6 ms·

Bluefin LTS Is Released

92 points by nikodunk 1y ago

MrDrMcCoy 1y ago
Meh. I haven't seriously considered GTK ecosystems since 3 got released. Between the increased usage of screen real estate, feature minimalism as a philosophy, becoming infested with ever more JavaScript that hampers performance, the continuous API instability that strangles extension development, and "my way or the highway" approach to workflows... I just don't get why people like it.
- MattPalmer1086 1y ago
  Well, everyone's different. It's great that Linux caters to all of us. I prefer Gnome because it does what I need but mostly just disappears and gets out of my way. I used to love fiddling and customising everything. Plenty of options for that if that's your thing, like KDE.
- baobun 1y ago
  While not mentioned in the post, there is a KDE flavor of the same project called Aurora/kinoite. While it doesn't get the LTS treatment (IMO it would have been the better pick over Bluefin), it's still viable. https://github.com/ublue-os/aurora https://github.com/ublue-os/aurora https://getaurora.dev/ https://getaurora.dev/
  - astralkraft 1y ago
    [dead]
  - mnmalst 1y ago
    Kinoite is not from the same project tho, it's the fedora KDE spin.
lsbussell 1y ago
After about 5 years away from desktop Linux, I have now been using Bluefin/Bazzite for the past few months as a Windows/MacOS replacement on my personal desktop and laptop. I knew that Bazzite was supposedly good for gaming but never looked into it any more than that. When I eventually learned about Bluefin, I was surprised to find that it, Bazzite, and all the other Universal Blue “distros” are built with the same container-native tech that I use every day at work. Needless to say I was immediately sold. I have been very impressed so far. I don’t find the immutable OS limiting in my day-to-day work at all. I guess I’m all about that “defaults lifestyle” now.
- nikodunk 1y ago
  Same here! Been developing embedded, server and frontend stuff all fron Bluefin/Bazzite for 2 years now. Having Homebrew and Tailscale all set up for me is super clean, and the system is just set-and-forget. Gaming works great too.
- andresen 1y ago
  How do you choose between Bluefin and Bazzite? Can you do any gaming from Bluefin, or is Bazzite a requisite for an easy functional setup for this?
  - joseda-hg 1y ago
    The difference is mostly about default settings Bluefin even includes stuff like built in propietary controller support and such If on desktop I'd probably keep to Bluefin (Gnome) or Aurora (KDE) mostly because those have better defaults for it
- vaylian 1y ago
  > I have been very impressed so far. I don’t find the immutable OS limiting in my day-to-day work at all. I guess I’m all about that “defaults lifestyle” now. Distrobox and custom podman containers get you a long way on an immutable system. It's actually a huge deal that podman supports rootless containers as a first-class feature.
upboundspiral 1y ago
I absolutely love what the universalblue team has been doing. They are one of the few organizations that are truly dedicated to providing a first-class, enjoyable, batteries included linux experience on the desktop. I truly believe that updates are seamless not just because of all the buzzwords about the underlying technology but because its made for people who actually use the system daily. They gate the fedora kernel and track breaking changes so you don't get them, and generally care about the user experience. If you want sensible gnome defaults and extensions they are there (or there to be disabled at the click of a button). If you want remote desktop streaming (sunshine/moonlight) its there. On the flip side, their distribution model also means no more need to keep track of out of tree kernel modules on upgrades (zfs, nvidia, waydroid even on Bazzite). Now onto the post specifically: LTS from a CentOS Stream base seems interesting. Fedora is nice, and the universalblue team tames it 99%, but its edge can be a bit too bleeding sometimes. My only reticence with CentOS Stream though is that it is veering dangerously close to Red Hat proper which I am unsure how to feel about. I am eagerly awaiting when non-rpms distros will be able to use the same underlying technology Bluefin uses, and see how the space evolves. A debian base especially seems interesting in theory. There has recently been some progress on that front: https://github.com/bootc-dev/bootc/issues/865 https://github.com/bootc-dev/bootc/issues/865 https://github.com/bootcrew/debian-bootc https://github.com/bootcrew/debian-bootc
