So I took the plunge and installed Fedora Silverblue because of all that immutable buzz. And it’s the most frustrating change I have made in almost 20 years of my distrohopping.

After installing Silverblue I configured it as usual. I installed necessary flatpaks, played with toolbox and distrobox, installed codecs, configured my bluetooth keyboard and other stuff in /etc and /var. Applied some useful tweaks I found on the web and… well… everything works. Nothing to do anymore. No issues. Nothing breaks, no dependency hell, everything runs smooth. I have nothing to tweak, tinker or configure anymore. So frustrating.

Every update is just… meh. Smooth, new, fresh system not affected by my stupid tweaking and breaking. Booooring.

I don’t have to distrohop anymore. If I want other distros I can just install them in distrobox. Other versions of apps? Something from AUR perhaps…? No problem. What’s the point of distrohopping now? Other DEs? I just rebase my system to other images with almost any DE or WM I want without losing data or messing everything up (damn you, UBlue!).

I don’t even have to reinstall the damn thing cause every time I update the system or rebase it to another image it’s like reinstalling it.

Silverblue killed distrohopping for me. Really frustrating.

  • macniel@feddit.de
    0·
    26 days ago

    Is this a First Linux-World Problem? :D

    To me, I like how clean and coherent GNOME looks like, but what I don’t like about it, is how hostile it is in regarding of themeing/coloring.

      • GravitySpoiled@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        25 days ago

        I don’t support that some want to push their own theme. Just use the provided theme. You may create your own custom theme but that should be able to be used everywhere. App icons can be part of a theme.

      • macniel@feddit.de
        0·
        26 days ago

        Yeah I get the rational, and that DEs shouldn’t theme them apps but I want to have some sort of customization (not just an accent color).

        • gianni@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          25 days ago

          It is my understanding that a lot of thought and care is put into the design language and appearance of applications and frameworks. However the same level of consideration is not usually afforded to skins and themes, which are often released an never updated again. This can cause usability issues and sometimes even breakages. Of course, people are free to do as they please with their computers.

      • Einar@lemm.ee
        0·
        26 days ago

        Thank you. I feel like I’ve found a new way to respect developers that I hadn’t considered before.

        • just another dev@lemmy.my-box.devEnglish
          0·
          25 days ago

          Yeah. My guess is that for every meticulously hand crafted ui, there’s 10 that just go with the default. If a user wants an icon pack where🤘means home, they’ll be perfectly fine with navigating your application.

          Developers can always include an option to disable styling if that would severely break the ui. But personally, I’d rather use a application that looks roughly like every other one in the system, than one that’s so specifically designed that it doesn’t.

    • dan@upvote.au
      0·
      26 days ago

      It’s an immutable/atomic version of Fedora: https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/silverblue/

      My understanding is that the core system is immutable (read-only) and major upgrades essentially just swap out that whole layer. Updates are atomic, meaning the entire thing either succeeds or fails and you can never end up with a broken half-updated system. UI apps all run using Flatpak.

      I’ve never tried it though!

        • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          26 days ago

          Thebquited storage figures for Flatpaks are misleading. They don’t use that much. I have 50+ Flatpaks installed and they use barely more than 2.4GB.

          And Flatpaks are great. There’s nothing to ew at.

    • Blaster M@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      26 days ago

      It’s an “immutable” Fedora, that is, the system comes as a read only image, kind of like how android works. Anything you do is “layered” on top of that image. This means you have to actually try to break it, because you can undo anything you did to break it by simply not booting with the extra layer(s).

      You’re encouraged to install in userspace flatpaks instead of system-wide rpms where possible, as system-wide rpms means adding a layer on top if the image as it is.

    • Telorand@reddthat.com
      0·
      26 days ago

      It’s immutable (aka. atomic), which means the system files cannot be changed, even by root. System updates come as complete system snapshots of the core filesystem, and everything else exists in containers or filesystem overlays (user directory is still writeable). Containers and the user’s home directory are unaffected by the updates, so the update process is typically much safer overall.

      If an update does break something, you can easily do rpm-ostree rollback, and everything will be working again. On top of that, you can swap between versions with a simple rebase command (e.g. swap between Silverblue and Kinoite, Kinoite and Bazzite).

  • secret300@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    26 days ago

    You got me so good. Been using fedora for a few years now and I’ve been hesitant to hop to silverblue but now, after reading your issues with it I might just have to stay away. I can’t imagine a world of painless updates and rebasing smoothly. If I don’t have things to troubleshoot what else am I gonna do on my PC!

  • banazir@lemmy.ml
    0·
    26 days ago

    Oh man. I’m so sorry for your loss. May your system break at some vague point in the future in a way that is nigh impossible to diagnose and that no one else seems to have experienced. Godspeed, you unwillingly content penguin!

    • Vilian@lemmy.ca
      0·
      24 days ago

      that the thing, if it breaks, the roolback is there or simply rebase without merging /etc, so basically a factory reset

    • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
      0·
      25 days ago

      What does rebasing mean in this context? I try to google it, but all I get is git rebase.

      Any articles about it that are worth reading? Or if you can explain, that would be neat. Thanks!

      • olafurp@lemmy.world
        0·
        25 days ago

        It’s a command provided by the OS to distrotop between ublue distros. You can basically hop between silverblue, Kionite and Bazzite with a single command.

