Fedora Atomic a chance, it’s an extremely nice family of distros (e.g. Bluefin/ Aurora, Bazzite, etc.)!
Can you elaborate on this? I landed on nix for my PC turned server and haven’t regretted it, but I’ve been hesitant to go all in on my main laptop (I’m wary of my laptop iGPU and GPU switching becoming a config issue, and I’m dreading having to configure my wsl dev environments again…)
Windows is getting blatantly terrible enough I know I’m just putting it off, maybe a cool new technology might help make it sound more fun
I don’t know what I should say tbh 😅
For the start, you can read my post about image based distros: https://feddit.de/post/8234416
Imo, Fedora Atomic is NixOS made easy. You can go to the uBlue-builder and modify a custom image if you’re a tinkerer.
NixOS is down-to-top (local config file that defines your host), while uBlue is top-to-bottom (you modify an image, image gets built on GitHub and then shipped to you).
This allows you to fork or create an existing “distro” without having to maintain a whole distro yourself.
Other than that, especially uBlue is extremely user friendly imo.
It updates itself in the background, updates get staged and applied after you’ve shut down your PC in the evening.
You can rebase anytime you want to another flavor, e.g. I switched to KDE 6 from Gnome after it came out.
You have to use containers for everything (mostly Flatpak, but also Distrobox or Nix)
It’s ultra low maintenance and even more reliable, you can boot into an old image if a new update broke anything or made something buggy
For a casual user, not distinguishable from regular Fedora
Ok, when I googled it earlier I saw “containers and roll back to previous version” and I made a note to do more reading
Your write up was good, much clearer than what’s on fedora and Wikipedia. And the fact you pitched immutable OS’s in general first caught my attention… The concept is a no brainer. Decouple the os and the rest of the software, and don’t bother digging into one of a kind conflicts when updating things - just make it rebuildable and create it fresh. You never know when the wrong bit will flip
Nix’s “learn this one thing, configure it once, and you’re done” stuck in my head. And after a different distros, a couple lines installed Nvidia, Nvidia’s docker package and docker
But then I had to configure WiFi and spend half an hour learning why I couldn’t mount an external drive and how to manage it… I still have no regrets, I’ve got a USB that should start converting my friends and family’s old PCs into a self organizing AI/self hosting cluster… Hopefully it works next month lol
But not what I want in a daily driver. I want something that’ll quickly do what I tell it and gracefully handle the fact I have 6 versions of Java and no idea why I need a version from 2018 specifically. And that I’m going to add a repo to install something and instantly forget what I did if it seems like the best path forward at the time
You’ve sold that pretty well - my takeaway was that atomic fedora is very modular and low side effect and also an interchangable foundation I can swap out and roll back easily… At this point, if it can run containers and the drivers I need, it sounds like a great option.
I used to use VMs so every 6-12 months I could start clean with the latest and run setup scripts for my dependencies… It was just easier than debugging some conflict. This sounds even cleaner - I swap out the base at will, and the stuff I’ve built on it should stay intact. Plus it sounds much more testable
So my main concern is will it run on an HP omen - it has zero Linux support and a bunch of concerning driver needs, but it does have a second m2 slot… What’s the worst that can happen? Except apparently some models forget they have fans in Linux and I just know the iGPU-GPU switch will cause some problem with sleeping… But Windows is only going to get worse
Now that you’ve convinced me this might be the best course (I only see less problems than other distros would have), and I’ve talked myself into giving it a go, is there any recommended reading or key concepts I should look into? Any particular flavor(s) you’d point me to first?
Now that you’ve convinced me this might be the best course (I only see less problems than other distros would have)
Sometimes, software, especially install scripts for something, are less common for Silverblue, but executing those is very risky anyway and I never felt the need for it.
And, as I said, some things just work differently. But NixOS is one million times worse than that in that regard, so don’t worry about it. You shouldn’t have many issues.
any recommended reading or key concepts I should look into? Any particular flavor(s) you’d point me to first?
I don’t know. In my opinion, my post should cover most stuff concepts and differences.
Don’t worry about it, you’ll use Flatpak anyway most of the time, and it updates itself automatically, so the package manager (rpm-ostree) doesn’t matter much for you.
You can still use your prefered package manager (apt, dnf, etc.) in Distrobox.
Other than that, just don’t worry and use your laptop for whatever you want to do.
