Gaming will always take the lead—gamers are usually quick to chase the newest and shiniest things. Bluefin/Aurora adoption takes a bit longer because developers have to adjust their workflows, and there’s still this odd stigma around atomics. People assume you “can’t do things” on an atomic distro that you can on a traditional one, when in reality it’s mostly the same—just a slightly different approach in certain areas. Like with Nix, once it clicks, the pros far outweigh the cons. Personally, Bluefin has made me a more organised and efficient developer.
I can’t upload the images for some reason but here’s the current numbers for the ublue spins
Bluefin/Aurora adoption takes a bit longer because developers have to adjust their workflows, and there’s still this odd stigma around atomics.
Bluefin maintainer here, our target audience are container people, not people who want to adjust their workflows. The people we cater to don’t have an opinion on “atomics” because no one’s ever heard of that term. They’ve heard of docker or podman though.
Thanks Jorge the good work! I had been using silverblue for years and now I’m running machines with bazzite, bluefin, and ucore os. I really, really enjoy how easy to manage atomic distros are, and how they steer you towards better practices (in dev and sysadmin) by design. Thanks!
I would love to hear a pro about atomic distros that isn’t some vague platitude about security or stability. I have zero security/stability problems on my ‘normal’ Fedora.
As someone who has steadfastly avoided atomic distros because it sounds like an arseache and the last thing I want is more busywork. Convince me to switch!
IME the nicest part of Bazzite is not having to manage it. To that end, it works on my Steam Deck. But that’s nothing to do with stability, as you say. In its own ways it’s more annoying to use than a regular distro.
Clearly people are finding use for it, but I personally find those annoying aspects needless speedbumps in my own usage. Except for, again, on my Steam Deck.
Security isn’t really one, but saying don’t mention stability is proving the point—Fedora goes to ten, but Silverblue goes to eleven. That’s like saying, “tell me why Arch is good without mentioning the up-to-date packages.”
For Bluefin, it had everything I was doing with Fedora and then Silverblue OTB, and then some things I didn’t realize I needed. Yes, you can run a container-focused workflow in Fedora, but atomics keep you focused on good practices. With Fedora, my system became a bit of a dependency hell with Python and npm packages; now I have a container per project that can either have its own home dir or just seamlessly integrate with my main system.
I’m the whole IT and dev department for my company, so I would often have dedicated VMs etc. for each focus. Now everything is just seamlessly in my system.
It’s a bit of a reset for sure what isn’t, but once it’s done you know you can just hit the power button and everything is there ready to go.
I’m getting into rolling my own spin at the moment for our thin clients as they only have 16GB of space, and that’s been really easy to set up. Now I have a trimmed-down Bluefin that comes packaged with Remmina, and I can deploy updates just by updating some files on GitHub.
It’s really not more busywork, pretty much the opposite for me, my root is basically /var and anything lower level I don’t really need to be messing about with on a workstaiton.
I have all my tools most out of the box. I have every language package esp elixir thanks to brew have you tried setting up iex on Ubuntu it’s dog egg. On bluefin, I just brew install elixir.
saying don’t mention stability is proving the point
My point is that stability is already 100% fine for me now. So saying you’ll make my already rock-solid experience somehow more stable is meaningless. As a power user for over a decade, I’ve personally experienced zero issues where I wished Fedora was somehow more stable. It’s like telling me that Silverblue connects to the internet - Like yes, I already have that.
From what I’m reading, it sounds like the singular ‘pro’ is being forced to do cleaner, more self-contained practices. I can totally see how that would be helpful for some people. But personally, I would genuinely despise that kind of restriction.
I’m admittedly the kind of person who hates being forced to do the ‘best practice’ thing. I’m genuinely happy that my Linux distro will me rm -rf the root partition (with an ‘are you sure’ prompt these days :) ). I’m happy that if I really want to purge the kernel package with dnf, then I can. I want (and kind of need) my freedom to make a mess, if I tell Linux to jump, it will goddamn jump, even if it’s a bad practice technically terrible decision. I have zero interest in going all around the houses just to do it the technically correct (and sometimes less-effort-in-the-long-run) way. If I ever want a clean plate, I can still spin up a container just like you’re saying.
