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Fedora Atomic Desktops

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71–80 of 109 posts

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#71

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, t…

I'm using Silverblue 39 for about 2 month coming from NixOS Unstable. It's working very well for me. I have some packages layered like Nvidia and fish shell and https://github.com/CheariX/silverblue-akmods-keys for AKMODS modules work with secure boot. Things like neovim, pyright, helix, starship, LSPs and CLI applications I install with brew (brew.sh). For desktop things I use Flatpak.

I had a problem with some Flatpak applications (like Steam and Discord) and brew because brew puts its folder in the $PATH before the default ones (/usr/bin ...) and those Flatpak applications tried to use SSL keys from brew instead of the system ones. I just changed the order of the $PATH to make brew bin path to be after ther system ones.

For VSCode I'm not using the Flatpak I'm using the tarball one I just extract in ~/applications and symlink the code binary in the ~/.local/bin. It's working well, I don't have problem with VSCode not executing LSPs and lint things. The only problem is VSCode from tarball cannot updates itself, so I need to download the newer version and extract to ~/applications. There is this VSCode CLI version (https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/?dv=linux64cli) but I was not able to make it use the wayland backend.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#72
Questions for Silverblue / Atomic Users:

I tried Silverblue a couple years ago and found myself rpm-ostree layering some basic tools like Fish shell and Mosh. Is layering still the preferred method for installing these types of tools or do you have "generic" container (made with toolbox/distrobox) that you jump into for generic shell work in like ssh'ing around and file management?

Also, how do you handle things like custom services? For example, Nebula overlay network doesn't really have an installer. Its just a single binary. I manually put that in /usr/local/bin, put the configs in /etc/nebula, chmod those configs to hide them, update selinux, and create a service file for it. How would I do that in an immutable system?

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#73

So can anyone help me understand why RedHat/Fedora has a containerized solution for desktop apps (flatpak), but nothing like that for CLI apps? It seems... odd.

Because it was already considered a solved problem. You can use standard containers for that sort of thing, so why reinvent that wheel.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#74

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, t…

I'm using Silverblue 39 for about 2 month coming from NixOS Unstable. It's working very well for me. I have some packages layered like Nvidia and fish shell and https://github.com/CheariX/silverblue-akmods-keys for AKMODS modules work with secure boot. Things like neovim, pyright, helix, starship, LSPs and CLI applications I install with brew (brew.sh). For desktop things I use Flatpak. I had a problem with some Flat…

Ah, glad to hear it's working well! I recall layering issues but I'm going to look into switching over. Thanks :)

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#75
post #38
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The package manager is a little slower but `dnf history` is a lifechanger. It's so easy to list the history of all transactions and undo a specific one. There are huge performance improvements coming in DNF5, scheduled for Fedora 41 (this fall).

Is there a downside to just installing the dnf5 package right now? I see it's available for 38+.

It's not considered polished enough to make the default. Some functionality isn't reimplemented yet. It's difficult to transition backwards once you've switched.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#76
I use Fedora KDE as my laptop distro and have been interested in Silverblue/immutable versions. However I am not a developer so I’m not sure if it would offer any real benefit to my use case. Mostly use my laptop for web browsing and file transfers to my NAS.

I’ve seen people say that immutable is the future of Linux, can someone explain that if they can?

Does that mean one day all versions of Fedora will be immutable? Is it a security benefit?

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only used NixOS, but the Containerfile looks more like a shell script than a Nix config: https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/blob/main/Containerfile

That looks like something I wouldn't wanna use, all imperative

Same. I can't be the only one who feels that Nix is doing the right thing the wrong way. The right thing being reproducible, declarative, composable environments; the wrong thing being its language and tooling. Too often I feel like serious Nix users spend a distressing amount of time manually doing package manager tasks, so the way forward is to stop doing exactly that. Going back to imperative composition is a step backward that will never help people free up time away from package management.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#78

I use Fedora KDE as my laptop distro and have been interested in Silverblue/immutable versions. However I am not a developer so I’m not sure if it would offer any real benefit to my use case. Mostly use my laptop for web browsing and file transfers to my NAS. I’ve seen people say that immutable is the future of Linux, can someone explain that if they can? Does that mean one day all versions of Fedora will be immutabl…

In my limited experience, I'd say the immutable spins are even better for non-developers. Getting developer tooling going in Silverblue was enough of a hassle for me to disregard it, for the time being.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#79
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.

> Long story short, immutable is the future of Linux.

If I didn't want my computer to change I would simply not turn it on!

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#80
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> trying to solve the fragility that can happen when the default way to use software in Linux is `sudo apt-get install` What fragility is that? Is it something outlined in https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian ?

“What fragility is that? The one described in detail in this document?” Yes, indeed it is

so, installing random software from random repositories equals fragility? that doesn't seem specific to apt at all. however the article is written Fedora-specific, so maybe people don't like to point out that dnf/yum is susceptible to the same problem. In fact, the article doesn't even try to call out apt, or fragility.

There is a use case for immutable distributions, just as there is one for those distributions which are not immutable.

It is dishonest to attribute fragility as a basic flaw in apt, when system fragility is a consequence of ignorance.

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