Well hey listen, I appreciate it. I would’ve spent who knows how long waffling between distos that I don’t feel drawn to, and even if I came across an atomic flavor, I probably would’ve just assumed it was marketing fluff
Good ideas need advocates, and this is a good idea… It’s a promise of an OS I want, not just running from one I don’t
I’m probably going to look at bazzite first. If I have containers that can run LLMs on my GPU, that checks off everything on my wish list except gaming. I’ll read up on it though, you’ve given me the context I need to care about learning more
Can you elaborate on this? I landed on nix for my PC turned server and haven’t regretted it, but I’ve been hesitant to go all in on my main laptop (I’m wary of my laptop iGPU and GPU switching becoming a config issue, and I’m dreading having to configure my wsl dev environments again…)
Windows is getting blatantly terrible enough I know I’m just putting it off, maybe a cool new technology might help make it sound more fun
I don’t know what I should say tbh 😅
For the start, you can read my post about image based distros: https://feddit.de/post/8234416
Imo, Fedora Atomic is NixOS made easy. You can go to the uBlue-builder and modify a custom image if you’re a tinkerer.
NixOS is down-to-top (local config file that defines your host), while uBlue is top-to-bottom (you modify an image, image gets built on GitHub and then shipped to you).
This allows you to fork or create an existing “distro” without having to maintain a whole distro yourself.
Other than that, especially uBlue is extremely user friendly imo.
I love nothing else more.
Ok, when I googled it earlier I saw “containers and roll back to previous version” and I made a note to do more reading
Your write up was good, much clearer than what’s on fedora and Wikipedia. And the fact you pitched immutable OS’s in general first caught my attention… The concept is a no brainer. Decouple the os and the rest of the software, and don’t bother digging into one of a kind conflicts when updating things - just make it rebuildable and create it fresh. You never know when the wrong bit will flip
Nix’s “learn this one thing, configure it once, and you’re done” stuck in my head. And after a different distros, a couple lines installed Nvidia, Nvidia’s docker package and docker
But then I had to configure WiFi and spend half an hour learning why I couldn’t mount an external drive and how to manage it… I still have no regrets, I’ve got a USB that should start converting my friends and family’s old PCs into a self organizing AI/self hosting cluster… Hopefully it works next month lol
But not what I want in a daily driver. I want something that’ll quickly do what I tell it and gracefully handle the fact I have 6 versions of Java and no idea why I need a version from 2018 specifically. And that I’m going to add a repo to install something and instantly forget what I did if it seems like the best path forward at the time
You’ve sold that pretty well - my takeaway was that atomic fedora is very modular and low side effect and also an interchangable foundation I can swap out and roll back easily… At this point, if it can run containers and the drivers I need, it sounds like a great option.
I used to use VMs so every 6-12 months I could start clean with the latest and run setup scripts for my dependencies… It was just easier than debugging some conflict. This sounds even cleaner - I swap out the base at will, and the stuff I’ve built on it should stay intact. Plus it sounds much more testable
So my main concern is will it run on an HP omen - it has zero Linux support and a bunch of concerning driver needs, but it does have a second m2 slot… What’s the worst that can happen? Except apparently some models forget they have fans in Linux and I just know the iGPU-GPU switch will cause some problem with sleeping… But Windows is only going to get worse
Now that you’ve convinced me this might be the best course (I only see less problems than other distros would have), and I’ve talked myself into giving it a go, is there any recommended reading or key concepts I should look into? Any particular flavor(s) you’d point me to first?
Sometimes, software, especially install scripts for something, are less common for Silverblue, but executing those is very risky anyway and I never felt the need for it.
And, as I said, some things just work differently. But NixOS is one million times worse than that in that regard, so don’t worry about it. You shouldn’t have many issues.
I don’t know. In my opinion, my post should cover most stuff concepts and differences.
Don’t worry about it, you’ll use Flatpak anyway most of the time, and it updates itself automatically, so the package manager (rpm-ostree) doesn’t matter much for you.
You can still use your prefered package manager (apt, dnf, etc.) in Distrobox.
Other than that, just don’t worry and use your laptop for whatever you want to do.
And about flavor choice, there are a few options:
Just go to the uBlue homepage and see for yourself what appeals to you :)
Well hey listen, I appreciate it. I would’ve spent who knows how long waffling between distos that I don’t feel drawn to, and even if I came across an atomic flavor, I probably would’ve just assumed it was marketing fluff
Good ideas need advocates, and this is a good idea… It’s a promise of an OS I want, not just running from one I don’t
I’m probably going to look at bazzite first. If I have containers that can run LLMs on my GPU, that checks off everything on my wish list except gaming. I’ll read up on it though, you’ve given me the context I need to care about learning more