So I get the feeling that atomic is very much not for me, which is what I suspected :) Very glad that people like yourself find it an improvement, that’s what flavours are for!
Exactly that. It’s not the be all and end all for Linux, nothing ever will be and that’s OK. Some people have had a few issues, especially when Fedora was in the 30s. Just did a quick search, even this year some users reporting it borking itself. But like you, I have never had an issue, but when I deploy machines that are 100 miles from me, I don’t want to deal with that, same for my work machines.
Bazzite works really well for my living room PC, wife approved PS5 replacement. Again, for my personal gaming rig I don’t want to get home go to game and have to deal with some dependency issue. I put Bluefin on my field laptop because again I use it sporadically, and it’ll update on boot if it was cachyOS or workstation there’s a chance it could drift out of spec enough to bork.
So yeah I love the Atomics, but I was prob 90% the way there before Silverblue came about and 95% there when the Ublue stuff stated rolling out.
Like a lot of things Linux it’s not the future of Linux but its a future I think.
I switched to fedora for stability and pretty consistently each major update would break my computer. I switched to fedora silverblue and everything is so much simpler and upgrading is a breeze. A few times I have missed the simplicity of just installing random obscure software or toolkits for school but typically I can use containers and that also works nicely.
I also prefer using containers anyways because that aligns with how I mentally organize things. Flatpak has basically everything I need so that’s not a concern either.
Edit: I see you don’t benefit from stability, so don’t worry about that bit. It benefits me greatly though.
I don’t think I’ve even tinkered with Bazzite since installing it. It just works. You do have to get used to container workflows and using flathub but its a marginal amount of overhead for improved security. Bonus points: you can lazy install lots of apps with distrobox, for example you can install .deb files, .rpm files, pull from the AUR, its no biggy, and its all preconfigured and easy to setup.
It’s also nice to be able to rebase your distro whenever you want to try out different spins and features, makes inter-fedora atomic distro hopping easy without destroying your configs.
Thanks for the response, though up to this sentence I’m hearing extra busywork and slow/annoying containerising, in exchange for vague security platitude and a tool which I can already use.
It’s also nice to be able to rebase your distro whenever you want to try out different spins and features, makes inter-fedora atomic distro hopping easy without destroying your configs.
I’m interested by this. Is there a uniqueness to Atomic setups such that you can (more easily) keep your user partition, GNOME configs, etc. and swap out the Fedora distro underneath?
Yep, I can for example rebase from Bazzite to Secureblue and keep all of my configs intact for say, KDE. So if a project goes fubar you aren’t out of luck and need to reinstall and reconfig linux, its trivial to rebase/“swap distro”, its a single command that looks like this
rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-dx-nvidia:stable
All programs, files, configs, etc are intact in your home directory. I’ve swapped between user created spins for different DEs like Cosmic and so on, whats cool is its all preconfigured to run well under bazzites kernel. Image based upgrades are also very nice, theres inevitably config drift that messes with performance or updates can break your setup on other distros, image based means the devs tweak every interaction and push it all to you with the least effort possible on your part.
This is very cool, and I can suddenly see atomic being useful for certain circumstances. Won’t be using it for my personal computer main driver, but hopping/resetting this is easily attracts me so. Thank you!
rpm-ostree is pretty nifty in general, it functions like git so it reapplies each of your configs over what the devs do each time you upgrade, leading to as little config drift and broken upgrades as possible. each upgrade feels like a fresh install imo
I switched from Fedora KDE to Kinoite a few months ago. Both were 100% stable for me as well.
The main reason I switched to Kinoite is because I’m a digital hoarder and after 5 years or so all my systems are completely trashed with various libraries, 12 different PHP/.NET versions, custom builds and a bazillion Python packages.
In the end it always causes issues like my builds stop working because I have some ancient version of a library stashed away somewhere.
Immutable distros are really easy to return to “factory defaults”. It keeps a list of all the packages that are installed on the system and everything else now goes in Toolboxes, Distroboxes or Docker containers. If I mess up my C++ environment (again) I can just delete that toolbox and start from scratch.
I still manage to bloat my home directory but that is much easier to clean up than looking through all system files.
