Bazzite Installation on the Framework Laptop 13

KDE Plasma or GNOME? Unsure which is best for you? Both KDE Plasma or GNOME versions are a solid experience right out of the box.

For this guide, we will be using the Bazzite-GNOME installation.

Let's continue on to preparing USB Bazzite Installation Media.

First, download the latest Bazzite release from the Bazzite website. We'll go through the steps in this Guide assuming you have a simple installation scenario of a fresh install on a blank drive.

Download balenaEtcher as a tool to create the USB installer from the ISO. balenaEtcher is available for MacOS. Install it.

Before booting to the Live USB drive, a note about secure boot.

Launch balenaEtcher. Insert your USB drive (8GB or larger). Click on "Flash from file" and select the Bazzite iso that you downloaded. Click on "Select target" and choose your USB drive. Click "Flash" and wait a minute or two for it to complete.

Once the USB drive creation is complete, you can close balenaEtcher and eject the USB drive from your OS.

First, download the latest Bazzite release from the Bazzite website. We'll go through the steps in this Guide assuming you have a simple installation scenario of a fresh install on a blank drive.

Download Rufus as a tool to create the USB installer from the ISO - select the top download option from the link provided. Rufus is available for Windows. Install it.

Launch Rufus. Insert your USB drive (8GB or larger). Click on "Flash from file" and select the Bazzite iso that you downloaded. Click on "SELECT" and choose your USB drive. Click "START" and wait a minute or two for it to complete.

Secure Boot is optional: Enabling secure boot is completely optional and not necessary for normal operation, it's a personal choice - but there are trade offs to be aware of. Follow this link if you wish to enable it before installing Bazzite. More about secure boot here.

Insert the USB drive into your powered off Framework Laptop 13, and then power on. If you have an existing OS installed on the Storage drive in your laptop, immediately after the power light comes on begin rapidly tapping (continuously ) the F12 key - you must begin tapping well before you see the Framework logo.

Select the USB drive. Press the enter key.

Next select Install Bazzite. Hit the enter key.

Select the keyboard language you’d like to use. On the next screen, click on the Installation Destination button to choose the disk.

If there is an OS already installed on the target drive, you’ll need to follow the guided steps to delete the existing partitions.

Click Finish Installation and then reboot into your new Bazzite install!

Select the keyboard language you'd like to use. Click Continue.

Select Time & Date, select your time zone.

Select Installation Destination, check Free up space by removing or shrinking existing partitions. Because we want this to be a dedicated installation on its own, select Delete all, then Reclaim space. Click Done.

Encryption. When setting up Installation Destination, you may set up Encrypt My Data by checking the box, creating a passphrase. Then click Done.

Select Network & Host Name. Select Network, connect to your wireless network. Once an IP address and DNS entries appear, click Done.

Click user Creation. Provide the full name, leave the boxes checked, create a password. Click Done. (Short passwords will require you to click Done twice)

Click the Begin Installation Button.

At the initial start up, two things will appear. The first is the Steam installer. If you do not want to login or setup Steam right now, just close it at the X.

Next we have Welcome to Bazzite! Click Next, make any sections that meet your needs or click Install to skip them altogether with the options unchecked. Ignoring the install throbbing line, click Next once again if no selections were made.

System Configuration. There are options pre-selected for you. Leave them enabled, and also check additional features if you decide you want them. The additional features are optional. Click Install. When presented with Allow Inhibiting Shortcuts box, select allow enter your user password, then OK. When this is complete, click Next.

Let's setup fingerprint login. Click on Activities, search for user.

Choose Fingerprint Login. Then select Scan new fingerprint. Select your desired fingerprint. Carefully tap your finger tip on the sensor (power button). You may need to try a few attempts as everyone's prints are different.

Once it's successful, you will see the word Complete.

If you're experiencing issues getting your fingerprint reader working, please contact support.

Bazzite handles updates in two very specific ways. Automatically or Manually. If you never bother to manually update, Bazzite will do the work for you.