- baobun 1y ago
  Mostly agree. I think they have some improvement to do on supply-chain though. A lot of random COPRs and kernel patches pulled in from various random third- and first party repos that I think should get consolidated before I can consider it mature and really ready for prime time. Similarly it would also be nice to see end-to-end builds being reproducible locally. (Things are currently hardcoded to github.com or tied to GitHub Actions in a few places. The patching required for that is nothing crazy - Good First Issue material :))
  - jcastro 1y ago
    For Bluefin LTS we're in control of all the 3rd party repositories we use. We depend on EPEL but so does everybody else. I am unaware of any kernel patches that we are shipping since we ship the default CentOS Stream kernel and the optional hwe kernel ships CentOSs' kmod kernel.
anthk 1y ago
A backported Gnome with a recent kernel definitively needs a current MESA backport.
- carlwgeorge 1y ago
  Mesa is kept current enough in CentOS that a backport isn't necessary. It's currently at version 25.0.7, same as Fedora 41.
jazzyjackson 1y ago
So Bluefin GDX is a good fit for the Nvidia DGX workstations going for 8-15k on ebay? I don't even do language model stuff I just want a gold computer
- jcastro 1y ago
  Co-maintainer here. When I saw one of these I immediately want to run Bluefin on it. In spirit I would love to support this, someone with one of these would need to PR in support, but it's usually taking the enablement instructions from NVidia and putting it in a dockerfile. Bluefin is already working well on on the Ampere ARM workstations that System76 sells. Getting it on one of these would be awesome.
joemccall86 1y ago
I'm a little surprised that an LTS product is based on CentOS 10 stream. Doesn't that have the shortest support?
- carlwgeorge 1y ago
  Each version of CentOS Stream is maintained for about 5.5 years, plenty to qualify as an LTS and significantly longer than Fedora (the base for non-LTS Bluefin).
- joseda-hg 1y ago
  Shortest support for CentOS, but that's still longer than regular Ubuntu LTS by 6 months
rvrb 1y ago
As someone quite happy with a vanilla Fedora Silverblue install on both my desktop and laptop, can anyone explain why I would rebase to Bluefin instead? It seems like there must be technical merit to the Universal Blue spins beyond adding preinstalled software/configs, but I can't find it, despite looking.
- joemccall86 1y ago
  I can answer for me coming from the same boat... exactly zero risk to try, given how easy it would be to rebase back onto silverblue. I didn't have to worry about the codecs Fedora couldn't legally ship so I could remove an overlay, plus I figured bootc was the future and I wanted to see it working.
  - rvrb 1y ago
    Sure there is zero immediate risk, I just genuinely don’t know what I would get out of taking on the risk of adding a community maintained middleman into the supply chain. I know, because rpm-ostree, it’s not the same as some random distribution. If there’s nothing to get out of it personally that layering a package or two can’t give me (or better, writing my own simple image).. why? I’m not saying there isn’t a reason; I’m genuinely looking for it
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  Haven't used Silverblue or Bluefin but the way I've seen it explained is that Bluefin, Aurora, etc include a number of QoL and practicality adjustments that make them nicer/easier to live with as a desktop OS than baseline Silverblue is.
  - nikodunk 1y ago
    Yes! I used to use Silverblue too. Things like Tailscale, Docker, Davinci Resolve, nvidia drivers, and all codecs are a button-click away or already properly set up for you out of the box on the universal blue projects.
jcastro 1y ago
Hi everyone! I built this 4 years ago as a passion project and now it's led to a culmination of things that led to release. Happy to answer questions!
