I'm not going to lie, that almost made me cry because like these types of moments are why we do what we do. We want people to understand the value of the things that we do and and why we do them. And that that was just so amazing. But we have other, you know, awesome awesome people in the community as well with their custom builds. Like this one's in a, you know, wooden case. We've got someone who's got a screen with their deck right there plugged in. And then we've got Hikari who has freaking so many controllers. I I don't know. Like he he loves them. And awesome. Like I I just I love that picture as well. And then, you know, someone with like five four or five laptops and two handhelds with with Bazite on them. It's it's just incredible. And I I want to talk to you about how this has impacted me directly because I think what is so cool about this is I never knew how to contribute to open source. I had been a US a Linux user for since YUbuntu 1204 was the first DRO that I actually installed and used. And like that was during the times when a lot of things were changing which was fun um to try to navigate and figure out. And what is what is so fascinating to me is the fact that it's like I've been a user for a really long time and I was trying to figure out well how do I give back? And so like well I was like well Red Hat seems like a good company you know that I could go and join and try to figure this out from you know but the interesting thing is that's not even what happened to cause me to contribute. What caused me to contribute is I I found this you know video that George had posted about this new model of of how to do things um on the Linux desktop and I was really fascinated about it. I'm like okay well let me give this a try. have never tried Fedora Silver Blue or Henino White or any of the spins. And I was like, I want to see how things are and how they're different. And um I ended up uh finding the Universal Blue Discord community because I play video games and you know have done it since I was a small child. And one of the one of the interesting things is is I saw that um that Kyle and George were in a Discord chat in the open, mind you, like not in a private, you know, Cabal whatever room. And I was like, "Huh, I recognize who George is. Is this the same George?" And I was like, "Huh, I'm going to go join that chat and see see what's going on." And and and I started talking and they're like, "Well, right now we're playing Halo, like you know." And I'm like, well, can I at least ask a few questions about the project cuz I know you guys are trying to unwind. And what ended up happening was I asked enough questions and they're like, well, you know, what are you interested? What do you want to try to help with? You know, and whatever. And I'm like the the laundry list of issues I gave at the time was our installer wasn't good enough. Like we need to make this easier to to get. And so this went for me for a year plus long journey of trying to figure out how to wrangle anaconda and get it to do what I needed it to do in order to be able to create, you know, the first basite ISOs. Um, outside of what we were doing before, which was rebasing using um using Silverblue and using um RPM OS tree rebase and everything has kind of taken off from there. I am very active in the community. I love what I do. I'm talking at this conference like I was again like in my room like earlier today and I was like holy crap all this has happened in the last few years and I think that's the thing the importance of community is is really trying to make open inclusive spaces which you know now that I've started to work with all of you you know more in the upstream I've really like I feel welcomed I feel embraced and it it's a great place to be so I I just wanted to say thank you to all of you and and honestly give yourself a round of applause for what you've done because you've really changed my life. So um but yeah >> and I can also talk a bit about me since we have a lot of time left. >> Absolutely. Yeah. >> Yeah. So >> how did you get started with this thing? How did you start wrangling devices? >> [laughter] >> So for me uh actually around when Legion Go released I was actually looking for a computer for personal use looking at the laptops looking at everything and I saw Lenovo was doing this handheld and for the specs the price was very low. So I think I thought to myself you know this is going to become more and more popular as time goes on. So I bought it and then I figured out that nothing worked. [laughter] Yeah. uh I first installed Ubuntu on it and Ubuntu at the time had the 6.1 or 6.5 and that kernel with that chipset had some very funny artifacts on the screen for example right so I started wrangling it together and fixing stuff and around December of that year Kyle contacted me and was like you know this stuff I want to include it on Bite so I started actively contributing there and As part of this journey, I've also started to more contribute to open source more and more. Right. Because before that, I wasn't contributing much. >> So, it has been a great journey for me as well. >> Oh, yeah. I uh again I and and I would be absolutely interested in any of your guys' journeys of how you got here, what you do. I I love hearing people's stories. So, feel free to, you know, chat me up or whatever the case may be. I you know that that's something that I just appreciate so much about this community and what we do. >> Yeah. And uh let's work together. So >> absolutely. >> We also have some statistics about our community. >> Absolutely. Yeah. So so again we're we're a downstream of Fedora. So we're not technically part of the project proper. And what I wanted to um show is that you know we have a rabid user base but we also have a rabid um contributor base. And what we've been doing is we've been compiling some statistics to talk about, you