Gaming will always take the lead—gamers are usually quick to chase the newest and shiniest things. Bluefin/Aurora adoption takes a bit longer because developers have to adjust their workflows, and there’s still this odd stigma around atomics. People assume you “can’t do things” on an atomic distro that you can on a traditional one, when in reality it’s mostly the same—just a slightly different approach in certain areas. Like with Nix, once it clicks, the pros far outweigh the cons. Personally, Bluefin has made me a more organised and efficient developer.
I can’t upload the images for some reason but here’s the current numbers for the ublue spins
Bluefin maintainer here, our target audience are container people, not people who want to adjust their workflows. The people we cater to don’t have an opinion on “atomics” because no one’s ever heard of that term. They’ve heard of docker or podman though.
Thanks Jorge the good work! I had been using silverblue for years and now I’m running machines with bazzite, bluefin, and ucore os. I really, really enjoy how easy to manage atomic distros are, and how they steer you towards better practices (in dev and sysadmin) by design. Thanks!
Joke’s on you, Jorge. I use U-Blue just for the great general purpose desktop experience.
I actually just switched from Bazzite to Bluefin on my devices, even my gaming PC
Mostly because I wanted a more minimal/essential experience with less pre-installed packages
I’m sure I’m sacrificing a little gaming performance, but nothing noticeable by me so far
:shrug:
I would love to hear a pro about atomic distros that isn’t some vague platitude about security or stability. I have zero security/stability problems on my ‘normal’ Fedora.
As someone who has steadfastly avoided atomic distros because it sounds like an arseache and the last thing I want is more busywork. Convince me to switch!
IME the nicest part of Bazzite is not having to manage it. To that end, it works on my Steam Deck. But that’s nothing to do with stability, as you say. In its own ways it’s more annoying to use than a regular distro.
Clearly people are finding use for it, but I personally find those annoying aspects needless speedbumps in my own usage. Except for, again, on my Steam Deck.
Security isn’t really one, but saying don’t mention stability is proving the point—Fedora goes to ten, but Silverblue goes to eleven. That’s like saying, “tell me why Arch is good without mentioning the up-to-date packages.”
For Bluefin, it had everything I was doing with Fedora and then Silverblue OTB, and then some things I didn’t realize I needed. Yes, you can run a container-focused workflow in Fedora, but atomics keep you focused on good practices. With Fedora, my system became a bit of a dependency hell with Python and npm packages; now I have a container per project that can either have its own home dir or just seamlessly integrate with my main system.
I’m the whole IT and dev department for my company, so I would often have dedicated VMs etc. for each focus. Now everything is just seamlessly in my system.
It’s a bit of a reset for sure what isn’t, but once it’s done you know you can just hit the power button and everything is there ready to go.
I’m getting into rolling my own spin at the moment for our thin clients as they only have 16GB of space, and that’s been really easy to set up. Now I have a trimmed-down Bluefin that comes packaged with Remmina, and I can deploy updates just by updating some files on GitHub. It’s really not more busywork, pretty much the opposite for me, my root is basically /var and anything lower level I don’t really need to be messing about with on a workstaiton. I have all my tools most out of the box. I have every language package esp elixir thanks to brew have you tried setting up iex on Ubuntu it’s dog egg. On bluefin, I just brew install elixir.
Thank you for the informative response! :)
My point is that stability is already 100% fine for me now. So saying you’ll make my already rock-solid experience somehow more stable is meaningless. As a power user for over a decade, I’ve personally experienced zero issues where I wished Fedora was somehow more stable. It’s like telling me that Silverblue connects to the internet - Like yes, I already have that.
From what I’m reading, it sounds like the singular ‘pro’ is being forced to do cleaner, more self-contained practices. I can totally see how that would be helpful for some people. But personally, I would genuinely despise that kind of restriction.
I’m admittedly the kind of person who hates being forced to do the ‘best practice’ thing. I’m genuinely happy that my Linux distro will me
rm -rfthe root partition (with an ‘are you sure’ prompt these days :) ). I’m happy that if I really want to purge the kernel package with dnf, then I can. I want (and kind of need) my freedom to make a mess, if I tell Linux to jump, it will goddamn jump, even if it’s a bad practice technically terrible decision. I have zero interest in going all around the houses just to do it the technically correct (and sometimes less-effort-in-the-long-run) way. If I ever want a clean plate, I can still spin up a container just like you’re saying.So I get the feeling that atomic is very much not for me, which is what I suspected :) Very glad that people like yourself find it an improvement, that’s what flavours are for!
