Legitimate question as I’m gonna move from Windows 10 within the next couple months. Is there something wrong with Bazzite or Nobara? I had narrowed my decision down to those two since they seem to be an easy transition, they do the things I need, and they’re popular enough that I can probably find fixes to any issues I experience. I pushed off my plan to build a desktop, but I still have an aging laptop that is losing security support in a couple of months.
Also, my wife needs Excel specifically for school. Can Excel work on these distros or are there just good alternatives? She might need to keep a Windows 10 partition just for Excel stuff if she can’t run it in Bazzite or whatever she picks.
Edit:
Thanks everybody for responses! School is not flexible about using Excel specifically, and she has to share her screen during exams to show that she’s just using regular Excel. It’s not a hill we’re willing to die on lol.
We aren’t super interested in doing anything beyond gaming and basic browsing type stuff with our computers, so I’m not sure that Bazzite being immutable really means anything to us. There were some good tips like a /home partition to easily swap distros when needed without losing everything, plus some people pointed out that some of these distros come and go over time so it would be harder to find fixes and continue getting updates if we get too entrenched in something that won’t be around much longer.
Overall, I don’t think we’ll be too picky. We just want a pretty simple process to get something that’s like an unbloated Windows, and we don’t want to rip our hair out looking for a new distro and starting over every six months. Most people are not power users. I can do pretty much all of my computer stuff on my phone and all of my gaming on my PlayStation, so I really won’t notice the difference between most of these recommendations probably.
I landed on Mint because it’s a simple no fuss distro that feels familiar to Windows refugees. I game on it just fine and use my computer for a lot of things so wanted something general. I bounced off Ubuntu because it has some decisions that are trying to protect you from actually learning Linux, which is a priority to me.
As a professional spreadsheet pusher, I can confidently say that LibreOffice (the Linux version of MS Office) has been able to do everything I needed that word/excel can, and then some.
But really any distro will be able to install the software you need, and it’s easy to switch. Just try it and have fun.
Those distros are fine, I haven’t heard anything bad about them. The only distros I wouldn’t recommend are Ububtu and Manjaro (I can explain why if you want).
About Excel, it doesn’t work on Linux unfortunately. But you have some options. You can try LibreOffice and OnlyOffice (you can install them on Windows to try them out before switching) and see if they’re enough for your needs. There’s also a web version of Excel which you can use in your browser but it doesn’t have all the features. If you really need Excel, you can also try using a virtual machine with Windows and run it inside of that but dual booting might be easier for you at that point.
From what I understand MS Office is notorious for not working well at all in Wine. The only ones thst I have seen evidence of running consistently in Wine are older ones like Office 2000-2007. 20-some year old products are probably simply not current enough to be useful.
I think the better bet would be dual booting or better yet virtualization.
From what I understand, it’s still an excellent choice. It’s well supported and decent for new users.
Can you look into if the online version of Excel works for your wife? That might simplify your install. Libre Office and OnlyOffice are decent alternatives, but they might not map 1:1 with the instructions she gets from school.
Bazzite is fantastic, but because the system is immutable, you can’t just install packages like you can with other distros. This makes it very stable and very secure, but it also means you need to take extra steps if you want to get creative with your system. If you are already familiar with Docker and containers, then you can do anything you want that way, if there isn’t already a flatpak available. As a last resort, you can also use rpm-ostree to create new layers, but if you go that route you need to understand how to use ostree since eventually you will need to fix those layers manually.
Bazzite is an immutable distro, and it expects you to install all your programs through containers. Not all software works with these containers, but like 99.9999% does. I’m a weirdo who wants the deepest of hardware monitoring tools and many of them don’t work with these containers. I haven’t used Nobara yet but it doesn’t appear to be immutable and based on regular Fedora so it shouldn’t have those issues.
excel
It may run through wine, and I’d test that out before fully committing. Worst case if that’s the ONLY thing you need you could do a VM. But would the cloud (web) version of office work for her? If you’re already paying for office 365 then I believe you get it included.
The main reason why I would steer newcomers away from the likes of Bazzite or Nobara is because I don’t think they’re going to last long. CachyOS has sprung up just as I was starting to hear less and less about Nobara. They get trendy as THE distro for newbies to install because it has a gimmick or two aimed at newcomers, which will inevitably get rolled into the mainstream, fixed, rendered obsolete or otherwise dealt with in the mainstream within a couple years anyway, then it’s off to the next one.
Who here remembers PeppermintOS being the hottest thing?
Staying power is an important and under-rated consideration for sure. Particularly as they get popular and the team behind it needs to be more serious about updates and such (if they aren’t already).
