I’m between distros and looking for a new daily driver for my laptop. What are people daily driving these days? Are there any new cool things to try?

I have been using linux mint recently. I have used nixos and arch in the past. Personally, linux mint uses flatpacks too much for my liking. Although, I might have a warped perspective after using arch. (the aur is crazy big)

  • thayerEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    I’ve been running Fedora Silverblue on nearly all of my PCs for about a year now and overall it’s been great.

    • Automatic and unobtrusive updates for the core OS and user apps (everything happens in the background without interaction; flatpak updates are applied immediately, and OS updates are applied at next boot)
    • I can choose to apply many core updates immediately, but rarely do
    • Atomic OS updates means that everything must be installed successfully or none of the OS updates are applied, which prevents a partially updated system
    • Being an image-based distro, I can and do easily rebase to Fedora’s test/beta/remix releases, and just as easily rollback, or run both stable and beta releases side by side for testing purposes
    • Being image-based means there’s no chance of orphaned packages or library files being left behind after an update, resulting in a cleaner system over time
    • In the event that anything does go sideways after a system update (hasn’t happened yet), I can easily rollback to the previous version at boot

    Some elements not unique to Silverblue but part of its common workflow:

    • Distrobox/toolbox allow you to run any other distro as a container, and then use that distro’s apps as if they were native to your host system; this includes systemd services, locally installed RPMs, debs, etc.; I use distrobox to keep most of my dev workflow within my preferred Archlinux environment
    • Flatpaks are the FOSS community’s answer to Ubuntu’s Snaps, providing universal 1-click installation of sandboxed user apps (mostly GUI based); Firefox, Steam, VLC, and thousands of other apps are available to users, all without the need for root access

    My only complaints about Silverblue are more to do with how Flatpaks work right now, such as:

    • Drag & drop doesn’t work between apps, at least not for the apps I’ve attempted to use; for example, dragging a pic into a chat window for sharing; instead, I have to browse to and select the image from within the chat app
    • Firefox won’t open a link clicked within Thunderbird unless the browser is already open, otherwise it just opens a blank tab
    • Many flatpak apps are maintained by unofficial volunteers, and this isn’t always clear on Flathub; I view this as a security risk and would prefer to see a flag or warning of some kind when a flatpak is not maintained by the official upstream developer

    That said, I’m confident that these issues will be addressed over time. The platform has already come a long way these past couple of years and now that the KDE and GNOME teams are collaborating for it, things will only get better.

    Like I said though, overall Silverblue has been a really great user experience, and as a nearly 20-year Linux veteran it has really changed the way I view computing.

    • jack@monero.town
      2·
      1 year ago

      Do you have to watch a loading screen while system updates are applied like on regular Fedora or is it in the background?

      Many flatpak apps are maintained by unofficial volunteers, and this isn’t always clear on Flathub; I view this as a security risk and would prefer to see a flag or warning of some kind when a flatpak is not maintained by the official upstream developer

      On flathub.org there’s a blue checkmark for apps maintained by the devs

      • thayerEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Do you have to watch a loading screen while system updates are applied like on regular Fedora or is it in the background?

        The image is downloaded and staged in the background of the active session. Upon reboot, the session seamlessly defaults to the staged image. For flatpaks, the updates happen immediately and without the need for a reboot.

        On flathub.org there’s a blue checkmark for apps maintained by the devs

        Aha, that must be one of the newer features implemented from the beta portal they’d been working on. I’m glad to hear it, and overall I hope to see more official upstream devs come on board with the platform (Signal, I’m looking at you).

        • jack@monero.town
          2·
          1 year ago

          The image is downloaded and staged in the background of the active session. Upon reboot, the session seamlessly defaults to the staged image. For flatpaks, the updates happen immediately and without the need for a reboot.

          That’s great to hear. Maybe I’ll give Silverblue a try

          • thayerEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Sounds good. I don’t think the automatic background updates are enabled by default, at least they weren’t when I last installed it. To enable:

            1. Edit /etc/rpm-ostreed.conf and set AutomaticUpdatePolicy=stage
            2. Reload system service: rpm-ostree reload
            3. Enable the timer daemon: systemctl enable rpm-ostreed-automatic.timer --now

            Also, consider disabling GNOME Software’s management of flatpaks with the following:

            rpm-ostree override remove gnome-software-rpm-ostree

            The flatpaks will continue to be updated by the backend system, but you’ll no longer have to deal with the sluggish frontend UI to keep things up to date.