- vaylian 1y ago
  Bluefin rocks. Thanks for your work!
dggdyh 1y ago
How quickly and safely are bugs fixed in Bluefin? It looks like Debian equivalents might be VanillaOS, EndlessOS, and (though not as similar) StarlingX, since all are OSTree-based for atomic updates. I’m curious what others’ experience is with developing on these- do drivers work out-of-the-box and is it easy to configure, similar to macOS stability with something like brew to get latest packages and apps? Eventually I’ll probably have to go back to free OSes because things don’t seem to be getting better.
- nikodunk 1y ago
  As soon as Fedora/Centos updates their images (pretty much immediately usually as it's upstream of EL), and the CI runs to re-layer the Bluefin changes. They also have Dependabot set up. https://github.com/ublue-os/bluefin/actions https://github.com/ublue-os/bluefin/actions It's just OCI images, like any web-scale project.
monkaiju 1y ago
I love the u-blue stuff I've used so far (Bazzite and uCore) but god do I wish they had one with cosmic desktop. Fedora atomic does, and it looks like u-blue used to (there's an archived repo), but until then I'm sticking with pop-os
abhinavk 1y ago
I have tried both Silverblue and Bluefin and I realized that I want something in between. So basically Silverblue+codecs+drivers. Maybe https://github.com/ublue-os/image-template https://github.com/ublue-os/image-template is the way to go when I do my setup next time.
- anogrebattle 1y ago
  Same but for Kinoite and Aurora. I recently rolled my own image off Kinoite using the template you linked. I highly recommend it! It’s fun, pretty straightforward, and it feels good to have a custom base for your exact needs.
- rsolva 1y ago
  Yeah, I also prefer the default Silverblue, but would like some codecs on top, in addition to my own selection of packages. I'll look into the ublue-os/image-template!
rmunn 1y ago
I was confused by my first several readings of the projectbluefin.io site, due in part to not having prior experience with some of the techs (e.g. their 2023 announcement said "Bluefin is a custom image of Fedora Silverblue by a bunch of cloud-native nerds. ... Originally Bluefin was "Fedora Silverblue for Ubuntu Expatriates". I ... wanted Silverblue but with a more Ubuntu-like desktop." I've never used Silverblue so that told me very little. But I think I'm beginning to understand. Please correct me if I'm getting any of this wrong: - Bluefin is, fundamentally, a container image that you run with your preferred container runtime (Docker, Podman, whatever). - But where most containers are slimmed-down to run just one app, Bluefin is a Linux desktop in a container. - Bluefin includes Podman in its image, so you can run other containers inside your container. (Yo dude, I hear you like containers...) - Because Bluefin is a container image, updates are all-or-nothing, i.e. atomic. You download the updated image, then reboot into it next time you're ready to reboot. - Installing other apps once you're running Bluefin is done via flatpak, rather than snap or apt or dnf or pacman. And there's a graphical app store that connects to Flathub. (I don't yet know what the offically-recommended way is to install software that isn't yet on Flathub). Anything incorrect in that list? Anything major that I left out? (Edited only to add a newline between bullet points, because I didn't realize that Hacker News doesn't implement that part of Markdown. The fact that asterisks around words gives you italics fooled me into thinking that more of Markdown than italics was implemented.)
- mtndew4brkfst 1y ago
  One foundational misunderstanding in your very first bullet - Universal Blue distros are installable operating systems that happen to use container image formats as a file representation for network distribution and update mechanisms, but you're expected to be running it on actual hardware or as a traditional VM. The outermost "container" part is largely an incidental implementation detail. You don't run these as a workload on like, a Kube cluster, or anything like that. The underlying project in question for the next conceptual layer down is rpm-ostree: https://coreos.github.io/rpm-ostree/ https://coreos.github.io/rpm-ostree/
  - rmunn 1y ago