know, actually how are these things happening, you know, um and and what's really amazing to me is that we've been able to put together um these discussions and and talks about like, okay, like how do we how do we actually figure this out? And like it it's amazing to see the numbers of members that have grown over time. I mean, this was the year of 2024, so I'm sure this is tiny. You know, I probably should have asked for a more recent graph, but this is the one that I got from last year. And like, what's amazing to me is that like there's so many conversations that are happening on Discord. You know, we also have a very active Discourse um you know, uh user base as well. And then GitHub, funnily enough, is the smallest, you know. Um, and I think it's it's one of those things of, you know, in some ways you have to meet people where they are. And and I feel like we've done a really great job of um being able to try to wrangle all of these things together and and be pragmatic in in the ways that we can and and try to be open in the ways that you know that we [clears throat] can as well. >> Yeah. I think what really makes Baza different is this downstream actually. the fact that we go to where the users are and not only that but because we are very very downstream you know and we don't have a lot of uh other projects depending on us we can ship features fast so if there's a device that has an issue and uh a random user can show up on Discord or on Reddit or wherever they can say okay I have this issue and if this issue is easy to fix I can push a commit if it's with the controllers for example I can push it to user space software and tell them press this button to update right and it will pull it straight from GitHub. So we have an iteration time for that for 10 to 20 seconds. And when it comes to the kernel since we have a custom kernel, I can do a fix a build and around 3 to four hours later we have a custom utility that works with bootc and I can tell to the user you know go to there go to testing you just swipe here you press these three buttons and you're testing the fix and then they can give me the thumbs up and because of that we iterate very fast. >> Absolutely. And that has been great and and also for the user right because imagine you you are somebody that is not involved with open source and uh you find this issue in a software and for example if it's Fedora where do you go what do you do? >> Mhm. If it's budget, you just pop up on our on the budget subreddit or you go to our discord and you see this issue is fixed very fast. It's very motivating for you and it's very motivating to come back and we kind of this way we reel them in because Yeah. We often don't talk about it but contributing to open source takes uh a lot of knowhow and a lot of institutional knowledge. >> Absolutely. >> And even for us, right? >> Yeah. And we have a question in the audience. >> Can I can I have a question? I'm interested in testing. Uh so how do you test basite like obviously you are generating container container images so you can run some some tests on top of it but how do you test the real hardware like you are you know uh like you support a lot of handhelds uh obviously and so on so can you expand a little bit on the story >> so what's going on with that is that uh when we need to do a new build to fix something maybe what was the last one matter broke yeah >> why not matter broke and the flat pack stopped working was that right we had to do Yes. Yeah, it was. Yeah. Mutter Mutter had a a bad patch that we actually had to cherrypick and and move back a version in order to be able to fix it because flat packs literally just would not open, >> which is a big issue on on for us. So, what we what we ended up doing is we we figured out what the upstream issue was. We did some testing. Um like what's nice about the container build aspect is that you know things get tested as they are built. So what we did there was we we made a an updated version of matter. Then we pressed a button on GitHub, the container built. Then our users could either type a command that they can find in our change logs or they could go to our user space software here and just press this button and it will automatically it won't work now because we are not don't have Wi-Fi but it will automatically find the latest versions for them to just go through. Press the button press apply and then they even get a progress bar now. Yep. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. We added the first progress bar in uh Red Hat tools, you know. >> Yep. Yep. >> You you guys must be allergic to progress bar. Podman does not have a progress bar. RPM S3 does not have a progress bar, you know. >> We have another question in the audience. >> Yes. >> So, um in the history of asking contentious questions but trying not to. Um in the previous session staff asked a question of fesco about how universal blue had had impact in the project and part of the answer was they kind of haven't shown up. So my question to you is not why haven't you shown up but what can the fedora community do to ensure that there's a welcoming space for the kind of work that's going on in universal blue that has applicability to its upstream. Like you ship some software and stuff that we're we're not going to let ship and that's fine. Um but how do we make sure that the good stuff is rolling upward in a look up not down perspective? >> Absolutely. Yeah, I can I can answer this one. So there there is definitely a desire for for us to do that. Um we actually are going to be moving into slides to suggest how that can happen. I mean, for for me personally, it's it's one of those things that like if we push upstream um and be upstream first, it benefits everyone. All of the people that we work with outside of our project, anyone who is trying to do gaming on Linux benefits from us getting those things upstreamed and