Do we have tunnel vision? Fedora atomic and much more
You should check out this video.
Yes, Fedora is not a(s) rolling release like Arch and
atomic updates – transactional approach – are slower etc.
At the physical layer in my Ideapad
Keyboard suspend / resume
cat /usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/my-kb.sh
#!/bin/sh
case $1/$2 in
pre/*)
echo "Going to $2..."
# Commands to run BEFORE suspend
echo i8042 > /sys/bus/platform/drivers/i8042/unbind
;;
post/*)
echo "Waking up from $2..."
# Commands to run AFTER resume
echo i8042 > /sys/bus/platform/drivers/i8042/bind
;;
esac
works only in non atomic Fedora (Cosmic)
I don’t mind this journey for the time being.
Edit:
TLTW: To oversimplify the video the goal is to recover your working environment
if hw is lost in less than 15 minutes. See stateless architecture / workstation.
I am not sure what that video says exactly as I don’t have a lot of interest in watching a 42 minute video.
However, I have tried many of the various immutable and/or atomic distros and have used several of them extensively.
There are pros and cons to all of them. There is no perfect solution for everyone. You need to focus on what your specific needs are and find the right solution for you.
I would just say that immutable distros and not universally better or worse, they are different.
I have used Fedora Silverblue and NixOS, what I found is in the end I found that I missed the freedom to do whatever I want which I have with Arch Linux. I thought about switching back to Fedora Silverblue but than I realized I have always ended up back on Arch Linux so better just to stay where I am
After this topic I went looking around again and part of me want to switch to something like Silverblue or one of the Bluefin images, but then I remember that I always found the Bluefin images over opinionated(terminal/shell setup, theming, etc) and with plain Silverblue(and even with Wayblue images) you end up layering a handful of packages anyways because there’s no Flatpak alternatives from them. Having to manage my own image doesn’t seem like something I would want to do right now, and also with everything going on in the world today, it just seems that with Arch Linux and most other normal distributions you have more freedom.
It is all about use cases and trade-offs. There is no solution that is perfect for everyone.
As an example of this, I am currently using Aurora(a ublue distro) in a couple of specific places. I installed it for my wife and I use it on my laptop. I am pretty happy with it for both those use cases.
For my wife, it just works and I don’t need to worry about updates since they are all automated. As long as she reboots once in a while, everything works and she can install and remove applications herself without any risk.
For my laptop, I use it very casually and sporadically. I don’t want to worry about handling maintenance on it and I want it to “Just work”. For that use case, it is great.
For my main workstation that I use all day I want more control and would not want to deal with the limitations of one of those image-based atomic distros.
That being said, if for some reason, I was forced to run it on my workstation, I am pretty confident I could make it work. Flatpak isn’t the only way to get applications.
It’s the reason why I have Debian on my laptop which I rarely use. I guess I could use Silverblue on my laptop, but I’ve got Debian running on my vpses and Arch on my desktop and I kind of like to stick to those as my standard.
I’ve made it work a few years ago on my workstation but then I missed the freedom that I have with Arch after 6 months.
Maybe I would look into creating a custom image for myself to see how that would work. The downside of the entire Github workflow and what is also a downside is is that you’re entirely dependent on the template created by the Ublue Project and on Github. If the Github side breaks you have no way of changing/updating your image.
When I was experimenting with Atomic distributions a few years ago I tried the Bluefin image, but I found it had to much custom stuff like theming. Then I switched to their base Silverblue image or the normal Silverblue image and for those I had to layer stuff like Qemu, libvirt, Kitty and some other stuff like that anyways or the least amount possible. If I were to go with an Atomic distribution again for my desktop I would want to not layer anything this time, instead of doing my own image I might then just see which one comes closest to what I want and then add my user profile to use my custom theming and stuff like that. But right now Arch will stay on my desktop system for now. I also like the fact that Arch Linux has less ties to corporate Linux than something like Fedora but that’s a different discussion.
I think all those things could be pretty easily installed without layering. We have so may tools available these days distrobox/flatpak/appimag/nix/brew/kapsule/toolbox/etc.
That being said, I am not saying I want to do that. I would rather not have to. Just saying that if I was forced to, I probably could.
In my investigations for recommending something to a beginner that was not tech inclined, I found Aurora to fit (as robust, featured, and running a desktop I would be knowledgeable about). Too bad his enthusiasm waned and I feel he’s just going to stay in the Windows camp.
I just checked and it seems Bluefin-DX has stuff like Qemu in the image, so that would solve it mostly for me, as I could probably get used to Ptyxis or find a workaround for using Kitty. I don’t mind using Flatpaks when using something Atomic, one thing I would wish is that Valve would also officially start supporting the Steam Flatpak so that it could get verified and same for signal-desktop.
P.S Just thinking out loud what I could and might do if I were to switch back to an Atomic distribution for my desktop.
The only thing missing would be Hyprland which I have now, but I would be willing to switch back to Gnome if I were to do that as the Wayblue images don’t have the Qemu packages in it. Yeah so this is where you are highly dependent on the developers who make the image you use.
Done some reading on immutable systems and… there’s no compelling reason for me to switch from Arch/ EOS. I’m a hobbyist, I break stuff, I fix it. Being told “You can’t touch this” by my laptop would drive me to violence. Or even to wearing genie pants.
Would you say the same thing for normal fedora like “it just works and maintenance free” and for casuals I mean the experience after installing drivers and codecs I would like to hear your opinion about it
No, I wouldn’t say that at all. For a casual user it can be pretty painful to use Fedora. Fedora has such a strict stance on patent encumbered applications that it is confusing how to even get your applications to work as expected for a casual user. Installing nvidia drivers is beyond the skill of many casual users too.
Plus you need to deal with updates and version upgrades, the combination of repo packages and flatpaks, etc, etc.
For an enthusiast, most of that is not a big deal but for a true casual user it is often more than they want to deal with. Compare all that with “Pick the nvidia version or not when you download and then open the store to install software”. That is much more approachable.
Also, it is much, much harder to break one of the Fedora atomic distros.