92 points by nikodunk 1y ago

Meh. I haven't seriously considered GTK ecosystems since 3 got released. Between the increased usage of screen real estate, feature minimalism as a philosophy, becoming infested with ever more JavaScript that hampers performance, the continuous API instability that strangles extension development, and "my way or the highway" approach to workflows... I just don't get why people like it.

MattPalmer1086 1y ago
Well, everyone's different. It's great that Linux caters to all of us. I prefer Gnome because it does what I need but mostly just disappears and gets out of my way. I used to love fiddling and customising everything. Plenty of options for that if that's your thing, like KDE.
baobun 1y ago
While not mentioned in the post, there is a KDE flavor of the same project called Aurora/kinoite. While it doesn't get the LTS treatment (IMO it would have been the better pick over Bluefin), it's still viable. https://github.com/ublue-os/aurora https://github.com/ublue-os/aurora https://getaurora.dev/ https://getaurora.dev/
- astralkraft 1y ago
  [dead]
- mnmalst 1y ago
  Kinoite is not from the same project tho, it's the fedora KDE spin.

lsbussell 1y ago

After about 5 years away from desktop Linux, I have now been using Bluefin/Bazzite for the past few months as a Windows/MacOS replacement on my personal desktop and laptop. I knew that Bazzite was supposedly good for gaming but never looked into it any more than that. When I eventually learned about Bluefin, I was surprised to find that it, Bazzite, and all the other Universal Blue “distros” are built with the same container-native tech that I use every day at work. Needless to say I was immediately sold. I have been very impressed so far. I don’t find the immutable OS limiting in my day-to-day work at all. I guess I’m all about that “defaults lifestyle” now.

nikodunk 1y ago
Same here! Been developing embedded, server and frontend stuff all fron Bluefin/Bazzite for 2 years now. Having Homebrew and Tailscale all set up for me is super clean, and the system is just set-and-forget. Gaming works great too.
andresen 1y ago
How do you choose between Bluefin and Bazzite? Can you do any gaming from Bluefin, or is Bazzite a requisite for an easy functional setup for this?
- joseda-hg 1y ago
  The difference is mostly about default settings Bluefin even includes stuff like built in propietary controller support and such If on desktop I'd probably keep to Bluefin (Gnome) or Aurora (KDE) mostly because those have better defaults for it
vaylian 1y ago
> I have been very impressed so far. I don’t find the immutable OS limiting in my day-to-day work at all. I guess I’m all about that “defaults lifestyle” now. Distrobox and custom podman containers get you a long way on an immutable system. It's actually a huge deal that podman supports rootless containers as a first-class feature.

upboundspiral 1y ago

I absolutely love what the universalblue team has been doing. They are one of the few organizations that are truly dedicated to providing a first-class, enjoyable, batteries included linux experience on the desktop. I truly believe that updates are seamless not just because of all the buzzwords about the underlying technology but because its made for people who actually use the system daily. They gate the fedora kernel and track breaking changes so you don't get them, and generally care about the user experience. If you want sensible gnome defaults and extensions they are there (or there to be disabled at the click of a button). If you want remote desktop streaming (sunshine/moonlight) its there. On the flip side, their distribution model also means no more need to keep track of out of tree kernel modules on upgrades (zfs, nvidia, waydroid even on Bazzite). Now onto the post specifically: LTS from a CentOS Stream base seems interesting. Fedora is nice, and the universalblue team tames it 99%, but its edge can be a bit too bleeding sometimes. My only reticence with CentOS Stream though is that it is veering dangerously close to Red Hat proper which I am unsure how to feel about. I am eagerly awaiting when non-rpms distros will be able to use the same underlying technology Bluefin uses, and see how the space evolves. A debian base especially seems interesting in theory. There has recently been some progress on that front: https://github.com/bootc-dev/bootc/issues/865 https://github.com/bootc-dev/bootc/issues/865 https://github.com/bootcrew/debian-bootc https://github.com/bootcrew/debian-bootc

baobun 1y ago
Mostly agree. I think they have some improvement to do on supply-chain though. A lot of random COPRs and kernel patches pulled in from various random third- and first party repos that I think should get consolidated before I can consider it mature and really ready for prime time. Similarly it would also be nice to see end-to-end builds being reproducible locally. (Things are currently hardcoded to github.com or tied to GitHub Actions in a few places. The patching required for that is nothing crazy - Good First Issue material :))
- jcastro 1y ago
  For Bluefin LTS we're in control of all the 3rd party repositories we use. We depend on EPEL but so does everybody else. I am unaware of any kernel patches that we are shipping since we ship the default CentOS Stream kernel and the optional hwe kernel ships CentOSs' kmod kernel.