I think, you know, we can move into the slides to basically discuss how that is going to happen. But not only that, but to be more specific there, we are also new to open source, right? And over the past year, we've been tightening up our act. For example, in kernel 6.16 for 1x player, uh the kernel driver we developed uh a major app overhaul for that driver got pushed upstream and uh yes we are trying to become more and more upstream and uh we need your help for that and in addition to that our users are even more novice than us. So we are also trying to upskill them. There's a lot there's a lot of new people in the community like some people literally have come into our community said this is the first thing like like I'm a web developer I'm a this developer embedded developer whatever the case may be and they're like this is the first open source project like I've ever worked with and they're like what what do we do and it's like you know I I think that that's why we're here to have this discussion is to try and figure out how how can we work better together and I think you know we can probably well we've one more slide to talk about um statistics which is talking about the amount of community members that we have um you know the conversations that are going on and and the growth of the project has been you know absolutely crazy um you know we have even statistics talking about like renovate bot man he they're killing it >> 687 contributions like come on like we're we're slacking here tulip you need to get to work and and and do some stuff but Yeah. No, in all seriousness, I mean, yeah, this this is what we're trying to say is that, you know, what we're doing is working. Now, how can we benefit everybody else? You know, >> um >> Yeah. And so what I want to what I want to say here is that, you know, I I took some time. >> Oh, did we want to Okay, we got a couple of questions. Um >> yeah, let's let's go ahead and do them. So, let's start here and then we'll go over here. >> Oh, was his hand up first? Yeah, let's go with him first. I have the questions from uh from the chat. So, I will go. >> Okay. So, we left a lot of time for questions. We are reading it to answer questions, but uh we can also slide through the slides and then do a proper Q&A. But, uh let's do that one first and then let's go. >> Well, he's got he's got the microphone. Let's start there. >> Okay. So, yeah. Uh there is one question is most upvoted. >> Uh why did you choose Federal Linux as your base? There is was another part but this was already answered and what can Federa project do for you to support your humor? >> Sure. Um I can answer this one. Um so the reason why we picked it is is is because of um of OS tree and Bootsie. Um for all intents and purposes Fedora was the only one that was doing something anywhere like what we needed and it was the most mature option at the time that we chose it. And I also think that Fedora does an absolutely excellent job of balancing, you know, the bleeding edge new features like we were talking about with also a stable platform to be able to work on. And from my perspective, that's that's why we chose it. >> Yeah. For me, okay, so I have a bit of a different perspective. In the beginning, it was a bit arbitrary, but as I got more and more involved, for me, what Fedora represents is the fact that it has enterprise bones, right? also that y >> it has secure boot. It has uh a lot of uh uh architectures support which will become important in the near future and finally it does all of that while having an a very large repository. So it competes very well against darts while having those enterprise features. >> Absolutely. Yep. >> Yeah. And I think this is not just important for us, right? But it's important for a lot of other users. I think Fedora has been slept on a bit. you know, everyone uses Ubuntu. >> Yeah. >> So, >> Yep. >> Yeah. >> We should do something about that. But >> yeah. Um, did we have any more questions from the chat or maybe we want to >> Yeah, there are three more. >> Three more. >> We can we can do them in the end. We can do >> Let's save those for the Q&A because we will likely have time. >> But I want to take your question because you've been waiting a long time. Yeah. So I I understand why you're building a separate kernel because there's a lot of drivers that are not there and I appreciate that those are actually being pushed upstream. U but my question is not the patches that you carry because uh we try to avoid as many patches as possible by policy but are you carrying many config changes for your kernel that are u actually not that many. So if you go to our kernel repository, we just modify the kernel local file and you can have a look and most of the kernel uh config changes are for packages that uh we add. So okay, >> I think there's one there's an HR timer one that we discussed as well yesterday. >> Yeah, I mean yeah it's just maybe maybe the config changes would be worth pushing up to me and and seeing if we can take them upstream. I think I think it would help two or three devices >> uh especially when it comes to motion controls because the user can do our uh our K mode packets and then they can use the stock kernel, right? >> Sure. >> So we can talk talk about that later. Uh but yes, we try to align with Fedora as >> Absolutely. Yeah. So, I was at Summit um a few weeks ago and I had a chance to um talk with um with somebody and one of the things that they brought up because I was like, "Okay, how am I going to how am I going to do this presentation?" Like I I was still noodling on exactly what I wanted to talk about and how and that's how the best presentations are born, it seems, is uh had also conversations with other people are like, "I'm just finishing up my slides." And I'm like, "Oh, uh interesting. So am I." But I think um one thing that I really took away that I wanted to talk about