Updates are completely automatic. However, should you wish to run them manually, you can do so from the Framework icon you see in your upper left corner, select System Update.

You will be asked to press Y for update. Press Y - no other keys are needed, it's updating. The update process checks for updates for your core system, Distrobox, Flatpacks and firmware.

Bazzite is atomic and by its nature, is resilient. However, should something not work as expected due to a suspected regression - you can roll back your installation to a previous state. This is an automatic feature provided by Bazzite.

Roll back to the image of your OS before the most recent batch up updates. Just run bazzite-rollback-helper rollback in a terminal. Press enter, reboot when prompted.

You should not try pinning releases or moving to rebasing unless it is suggested by support or by someone from the Bazzite team.

You can learn more about how the rollback system works here.

Flatpaks. Installing Flatpaks is the recommended method to installing software. This is the primary method of installing applications on Bazzite and is recommended to use Flatpak over other formats for most software when possible.

Ujust. Technically ujust is not a package format, but are convenience commands that automate tasks using scripts which can be utilized to install specific software.

Homebrew. This is a package manager that installs packages to their own prefix, and is used strictly for command-line interface (CLI) and terminal user interface (TUI) applications. Do not install graphical applications or anything that may override system-level packages with Homebrew.

Quadlet. Unlike the above options, this is a features of podman that allows a user to run a container as systemd units. It works by using a declarative syntax like docker compose but integrates to systemd and use podman as a backend.

Distrobox. Run other minimal variants of popular Linux distributions in Bazzite inside of a container, and access each distribution's packages without any of their dependencies and libraries affecting the host machine.

AppImage. A a universal package format that attempts to bundle every dependency that an application needs into one portable file. Applications installed as an AppImage can integrate with your desktop and be managed with Gear Lever which is pre-installed on Bazzite.

Manage OS Rollbacks and Install RPMs. Bazzite uses bootc for core system image management and rpm-ostree for layered package and kernel argument modifications, maintaining a balance between an Atomic base and user customization.

Steam. In Bazzite, Steam is installed and configured out of the box. It can run Windows games on Linux. It utilizes a wide range of projects and patches all packed into a piece of software built-in to Steam called Proton for Windows compatibility.

Currently Steam only allows whitelisted games to run by default on the desktop Steam client. You can change this by enabling this in Settings > Compatibility > Enable Steam Play for all other titles.

Common Gaming Issues. This provides a guide for some common issues and explains what your options are.

Auto-Mounting Game Drives. Read the Auto-Mounting Secondary Drives Guide for more information. It is also recommended to do your own research on drive mounting on Linux.

Lutris. A game management software that doubles as a WINE front-end for Windows games. Several games and launchers can be installed by searching for the title and using one of the installer scripts for it.

Making sure you are on the latest firmware. Bazzite automatic updates should handle this for you on Ryzen 7040 Series, Ryzen AI 300 Series, Intel® Core Ultra and other platforms with firmware updates provided by LVFS. As an alternative, you can also check for this manually by attaching to power, then running System Update manually again.

So what additional installation tweaking needs to be done? That is it, you're done. Curious what else Bazzite can do? Take a look at their user guide here.

Want to check the BIOS version? Go to and click upper left corner where you see the Framework gear launcher, click Terminal. Type in ujust bios-info, click the enter key.

The output will tell you which Framework Laptop 13 you have and also which BIOS version you're using. This section is best suited for both LVFS and EFI options, depending on your hardware. While LVFS is part of the Bazzite update process, you can still do this manually as well.

If you have Intel 11th Gen Intel Core, you can check here for the latest firmware.

If you have Intel 12th Gen Intel Core, you can check here for the latest firmware.

If you have Intel 13th Gen Intel Core, you can check here for the latest firmware.

If you have AMD Ryzen 7040 Series, you can check here for the latest firmware.

If you have Intel Core Ultra Series 1, you can check this here for the latest firmware.

If you have AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series, you can check here for the link in the near future when new firmware is available.