          • Vilian@lemmy.ca
            0·
            24 days ago

            ostree based distros*, the default fedora don’t use ostree so you can’t rebase, bazzite is not fedora but they also use ostree, so you rebase there

            • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
              0·
              23 days ago

              I have so much to learn. Last time I was tracking distros and having fun with distro hopping was with Slackware 7, I think.

              What is ostree? What is bazzite? Time to google stuff.

      • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
        0·
        25 days ago

        Its the same :D

        Rebasing refers to an OSTree remote which is like a git repo, but with binaries and producing bootable systems. There are some differences there.

        The idea is: there is a remote that has the exact wanted configuration, your system mirrors it. All the package manager does is similar to git pull.

        If you rebase, you switch the upstream remote, and your system gets the diffs, downloads them.

        The cool thing is, that these updates are atomic, so you stay on the current system and the rebased one is only set as the system you boot in after a reboot. You can still sudo ostree admin pin 0 before rebasing, and your current system will be saved forever to switch back to.

        Note that /etc is writable so you might still accumulate duplicate or redundant configs.

        gitlab.com/fedora/ostree/sig/-/issues

  • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    26 days ago

    I’m still getting things set for Silverblue to be my baremetal hypervisor distro on my laptop. And by that, I mean giving up on Incus, setting up libvirt, and… everything is working like it should. I wasn’t expecting that. Now, I’ve got to find something else to do with my time.

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
      0·
      26 days ago

      What’d you dislike about Incus that libvirt does easier? I’m on a similar trajectory as you. I have Incus on Debian but I am transitioning to IoT for that machine. I kinda like Incus. I want to attach USB devices to a couple of my containers, it was a learning curve but eventually worked out alright.

      • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
        0·
        25 days ago

        For me, I think it’s just not ready for non-Debian distros yet. The docs and packages just aren’t up to parity. I like a lot about Incus and its general direction but libvirt and virt-manager are fully functional at the moment. Passing through devices with virt-manager is dead easy.

  • Lung@lemmy.world
    0·
    26 days ago

    I’m honestly so trolled, I hate change & hate the idea that something might be better than my existing Arch install. I hate that security, reliability, and flexibility are improved. I cope by reminding myself that I’m very low on disk space right now, for the needed extra partitions

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
      0·
      26 days ago

      If you have a spare homelab machine Fedora does an immutable build called IoT (they branded it wrong it’s just a barebones install appropriate for servers also).

    • QuazarOmega@lemy.lolEnglish
      0·
      26 days ago

      TL;DR Don’t (unless your needs are really basic or you really don’t want to layer more packages)

      Distrobox ftw, its website is pretty good to find all its features and it has a neat GUI BoxBuddy too! And also the generic Pods can be useful for more advanced needs.

      Extra tip: if you have more time to spend on learning, I think Nix Home Manager will actually be the better solution in the long run, no need to worry about containers breaking in some way after system updates with scattered solutions that are hard to understand and remember, also you get to bring your configuration anywhere

    • KISSmyOSFeddit@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      26 days ago
      Toolbox create  
Toolbox enter

      Now you have a standard Fedora command line system that shares your home folder but otherwise has its own filesystem.
      There’s more options (like using other distro’s), but it’s really not complicated.

      To install CLI stuff that needs to access your host system’s root files, use rpm-ostree (but if you need a lot of that, use a non-immutable distro instead).

      I actually use neither anymore. My stuff I want to edit is in home, most programs I use are GUI and I have no need to tinker on this system, cause it just works.

  • Dragula [any/any]@lemmygrad.ml
    0·
    26 days ago

    I’ve been considering it for a while but my main setup (knock on wood) has been rock solid with traditional fedora. If I ever end up switching distros silverblue is probably going to be it.

  • yak@feddit.it
    0·
    26 days ago

    But well, if that helps, look at the bright side: while it’s true that it’ll almost never give you problems, I think it’s true that the time the problems will happen, they will be pretty hard to solve, so it might pretty bad. That’s great, isn’t it?

    Don’t tell me that this thing just cannot breaks. If that was even possible, that’d be tremendously evil.

    • Vilian@lemmy.ca
      0·
      24 days ago

      bro, trust me i tried to break it, i booted without kernel parameters, my system didn’t even had a root partition, shit was craze, and it didn’t have a /home, rolled back just fine

      -rebase from different fedora versions, i couldn’t even login because of kernel versions(yeah even trying to login as root didn’t work)

      but, i read a history that happened a bug in ostree, in the early days, and the devs needed to ask the users to fix it manually, but was when in the start of silverblue

      • yak@feddit.it
        0·
        24 days ago

        That really sucks, sorry to hear that man. It seems honestly pretty bad and I really have to stay away from this distro.

        Only RedHat could have conceived something this evil. Of course is RedHat, who else could it have been?

        But…!

        but, i read a history that happened a bug in ostree, in the early days, and the devs needed to ask the users to fix it manually, but was when in the start of silverblue

        This. This is really giving me hope. It kind of confirms what I was saying too. You see? It almost never breaks. But when it breaks, oh man! It breaks very hard indeed.

        Never give up mate, that thing is gonna break somehow, sooner or later. It has to.

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
      0·
      26 days ago

      I’m trying to make a TPM chip work out of curiosity and it has been frustrating. Does that help?

  • Sunny' 🌻@slrpnk.net
    0·
    26 days ago

    Wow I was so confused while reading this haha, got me good there! Happy to hear its working as expected :P