is how Basite aligns with Fedora and the values that the community has. And the values that I were given was first features, friends, and freedom. And like the funny part was is when I was reading through that, I was like, "Oh, wow. Yeah, we we align literally with all of those things. we just need to figure out, you know, how we can get the the upstream stuff done and how we can work more closely together. And that's those are the really the big takeaways that I had when I was reading those. And um if you haven't had a chance to, you know, I'm sure most of you, if you're longtime contributors know these, but it it was really eye opening for me to to think about. Yeah. But also there is a bit of a benefit for the budget being separate, right? And we talk about that here, right? We want a lot more cutting edge when it comes to gaming stuff and we want something that's a bit simpler and that uh goes halfway with the users. So if they want to use their profile software, we want to let them. But at the same time, as we discussed here, uh a lot of the stuff we do could go upstream and it could benefit Fedora a lot. So I think for that stuff, we should work more together to to push it up. >> Absolutely. Yeah. things like NVK fax um you know those those are the types of things that we're really excited about like even the stuff that's being um happening in Nobara and um the UMU launcher project and all of these different ways in which that we can take Steam out of the equation for certain types of gaming like ultimately like I would love to have everything be be open source from from soup to nuts like that would be super awesome but like the reality is is that we have to focus on the here and now. We have to meet people where we are and we need to get more people involved because ultimately that will help us move towards the goals. But also a lot of our uh insight here is not uh code right it's user testing we have a lot of user testing in a lot of major uh fedora components such as bootc such as an aonda right and we know a lot of the pain points and it's actually a shame that we cannot share them with you right so for example with an aonda there are like four to five specific errors and uh where our users stumble on them and it would be very nice to work together to fix them because they're also for in Fedora as well, right? Absolutely. When we work downstream, it's very hard to >> do this lip and to find the the person responsible to do that, right? >> Absolutely. >> Yep. >> So, we should uh work together. >> We need to work together. Um you know, something that was interesting uh that Neil told me is the fact that there was a Fedor Neil GPA. You all know Neil. Um >> is to revive the is to revive the gaming sig. Um, and really I I thought about it and I'm like, okay, well, what could we do with the gaming SE? And my thought was is basically we could have that be essentially a a way a common platform that a lot of us could build off of and and be able to utilize and it could benefit the wider gaming ecosystem by doing that. I I think if we try to, you know, if we try to think of it more as a platform and less as a, you know, someone's going to use the Fedora gaming spin out of the box, you know, um it it could work. You know, I'm I'm just coming up with ideas or thoughts, but that that one was one that that stuck out to me. The idea that we have, you know, gamers make excellent contributors. Um we want to give you guys more people to be able to work on these things. And then the final thing that that um Kyle and I talked about before we got here was how can we get Fedora more visible in in the community. And one of the ways that I thought about it was, you know, like having an official Steam Fedora group or something like that or even like a, you know, something like hosting community game nights where it's, you know, Fedora users versus Arch users or something like that. Like like silly stuff like that. That could be that could be really fun. >> But we are at T minus 10. So I think we should speed through the rest of the slides. >> Absolutely. Let's speed through it. Exactly. >> So we have well we talked about these things already. So >> yep >> we should talk a bit about our contributors and I will actually give you this so that I pull a list that they have because I I don't want to forget anyone right >> uh because we love you all of you and a lot of them are actually most of them are actually new to open source and budget is the first project they are contributing to. Yep. >> Right. So, of course, we have uh Kyle, who couldn't be here today, so we have to shout him out, who created Bazite and actually does a lot of the heavy lifting still. >> Yep. >> Uh and then we have uh Hickory who helps our community a lot. Zlus, check your fox. Uh, Valerie, Wolfie, Reload, Cilantro, Limewire, Anen, Honzo. And then, uh, in our community, we have four special members, Atapia, Delia, Termisk, and Chrono that uh are very active. And we cannot forget about Nickim who is uh stepping a bit away from our docs but is the reason that Bazite has the incredible documentation that he has. >> He's going into the sunset. We need to give him a little bit of a break cuz man he he did an absolute excellent job. >> Yes. Yes. Yeah. And uh George, of course. >> Yeah. I I can quickly go through this. So my my feeling is that Microsoft has left room for us to be able to pounce on this new market. We need to be pragmatic. That's I think a really important thing. And and we need to work closer together. We're going to move to questions now because it seems like there's a lot. So I want to make sure you leave ample time. >> Take the ones in the room first, I guess, or the ones inside. Okay, let's go. >> Okay, so another one from chat. Why would I install bezite on to play games when I can play games on my existing Federa workstation already? If uh the your Fedora