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Articles like this make me happy the distribution I chose was Linux Mint, and nearly everything worked without me having to learn a bunch of things. (My change

Articles like this make me happy the distribution I chose was Linux Mint, and nearly everything worked without me having to learn a bunch of things. (My changes included installing KDE Plasma 5, and maybe trying a few different login managers, i.e. gddm3/lightdm. Not much else!) Of course, if you like learning how to customize and tinker, then these kinds of distributions probably make a whole lot more sense to you!

frantathefranta 4y ago
I've had the same experience with EndeavourOS (more user-friendly Arch). It's running on an old OptiPlex desktop with an added GTX1650 GPU. I've had basically no issues for the last 8 months, with my dual monitor set-up working out of the box. I've used Arch prior to this for about 2 years but I wouldn't say that stopped me from making some mistakes. Nothing that broke the install for me though.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
I use Fedora and everything works out of the box- even Steam, Nvidia drivers from the package manager, and games. This is about Silverblue, a bespoke and immutable variant of Fedora Workstation.
- thinkmassive 4y ago
  I’ve been running debian distros exclusively for the past few years. A few weeks back I attempted a reinstall, but I was blocked by a combo of nonfree firmware (that was incompatible w/kernel in stable) and partitioning/bootloader issues in testing. After a few failed attempts at pre-partitioning in stable, then installing from testing, I gave up and tried Silverblue. Gotta admit, the lack of driver issues out of the box was refreshing! Like any immutable distro, Silverblue has it’s quirks, but hardware support hasn’t been one of them in my recent experience.
  - freedomben 4y ago
    Did you have any regular Fedora experience going into Silverblue?
    - thinkmassive 4y ago
      Yes, though I don’t recall needing any Fedora knowledge to use Silverblue. You can use toolbox containers of any distro, and if you choose Fedora really all you need to know is the package manager is dnf.
- neogodless 4y ago
  Thank you, I saw it was about Silverblue. It's in the title! I didn't claim Fedora (or in particular, Fedora distributions separate from Silverblue) doesn't work out of the box. I just observed what's in the shared article, which is a lot of steps to get things how they want them. As a Linux Mint user, obviously I don't know a ton about every distribution and all of the differences! (There's an implicit assumption there, that if you know a lot more, you might choose to customize a less "off the shelf" distribution, though I don't know if that is accurate!) I'm just glad my Linux installation process didn't involve all the steps that this article included to get up and running and being able to use my computer. To be sure, they have used Linux for over a decade, and like things a certain way, so their pickiness leads to a lot of the tinkering! I'm just saying, personally, I don't want to dig that deep if I don't have to. I still think it's funny that everyone is pointing out that it's about Silverblue, when it's in the title, and I didn't say anything to contradict that. What am I missing here?
tapoxi 4y ago
Fedora basically works out of the box, but Silverblue is an immutable system that you can modify by layering packages on top of the image. It's really cool, and probably The Right Way™ to handle system upgrades, but its got a bit of a learning curve. Every now and then I give it a spin, but most IDEs aren't great at doing development inside of a container just yet, which makes it painful to work with.
- thinkmassive 4y ago
  I hadn’t considered this. It makes me glad I keep as much as possible within my shell and browser. In its current state I would recommend Silverblue to two classes of users: 1. Highly technical with a strong background in immutable systems and containerization. 2. Non-technical users whose app needs are completely fulfilled by Flathub. The latter may require some assistance with initial setup, but if I needed to help a friend or family member maintain their computer then Silverblue would be my first choice.
evol262 4y ago
Silverblue is intended for the opposite of that. It is single system image mostly immutable root OS. The goal is to *not* tinker with the core OS, and do your tinkering in containers (toolbox, distrobox, whatever). Complaining that rpm-ostree took 2 minutes to update 2 packages (rpm-ostree downloaded an entirely new pre-baked filesytem snapshot and applied it atomically) is completely missing the point, as is complaining about selinux after swapping out a bunch of system level stuff. This is like the antithesis of the use case for Silverblue, and an author who has somehow never had to build a package for anything but Arch (deb would be much worse) complaining about the difficulty of building RPMs to install/overlay on the host system, which is not the intended use case *anyway*, is silly.
- YorickPeterse 4y ago
  > and an author who has somehow never had to build a package for anything but Arch (deb would be much worse) complaining about the difficulty of building RPMs to install/overlay on the host system, which is not the intended use case anyway, is silly. I can assure you I've built packages for more than just Arch Linux, and that building RPMs was by far the most frustrating experience of all :)
- schadfield 4y ago
  I don't want to tinker at all. I just want to get some work done. That is why I run Debian stable. Back when I first installed Slackware in 1994 I spent a lot of time tinkering. I am through with that now.

