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>Kinoite is like a KDE-version of Silveblue. Why the CoreOS branding, mentioning of containers, and mentioning of flatpak? I get what the difference is betwee

by aliqot 4y ago

>Kinoite is like a KDE-version of Silveblue. Why the CoreOS branding, mentioning of containers, and mentioning of flatpak? I get what the difference is between flatpak and nix, but it's the only place my brain could go where a stupid name + some seemingly too-leet-for-me shit was going on, the only thing that came to mind was the new deterministic OS thing everyone's on. I can't grasp how something with such a terrible name plus an ambiguous purpose got any kind of attention, and I hope it got no funding for this. It seems to serve zero articulable purpose. Who is the ideal user here? Everyone wishing to use those technologies is more than capable and likely prefers to install KDE on their already working system.

smoldesu 4y ago
You probably understand most of it. Now, why would anyone willingly use a toddler-ized version of Linux? Beats me, but there's other distributions to pick from so I'm still happy. Again, I'm not opposed to most of the underlying technology (particularly Bubblewrap and rpm-ostree), but it does feel like they're baking a cake before they've even mixed the ingredients properly.
- 0rzech 4y ago
  I'm replying to the whole thread at once: The Silverblue, IoT and CoreOS logo are in the section "Related Projects". This is probably because all of them (not sure about IoT), including Kinoite, use rpm-ostree. Both Silverblue and Kinoite are named after crystals. Kinoite is like Silverblue with KDE instead of Gnome. They have separate deployment channels due to the nature of underlying technology. Neither Silverblue nor Kinoite is considered primary variant by Fedora Project yet, because they're still rough around the edges. But I hope they will be in the future due to their advantages, which are mentioned on the first page of their respective docs [1][2] and which I have experienced myself. The only thing I don't like is using Toolbox to manage CLI programs and the fact that `rpm-ostree install` always includes `Recommends`. I think Flatpak should handle CLI apps as well as GUI. [1] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/#introduction https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/#intr... [2] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-kinoite/#introduction https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-kinoite/#introdu...
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    I'm all-for the advantages of rpm-ostree and sandboxing - these technologies are great, and they need a platform to be experimented on. Unfortunately, I feel like relying so heavily on Flatpak is a bit of a hindrance for this distribution. Anything but the most basic of use-cases is going to cause friction, and ultimately leave your OS feeling more like an iPad than a full-featured desktop. For terminal users and developers and people who want to run background services, this is a complete non-starter. This could have been a great opportunity for Fedora to raise the bar and lead the industry by redesigning RPM to integrate with Bubblewrap and provide unprecedented thin-sandboxing. That's a great sell to enterprise users! The execution feels a bit botched though, and there's a lot of work left on the table before it can compete with other modern distros. It's creative, but not creative enough IMO.
    - 0rzech 4y ago
      But the whole point of rpm-ostree is to avoid rpms where possible. You can't be for rpm-ostree and at the same time propose continuing with traditional packaging system, which is discouraged for immutable systems. Snap and Flatpak where not only meant to enable sandboxing, but also to eliminate huge distribution repositories of packages all modifying root directory contents and requiring redundant packaging work. I agree that neither Flatpak nor Snap are there yet, but we're all still in the transition stage.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        > but also to eliminate huge distribution repositories of packages all modifying root directory contents and requiring redundant packager work. Well... I'd argue both of them failed. Snap is well-made, but mired in Canonical politics to the point that it's unusable. Flatpak has good intentions, but is generally poorly maintained and driven by ideologues rather than project managers and top-down leadership. That's without mentioning the technical implementations of either project, both of which fail to eliminate redundancy in their runtimes and feel completely foreign to the native system. Nix shouldn't have to come up so frequently in these discussions, but it's a much better package manager than Flatpak or Snap (isolation technologies aside). If Flatpak also worked with software maintainers instead of embracing mutual distrust, it could be faster and lighter on the system. Instead of tracking our dependencies properly, we've resigned ourselves to just targeting "Another Competing Standard" and hoping it won't also become irrelevant in 5 years when rpm-ostree-2 drops. It doesn't strike me as a resilient or reliable technology in the long-term, especially on it's own.
- dizhn 4y ago
  openSUSE is working on a similar distro now which likely will replace their non rolling release offering Leap. As far as I understand they think the current distro/software model is not sustainable and this is how they are trying to solve it.