Exactly that. It’s not the be all and end all for Linux, nothing ever will be and that’s OK. Some people have had a few issues, especially when Fedora was in the 30s. Just did a quick search, even this year some users reporting it borking itself. But like you, I have never had an issue, but when I deploy machines that are 100 miles from me, I don’t want to deal with that, same for my work machines.
Bazzite works really well for my living room PC, wife approved PS5 replacement. Again, for my personal gaming rig I don’t want to get home go to game and have to deal with some dependency issue. I put Bluefin on my field laptop because again I use it sporadically, and it’ll update on boot if it was cachyOS or workstation there’s a chance it could drift out of spec enough to bork.
So yeah I love the Atomics, but I was prob 90% the way there before Silverblue came about and 95% there when the Ublue stuff stated rolling out.
Like a lot of things Linux it’s not the future of Linux but its a future I think.
I switched to fedora for stability and pretty consistently each major update would break my computer. I switched to fedora silverblue and everything is so much simpler and upgrading is a breeze. A few times I have missed the simplicity of just installing random obscure software or toolkits for school but typically I can use containers and that also works nicely.
I also prefer using containers anyways because that aligns with how I mentally organize things. Flatpak has basically everything I need so that’s not a concern either.
Edit: I see you don’t benefit from stability, so don’t worry about that bit. It benefits me greatly though.
I don’t think I’ve even tinkered with Bazzite since installing it. It just works. You do have to get used to container workflows and using flathub but its a marginal amount of overhead for improved security. Bonus points: you can lazy install lots of apps with distrobox, for example you can install .deb files, .rpm files, pull from the AUR, its no biggy, and its all preconfigured and easy to setup.
It’s also nice to be able to rebase your distro whenever you want to try out different spins and features, makes inter-fedora atomic distro hopping easy without destroying your configs.
Thanks for the response, though up to this sentence I’m hearing extra busywork and slow/annoying containerising, in exchange for vague security platitude and a tool which I can already use.
I’m interested by this. Is there a uniqueness to Atomic setups such that you can (more easily) keep your user partition, GNOME configs, etc. and swap out the Fedora distro underneath?
Yep, I can for example rebase from Bazzite to Secureblue and keep all of my configs intact for say, KDE. So if a project goes fubar you aren’t out of luck and need to reinstall and reconfig linux, its trivial to rebase/“swap distro”, its a single command that looks like this
rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-dx-nvidia:stableAll programs, files, configs, etc are intact in your home directory. I’ve swapped between user created spins for different DEs like Cosmic and so on, whats cool is its all preconfigured to run well under bazzites kernel. Image based upgrades are also very nice, theres inevitably config drift that messes with performance or updates can break your setup on other distros, image based means the devs tweak every interaction and push it all to you with the least effort possible on your part.
This is very cool, and I can suddenly see atomic being useful for certain circumstances. Won’t be using it for my personal computer main driver, but hopping/resetting this is easily attracts me so. Thank you!
rpm-ostree is pretty nifty in general, it functions like git so it reapplies each of your configs over what the devs do each time you upgrade, leading to as little config drift and broken upgrades as possible. each upgrade feels like a fresh install imo
I switched from Fedora KDE to Kinoite a few months ago. Both were 100% stable for me as well.
The main reason I switched to Kinoite is because I’m a digital hoarder and after 5 years or so all my systems are completely trashed with various libraries, 12 different PHP/.NET versions, custom builds and a bazillion Python packages.
In the end it always causes issues like my builds stop working because I have some ancient version of a library stashed away somewhere.
Immutable distros are really easy to return to “factory defaults”. It keeps a list of all the packages that are installed on the system and everything else now goes in Toolboxes, Distroboxes or Docker containers. If I mess up my C++ environment (again) I can just delete that toolbox and start from scratch.
I still manage to bloat my home directory but that is much easier to clean up than looking through all system files.