frantathefranta 4y ago

I've had the same experience with EndeavourOS (more user-friendly Arch). It's running on an old OptiPlex desktop with an added GTX1650 GPU. I've had basically no issues for the last 8 months, with my dual monitor set-up working out of the box. I've used Arch prior to this for about 2 years but I wouldn't say that stopped me from making some mistakes. Nothing that broke the install for me though.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

I use Fedora and everything works out of the box- even Steam, Nvidia drivers from the package manager, and games. This is about Silverblue, a bespoke and immutable variant of Fedora Workstation.

thinkmassive 4y ago
I’ve been running debian distros exclusively for the past few years. A few weeks back I attempted a reinstall, but I was blocked by a combo of nonfree firmware (that was incompatible w/kernel in stable) and partitioning/bootloader issues in testing. After a few failed attempts at pre-partitioning in stable, then installing from testing, I gave up and tried Silverblue. Gotta admit, the lack of driver issues out of the box was refreshing! Like any immutable distro, Silverblue has it’s quirks, but hardware support hasn’t been one of them in my recent experience.
- freedomben 4y ago
  Did you have any regular Fedora experience going into Silverblue?
  - thinkmassive 4y ago
    Yes, though I don’t recall needing any Fedora knowledge to use Silverblue. You can use toolbox containers of any distro, and if you choose Fedora really all you need to know is the package manager is dnf.
neogodless 4y ago
Thank you, I saw it was about Silverblue. It's in the title! I didn't claim Fedora (or in particular, Fedora distributions separate from Silverblue) doesn't work out of the box. I just observed what's in the shared article, which is a lot of steps to get things how they want them. As a Linux Mint user, obviously I don't know a ton about every distribution and all of the differences! (There's an implicit assumption there, that if you know a lot more, you might choose to customize a less "off the shelf" distribution, though I don't know if that is accurate!) I'm just glad my Linux installation process didn't involve all the steps that this article included to get up and running and being able to use my computer. To be sure, they have used Linux for over a decade, and like things a certain way, so their pickiness leads to a lot of the tinkering! I'm just saying, personally, I don't want to dig that deep if I don't have to. I still think it's funny that everyone is pointing out that it's about Silverblue, when it's in the title, and I didn't say anything to contradict that. What am I missing here?

tapoxi 4y ago

Fedora basically works out of the box, but Silverblue is an immutable system that you can modify by layering packages on top of the image. It's really cool, and probably The Right Way™ to handle system upgrades, but its got a bit of a learning curve. Every now and then I give it a spin, but most IDEs aren't great at doing development inside of a container just yet, which makes it painful to work with.

thinkmassive 4y ago
I hadn’t considered this. It makes me glad I keep as much as possible within my shell and browser. In its current state I would recommend Silverblue to two classes of users: 1. Highly technical with a strong background in immutable systems and containerization. 2. Non-technical users whose app needs are completely fulfilled by Flathub. The latter may require some assistance with initial setup, but if I needed to help a friend or family member maintain their computer then Silverblue would be my first choice.

evol262 4y ago

Silverblue is intended for the opposite of that. It is single system image mostly immutable root OS. The goal is to *not* tinker with the core OS, and do your tinkering in containers (toolbox, distrobox, whatever). Complaining that rpm-ostree took 2 minutes to update 2 packages (rpm-ostree downloaded an entirely new pre-baked filesytem snapshot and applied it atomically) is completely missing the point, as is complaining about selinux after swapping out a bunch of system level stuff. This is like the antithesis of the use case for Silverblue, and an author who has somehow never had to build a package for anything but Arch (deb would be much worse) complaining about the difficulty of building RPMs to install/overlay on the host system, which is not the intended use case *anyway*, is silly.

YorickPeterse 4y ago
> and an author who has somehow never had to build a package for anything but Arch (deb would be much worse) complaining about the difficulty of building RPMs to install/overlay on the host system, which is not the intended use case anyway, is silly. I can assure you I've built packages for more than just Arch Linux, and that building RPMs was by far the most frustrating experience of all :)
schadfield 4y ago
I don't want to tinker at all. I just want to get some work done. That is why I run Debian stable. Back when I first installed Slackware in 1994 I spent a lot of time tinkering. I am through with that now.