by aliqot 4y ago

smoldesu 4y ago

You probably understand most of it. Now, why would anyone willingly use a toddler-ized version of Linux? Beats me, but there's other distributions to pick from so I'm still happy. Again, I'm not opposed to most of the underlying technology (particularly Bubblewrap and rpm-ostree), but it does feel like they're baking a cake before they've even mixed the ingredients properly.

0rzech 4y ago
I'm replying to the whole thread at once: The Silverblue, IoT and CoreOS logo are in the section "Related Projects". This is probably because all of them (not sure about IoT), including Kinoite, use rpm-ostree. Both Silverblue and Kinoite are named after crystals. Kinoite is like Silverblue with KDE instead of Gnome. They have separate deployment channels due to the nature of underlying technology. Neither Silverblue nor Kinoite is considered primary variant by Fedora Project yet, because they're still rough around the edges. But I hope they will be in the future due to their advantages, which are mentioned on the first page of their respective docs [1][2] and which I have experienced myself. The only thing I don't like is using Toolbox to manage CLI programs and the fact that `rpm-ostree install` always includes `Recommends`. I think Flatpak should handle CLI apps as well as GUI. [1] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/#introduction https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/#intr... [2] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-kinoite/#introduction https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-kinoite/#introdu...
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I'm all-for the advantages of rpm-ostree and sandboxing - these technologies are great, and they need a platform to be experimented on. Unfortunately, I feel like relying so heavily on Flatpak is a bit of a hindrance for this distribution. Anything but the most basic of use-cases is going to cause friction, and ultimately leave your OS feeling more like an iPad than a full-featured desktop. For terminal users and developers and people who want to run background services, this is a complete non-starter. This could have been a great opportunity for Fedora to raise the bar and lead the industry by redesigning RPM to integrate with Bubblewrap and provide unprecedented thin-sandboxing. That's a great sell to enterprise users! The execution feels a bit botched though, and there's a lot of work left on the table before it can compete with other modern distros. It's creative, but not creative enough IMO.
  - 0rzech 4y ago
    But the whole point of rpm-ostree is to avoid rpms where possible. You can't be for rpm-ostree and at the same time propose continuing with traditional packaging system, which is discouraged for immutable systems. Snap and Flatpak where not only meant to enable sandboxing, but also to eliminate huge distribution repositories of packages all modifying root directory contents and requiring redundant packaging work. I agree that neither Flatpak nor Snap are there yet, but we're all still in the transition stage.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      > but also to eliminate huge distribution repositories of packages all modifying root directory contents and requiring redundant packager work. Well... I'd argue both of them failed. Snap is well-made, but mired in Canonical politics to the point that it's unusable. Flatpak has good intentions, but is generally poorly maintained and driven by ideologues rather than project managers and top-down leadership. That's without mentioning the technical implementations of either project, both of which fail to eliminate redundancy in their runtimes and feel completely foreign to the native system. Nix shouldn't have to come up so frequently in these discussions, but it's a much better package manager than Flatpak or Snap (isolation technologies aside). If Flatpak also worked with software maintainers instead of embracing mutual distrust, it could be faster and lighter on the system. Instead of tracking our dependencies properly, we've resigned ourselves to just targeting "Another Competing Standard" and hoping it won't also become irrelevant in 5 years when rpm-ostree-2 drops. It doesn't strike me as a resilient or reliable technology in the long-term, especially on it's own.
dizhn 4y ago
openSUSE is working on a similar distro now which likely will replace their non rolling release offering Leap. As far as I understand they think the current distro/software model is not sustainable and this is how they are trying to solve it.