Live data from Hacker News

Fedora Atomic Desktops

fedoramagazine.org

1–10 of 109 posts

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#2
Good, they changed the name of Sericea just as I learned how to spell it. :D

I started using Silverblue in October 2022 and now I've been using Sericea for the past 2 months.

Long story short, immutable is the future of Linux.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#3
post #2

Good, they changed the name of Sericea just as I learned how to spell it. :D I started using Silverblue in October 2022 and now I've been using Sericea for the past 2 months. Long story short, immutable is the future of Linux.

> immutable is the future of Linux

Or indeed, the past. Happy nixos user since ~2016 here.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#4
post #3
post #2

Good, they changed the name of Sericea just as I learned how to spell it. :D I started using Silverblue in October 2022 and now I've been using Sericea for the past 2 months. Long story short, immutable is the future of Linux.

> immutable is the future of Linux Or indeed, the past. Happy nixos user since ~2016 here.

I am also a nixos enjoyer but I have mixed feelings around the fact that I still don't really understand the configuration language.

I'm happy in the sense that its simple enough that I can install programs and do all the other usual desktop stuff with minimal knowledge. But I'm unhappy in the sense that when I started with nixos I wanted to replace docker and docker-compose. I still haven't accomplished that.

But all-in-all I'm very happy with Nixos for desktop use. No crashes, no bugs. Its the reason I was able to permanently drop Windows.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#5
post #3
post #2

Good, they changed the name of Sericea just as I learned how to spell it. :D I started using Silverblue in October 2022 and now I've been using Sericea for the past 2 months. Long story short, immutable is the future of Linux.

> immutable is the future of Linux Or indeed, the past. Happy nixos user since ~2016 here.

I liked Nix, because it worked very well to reproduce "the same system" every time. However, it became unmanageable and a huge time sink to constantly remake how I scripted together my nix flakes per the current/modern way of doing that. And then finding a repository of how someone else managed this on Github and rewriting my configuration again.

Nix ultimately made me feel like I was running Gentoo. Excellent build system, but I could not invest the time in learning ebuilds, and I could not invest the time in using Nix's language to manage its packages. It was just a huge time sink and baggage to maintain.

rpm-ostree is lowering the barrier to entry greatly to produce layered [open container] images that we can rebase off of. That is the future among all this atomic stuff. It would be entirely possible to /someday/ build a system with the nix toolset, then commit the image through rpm-ostree, and have others rebase from it. Best of both.

In the future, with immutable systems, it probably also means being able to have those very robust update systems in place like Chromebooks where you update and switch to partition B with the new image, while having the fallback on partition A. It would also probably make it easier to verify and sign these images for secure boot purposes so then enabling secure boot on Linux becomes easier/convenient, and the secure default.

I still think the Nix language is yet another language I don't see the value in. I'm not learning this, or becoming comfortable in this language, or convincing myself it's a comfortable language to use ...just to maintain my 2-3 laptops when I don't use Nix anywhere else.

Time sink. But a very solid system.

PS: I want them to layer everything on Fedora CoreOS. Make CoreOS the secure thin base, then create all these atomic "Spins" as a derivation of CoreOS.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#6
If anyone isnt aware, Fedora is currently the GOAT OS. Don't knock it until you try it. Everything just works, and it works like the Platonic form of a desktop should.

A Fedora Cinnamon Atomic would be a wet dream for me. I'm surprised that wasnt prioritized. Budgie Desktop looks interesting.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#7

If anyone isnt aware, Fedora is currently the GOAT OS. Don't knock it until you try it. Everything just works, and it works like the Platonic form of a desktop should. A Fedora Cinnamon Atomic would be a wet dream for me. I'm surprised that wasnt prioritized. Budgie Desktop looks interesting.

I tried getting to Fedora but the package manager was slower even to deb, the hardware video acceleration in browsers required me to juggle drivers from fusion due to licensing problems, and I use AMD which I would expect to not have issues.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#8
Ugh, the Sway/Kinoite Atomic spin is so tempting for me as a regular Fedora user. Two weeks ago, a kernel update borked my laptop, and for some reason it deleted the older versions, so I was forced to live boot, chroot, and install a beta kernel. A few days ago, my desktop stopped booting - something to do with Nvidia drivers, and older kernels don't help. I don't have the time to try and fix it any time soon.

But, there was definitely pains with this kind of desktop when I tried it last time. Regular old software I want to install via dnf is painful to install - you have to layer it on top of the base image, and then that makes it "nonstandard" basically from then on. I know they push you toward flatpaks, but the vast majority of apps I use don't have it (or I don't prefer using the Flatpak version).

Can anyone give a more recent perspective? It's been about two years - I probably used Fedora Atomic 35/36.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#9
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> immutable is the future of Linux Or indeed, the past. Happy nixos user since ~2016 here.

I am also a nixos enjoyer but I have mixed feelings around the fact that I still don't really understand the configuration language. I'm happy in the sense that its simple enough that I can install programs and do all the other usual desktop stuff with minimal knowledge. But I'm unhappy in the sense that when I started with nixos I wanted to replace docker and docker-compose. I still haven't accomplished that. But al…

I know they're kind of experimental still, but I have personally found Nix Flakes a lot more fun to work with, at least once I sat down and actually learned about them. I feel the interface is more consistent, and it gives me the "replacing docker" experience with the ability to make devshells and ephemeral builds.

Granted, I'm not running Nixos on my main laptop, because I have had a hell of a time getting me 2020 Macbook to get Linux running stably, but I do use Nix as my sole package manager within MacOS, and I do run NixOS on my server and use Flakes heavily there.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#10
post #3
post #2

Good, they changed the name of Sericea just as I learned how to spell it. :D I started using Silverblue in October 2022 and now I've been using Sericea for the past 2 months. Long story short, immutable is the future of Linux.

> immutable is the future of Linux Or indeed, the past. Happy nixos user since ~2016 here.

And every time your libc needs to be updated, almost every other package you have installed must be updated at the same time.
Post reply on HN