💾 Archived View for ax.flounder.online › tech › linux › silverblue.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 02:34:19. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

View Raw

More Information

➡️ Next capture (2023-04-26)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Silverblue Guide

Fedora Silverblue is an immutable desktop operating system. It aims to be extremely stable and reliable. It also aims to be an excellent platform for developers and for those using container-focused workflows.

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/

Fedora Silverblue provides a very rock solid system making it ideal for daily desktop use. It's main source of applications is Flatpak, RPMs can be installed but require a system restart each time a RPM package is modified due to sandboxing reasons so it is only recommended for important system packages.

Silverblue uses Gnome, Kinoite is available if you want KDE

https://kinoite.fedoraproject.org/

Overview

Pros

+ Very stable system

+ Vast amount of packages with use of containers with Distrobox (AUR, DEB ect.)

+ Minimal applications included in installer ISO

+ Easy to use installation ISO

+ Most Fedora support forum advice and guides will work with Silverblue

Cons

- Restart required for install, update and removal of RPM packages by default

- This unnecessary stuff

- Cannot duel boot

- Cannot test live session, only boots to installation

- SystemD

SystemD likes to hang on shutdown for 2 minutes very commonly for me

- Containers have large filesizes

- Gnome-software is very buggy

- Doesn't come with video codecs. Flatpaks may come with them

Neutral

~ Downstream is a corporate controlled distro

~ Prepackaged Flatpaks use Fedora repos, which come with their own runtimes which are large and ideally shared with other Flatpaks, so switching default applications to flathub is a good idea to save space

What doesn't work

Shell extensions

quick-settings-extension: Argument filename may not be null

What should I use to install software?

Flatpak > Container > RPM

For example: Dino is in the RPM repos but not a flatpak. It's possible to install it as a layered RPM if wanted, but most people would recommend installing it with toolbox or distrobox and adding it to your menu.

My Fedora Silverblue setup

Add RPMs

rpm-ostree install gnome-tweak-tool alacarte distrobox

gnome-tweak-tool - Tweak Tool

alacarte - Application menu editor (Flatpaks cause errors)

distrobox - Use other distros in containers, supports GUI applications

Remove RPMs

rpm-ostree override remove firefox gnome-tour

firefox - Use Flatpak for browsers

gnome-tour - Only used once on major updates

Add Flatpaks

Extension Manager - install Gnome shell extensions without a browser

Flatseal - Advanced flatpak permission manager GUI

Bottles - Run Windows programs easily (WINE GUI)

Distrobox

What Distrobox can do

What Distrobox can't do

Install your distro of choice in distrobox

or

Install Arch Linux in distrobox

distrobox-create --image docker.io/library/archlinux:latest --name arch

Name can be whatever you want it to be

Recommended: Add a terminal profile to start with "distrobox-enter arch" with a different colour scheme

distrobox-enter arch

install yay for AUR packages

yay nano

Add Chaotic-AUR for precompiled packages. For the last step on the page use nano to edit /etc/pacman.conf with:

sudo nano /etc/pacman.conf

ctrl + s to save

Install pamac-aur from Chaotic-AUR or AUR for pacman/AUR gui

yay pamac-aur

Add a desktop file to the hosts OS

distrobox-export --app pamac --sudo

Enable AUR with Hambuger menu > Settings > Third Party > Enable AUR support

Install junction from the aur to open links from the container to the host

Junction

[WIP] Remove Fedora repository flatpaks

Disable Fedora flatpak repo

Remove Fedora flatpak runtimes

flatpak list --app | grep "fedora"
flatpak install --reinstall org.gnome.Calculator org.gnome.Calendar org.gnome.Characters org.gnome.Connections org.gnome.Contacts org.gnome.Evince org.gnome.Logs org.gnome.Weather org.gnome.baobab org.gnome.clocks org.gnome.eog org.gnome.font-viewer

Software to look out for

Pods (podman gui) for managing distrobox

Waydroid (run Android applications) without custom kernel (not working correctly right now)