I’ve had a much better experience with OnlyOffice compared to LibreOffice in terms of MS compatibility, and it’s a Flatpak so it should have no issues running under Bazzite.
Nobara had some issues updating correctly for me, but I haven’t seen anyone else express that
This is why I stopped using it. I could never find anyone else with the same issue or any advice on it either. Glad to find out it wasn’t just me after all
I usually get downvoted for this since it’s not open source, but WPS Office is free and basically an exact ms office clone. I use it regularly moving files between my work laptop with windows
I’m not familiar with the above distros, but I’m pretty certain there’s more people on Ubuntu which helps a lot with troubleshooting and finding solutions online.
One option is, when installing any Linux OS, is to create a separate partition for “home/”. that way, you can reinstall any other Linux based OS, and keep most of your files installed.
Excel doesn’t work on Linux, but LibreOffice and Google sheets do.
I went with Nobara because it’s pretty much Fedora + gaming related fixes. Meaning every Fedora guide out there works and Fedora on its own is pretty user friendly.
Excel, as in Microsoft Excel might be a problem. If she needs something Excel-like, the default LibreOffice stuff is very capable, but it’s not 100% compatible, really depends on what she needs. The online Office 365 thing might also be enough.
As for the Windows partition, a simple virtual machine might be enough and you don’t have to reboot the PC every time you need to open an Excel file.
I’ve had Bazzite break its own update utility such that it needed manual intervention at least 3 times now. I see no point in a “just works” distro that doesn’t actually just work.
One of the breakages was caused by an expired signature or something from Universal Blue, which hit all users. I’m surprised that one doesn’t get talked about more. One of them was caused by Bazzite changing how Steam itself is handled and not transitioning my system over properly. Can’t remember what the third one was caused by.
Legitimate question as I’m gonna move from Windows 10 within the next couple months. Is there something wrong with Bazzite or Nobara? I had narrowed my decision down to those two since they seem to be an easy transition, they do the things I need, and they’re popular enough that I can probably find fixes to any issues I experience. I pushed off my plan to build a desktop, but I still have an aging laptop that is losing security support in a couple of months.
Also, my wife needs Excel specifically for school. Can Excel work on these distros or are there just good alternatives? She might need to keep a Windows 10 partition just for Excel stuff if she can’t run it in Bazzite or whatever she picks.
Edit:
Thanks everybody for responses! School is not flexible about using Excel specifically, and she has to share her screen during exams to show that she’s just using regular Excel. It’s not a hill we’re willing to die on lol.
We aren’t super interested in doing anything beyond gaming and basic browsing type stuff with our computers, so I’m not sure that Bazzite being immutable really means anything to us. There were some good tips like a /home partition to easily swap distros when needed without losing everything, plus some people pointed out that some of these distros come and go over time so it would be harder to find fixes and continue getting updates if we get too entrenched in something that won’t be around much longer.
Overall, I don’t think we’ll be too picky. We just want a pretty simple process to get something that’s like an unbloated Windows, and we don’t want to rip our hair out looking for a new distro and starting over every six months. Most people are not power users. I can do pretty much all of my computer stuff on my phone and all of my gaming on my PlayStation, so I really won’t notice the difference between most of these recommendations probably.
I landed on Mint because it’s a simple no fuss distro that feels familiar to Windows refugees. I game on it just fine and use my computer for a lot of things so wanted something general. I bounced off Ubuntu because it has some decisions that are trying to protect you from actually learning Linux, which is a priority to me.
As a professional spreadsheet pusher, I can confidently say that LibreOffice (the Linux version of MS Office) has been able to do everything I needed that word/excel can, and then some.
But really any distro will be able to install the software you need, and it’s easy to switch. Just try it and have fun.
Nothing wrong with them, surely better than Ubuntu, despite the meme.
I went from Nobara to Bazzite and it feels way more polished, although the immutable thing may not be for everyone
Bazzite over Nobara, IMO.
Those distros are fine, I haven’t heard anything bad about them. The only distros I wouldn’t recommend are Ububtu and Manjaro (I can explain why if you want).
About Excel, it doesn’t work on Linux unfortunately. But you have some options. You can try LibreOffice and OnlyOffice (you can install them on Windows to try them out before switching) and see if they’re enough for your needs. There’s also a web version of Excel which you can use in your browser but it doesn’t have all the features. If you really need Excel, you can also try using a virtual machine with Windows and run it inside of that but dual booting might be easier for you at that point.
OpenOffice has been effectively abandoned. All of the original devs work on LibreOffice now.
I meant to write OnlyOffice 😭
But thanks for pointing it out, I fixed it
Another option for Excel is running it using Wine. A lot of Windows games run on Wine, which also means that things like Excel run well too.