workstation works really well for you, you can of course keep using it. And we also try to make the gaming components that we try to improve available to use on Fedora. So if it works for you, stay where you are. But if you are a bit of more of a novice user or actually you want some of the cutting edge features such as HDR, VRR, you know, uh >> and we also had last year for example, we had Skax before it merged in the kernel. I think we had it uh for around half a year before it hit upstream, right? So if you want features like that and you want them early, >> uh budget is definitely a place to look, right? So let's >> Yeah. Another one. >> Yeah. >> Are there plans to provide basite for ARM 64 devices? >> Actually, we have a a testing build you can install right now on ARM. Uh, one of our members that I shouted out made it, right? >> Yep. Yeah, we we've definitely been interested in in working on ARM devices. Anybody who can help us with this would be absolutely immensely helpful. I mean, we would love to be able to ship Bazite even for um you know, with the Asah stuff, you know, being able to get it to run on Macs because like one of the biggest ARM platforms available, like we have to be there, >> but also it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. We're also waiting on devices, right? And devices that are powerful enough where it makes sense to install a fullyfledged distribution. >> Absolutely. >> And that's happening right now with Qualcomm, for example. So, >> okay. Okay. And the last one I have here, will there be a move away from carrying oddities from Steam OS eventually, for example, their broken automount behavior? >> So, which one? >> Broken Automount. >> Automount. We actually So, we do have two automount solutions right now. We have the Steam one and one of our members developed another one that works with all of your internal discs if they are bet better. And if this solution becomes more and more mature, we might drop the Steam one. Although the Valve one, but although I thought it worked. So >> yeah. Yeah. [laughter] >> Well, we can also work on upstreaming that if >> Absolutely. >> Yes. Yes. [snorts] >> Yeah. So that's it. >> That was all from me. >> Yeah. So anyone else? >> Do we have any other questions? We've got about five minutes left. So I want to be cognizant of of other presenters. So you you mentioned you guys have worked with some of the Steam OS developers upstream. Do [snorts] you get any sense of like what Valve thinks of Basite or you know any indication of them wanting to maybe use it in the future? >> It it is interesting, right? Because like they are aware of us as as far as I can tell. Like they they know that we exist. Um they know, you know, that we that we contribute upstream to to Gamecope as far as I'm aware. I mean I I think the thing is is like like if we have a problem contributing to upstream ourselves, Valve has two problems. So they also need to get better. We we are trying to get right. So >> Right. Yeah. It's it's one of those things that I think like Valve just from from what I can tell like cares but also doesn't in certain ways. Like it's it's a weird relationship that I almost wish that was a little bit more clear >> like a lot of their packages we have to fish from uh so they publish the source RPMs to stay compliant. So we have to fish the source code from those right they are not available online. So stuff like that >> at least for us we make everything available and actually last year we made the basite organization where we put a lot of the repositories we had in personal repos and we centralized everything. So we are trying to get better. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and there's definitely help there too of like packages that we have or even kernel like we were talking about earlier, how can we get these things upstreamed to be beneficial and >> but also that's difficult, right? So, we are trying to get better. So, >> for example, if steam wanted to enable this in the future, one way that they could do that is actually get their RPMs into Fedora. It >> make it a lot easier for you guys. >> I think a first step would be to publish the repositories. So, let's start with the basic step. >> Yes. Yes. Yes. [laughter] Yeah. >> Yes. Uh >> sorry making making you want to run everywhere. Uh, are there any uh, well, I I realize that if I'm probably about to ask about stuff that might be a business decision, so you may not be able to actually answer fully, but are there any plans or efforts in place to uh, working with hardware manufacturers to have basite be the uh, solution that they that they ship with or or ship as an as an alternative offering directly from the uh, manufacturers? >> We I can answer about that. Yeah, it's something that we are thinking about. But before we do that, >> uh the major component here is homologation and we are kind of clueless when it comes to homologation and budget itself is not a company. It doesn't have trademarks, right? It's not a foundation. So I think there needs to be a legal entity there. Maybe you know I I don't know. I don't know. But it's a very valid question and it's something that we should look into because it's a shame that these manufacturers they want to >> to enable their users to use Linux and because of we haven't done the background work on it they cannot. Right. >> Right. I mean the biggest thing is yeah we just need to talk more about it you know um and really reach a consensus there because a lot of what we do is you know we all like every open source you know uh project have our own views on how things should be done and so >> that yeah >> yeah and I think that's that's a big part of it too >> we have a large contributor pool now so everyone would have to also come together and decide >> so nice so exactly on No more questions. >> Thanks a lot. >> Thank you very much everybody. [applause]