From what I understand MS Office is notorious for not working well at all in Wine. The only ones thst I have seen evidence of running consistently in Wine are older ones like Office 2000-2007. 20-some year old products are probably simply not current enough to be useful.
I think the better bet would be dual booting or better yet virtualization.
From what I understand, it’s still an excellent choice. It’s well supported and decent for new users.
Can you look into if the online version of Excel works for your wife? That might simplify your install. Libre Office and OnlyOffice are decent alternatives, but they might not map 1:1 with the instructions she gets from school.
Bazzite is fantastic, but because the system is immutable, you can’t just install packages like you can with other distros. This makes it very stable and very secure, but it also means you need to take extra steps if you want to get creative with your system. If you are already familiar with Docker and containers, then you can do anything you want that way, if there isn’t already a flatpak available. As a last resort, you can also use rpm-ostree to create new layers, but if you go that route you need to understand how to use ostree since eventually you will need to fix those layers manually.
Bazzite is an immutable distro, and it expects you to install all your programs through containers. Not all software works with these containers, but like 99.9999% does. I’m a weirdo who wants the deepest of hardware monitoring tools and many of them don’t work with these containers. I haven’t used Nobara yet but it doesn’t appear to be immutable and based on regular Fedora so it shouldn’t have those issues.
It may run through wine, and I’d test that out before fully committing. Worst case if that’s the ONLY thing you need you could do a VM. But would the cloud (web) version of office work for her? If you’re already paying for office 365 then I believe you get it included.
The main reason why I would steer newcomers away from the likes of Bazzite or Nobara is because I don’t think they’re going to last long. CachyOS has sprung up just as I was starting to hear less and less about Nobara. They get trendy as THE distro for newbies to install because it has a gimmick or two aimed at newcomers, which will inevitably get rolled into the mainstream, fixed, rendered obsolete or otherwise dealt with in the mainstream within a couple years anyway, then it’s off to the next one.
Who here remembers PeppermintOS being the hottest thing?
Staying power is an important and under-rated consideration for sure. Particularly as they get popular and the team behind it needs to be more serious about updates and such (if they aren’t already).
I’ve had a much better experience with OnlyOffice compared to LibreOffice in terms of MS compatibility, and it’s a Flatpak so it should have no issues running under Bazzite.
Both are great, as is Fedora, the one that both are based on.
Nobara had some issues updating correctly for me, but I haven’t seen anyone else express that, so I don’t think it’s a common thing.
Bazzite is really gaming focused, so it’s harder to do general purpose computing on it than a desktop OS.
But they are both great OSes, and really you should just try out a bunch of them and pick the one you like the most. They’re free after all.
This is why I stopped using it. I could never find anyone else with the same issue or any advice on it either. Glad to find out it wasn’t just me after all
Setting up qemu is easy, vm that opens the apps as windows so it seems native while running off a vm works well with cpu based stuff
I usually get downvoted for this since it’s not open source, but WPS Office is free and basically an exact ms office clone. I use it regularly moving files between my work laptop with windows
Honestly, most people keep a Windows partition anyway. I have one for Fusion 360 which intermittently stops working in Bottles.
Most people? Is that true?
Definitely not. Source: trust me bro, same as op
I’m not familiar with the above distros, but I’m pretty certain there’s more people on Ubuntu which helps a lot with troubleshooting and finding solutions online. One option is, when installing any Linux OS, is to create a separate partition for “home/”. that way, you can reinstall any other Linux based OS, and keep most of your files installed.
Excel doesn’t work on Linux, but LibreOffice and Google sheets do.
I went with Nobara because it’s pretty much Fedora + gaming related fixes. Meaning every Fedora guide out there works and Fedora on its own is pretty user friendly.
Excel, as in Microsoft Excel might be a problem. If she needs something Excel-like, the default LibreOffice stuff is very capable, but it’s not 100% compatible, really depends on what she needs. The online Office 365 thing might also be enough.
As for the Windows partition, a simple virtual machine might be enough and you don’t have to reboot the PC every time you need to open an Excel file.
I’ve had Bazzite break its own update utility such that it needed manual intervention at least 3 times now. I see no point in a “just works” distro that doesn’t actually just work.
Was this caused by layering?
One of the breakages was caused by an expired signature or something from Universal Blue, which hit all users. I’m surprised that one doesn’t get talked about more. One of them was caused by Bazzite changing how Steam itself is handled and not transitioning my system over properly. Can’t remember what the third one was caused by.
I thought I saw something that the bazzite project might end once Fedora moves away from the 32 bit packages:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/06/bazzite-would-shut-down-if-fedora-goes-ahead-with-removing-32-bit/
Don’t have a link to underline this but it was just a proposal and was not endorsed officially. This is not going to happen.