anthk 1y ago

A backported Gnome with a recent kernel definitively needs a current MESA backport.

carlwgeorge 1y ago
Mesa is kept current enough in CentOS that a backport isn't necessary. It's currently at version 25.0.7, same as Fedora 41.

jazzyjackson 1y ago

So Bluefin GDX is a good fit for the Nvidia DGX workstations going for 8-15k on ebay? I don't even do language model stuff I just want a gold computer

jcastro 1y ago
Co-maintainer here. When I saw one of these I immediately want to run Bluefin on it. In spirit I would love to support this, someone with one of these would need to PR in support, but it's usually taking the enablement instructions from NVidia and putting it in a dockerfile. Bluefin is already working well on on the Ampere ARM workstations that System76 sells. Getting it on one of these would be awesome.

joemccall86 1y ago

I'm a little surprised that an LTS product is based on CentOS 10 stream. Doesn't that have the shortest support?

carlwgeorge 1y ago
Each version of CentOS Stream is maintained for about 5.5 years, plenty to qualify as an LTS and significantly longer than Fedora (the base for non-LTS Bluefin).
joseda-hg 1y ago
Shortest support for CentOS, but that's still longer than regular Ubuntu LTS by 6 months

rvrb 1y ago

As someone quite happy with a vanilla Fedora Silverblue install on both my desktop and laptop, can anyone explain why I would rebase to Bluefin instead? It seems like there must be technical merit to the Universal Blue spins beyond adding preinstalled software/configs, but I can't find it, despite looking.

joemccall86 1y ago
I can answer for me coming from the same boat... exactly zero risk to try, given how easy it would be to rebase back onto silverblue. I didn't have to worry about the codecs Fedora couldn't legally ship so I could remove an overlay, plus I figured bootc was the future and I wanted to see it working.
- rvrb 1y ago
  Sure there is zero immediate risk, I just genuinely don’t know what I would get out of taking on the risk of adding a community maintained middleman into the supply chain. I know, because rpm-ostree, it’s not the same as some random distribution. If there’s nothing to get out of it personally that layering a package or two can’t give me (or better, writing my own simple image).. why? I’m not saying there isn’t a reason; I’m genuinely looking for it
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
cosmic_cheese 1y ago
Haven't used Silverblue or Bluefin but the way I've seen it explained is that Bluefin, Aurora, etc include a number of QoL and practicality adjustments that make them nicer/easier to live with as a desktop OS than baseline Silverblue is.
- nikodunk 1y ago
  Yes! I used to use Silverblue too. Things like Tailscale, Docker, Davinci Resolve, nvidia drivers, and all codecs are a button-click away or already properly set up for you out of the box on the universal blue projects.

jcastro 1y ago

Hi everyone! I built this 4 years ago as a passion project and now it's led to a culmination of things that led to release. Happy to answer questions!

vaylian 1y ago
Bluefin rocks. Thanks for your work!

dggdyh 1y ago

How quickly and safely are bugs fixed in Bluefin? It looks like Debian equivalents might be VanillaOS, EndlessOS, and (though not as similar) StarlingX, since all are OSTree-based for atomic updates. I’m curious what others’ experience is with developing on these- do drivers work out-of-the-box and is it easy to configure, similar to macOS stability with something like brew to get latest packages and apps? Eventually I’ll probably have to go back to free OSes because things don’t seem to be getting better.

nikodunk 1y ago
As soon as Fedora/Centos updates their images (pretty much immediately usually as it's upstream of EL), and the CI runs to re-layer the Bluefin changes. They also have Dependabot set up. https://github.com/ublue-os/bluefin/actions https://github.com/ublue-os/bluefin/actions It's just OCI images, like any web-scale project.

monkaiju 1y ago

I love the u-blue stuff I've used so far (Bazzite and uCore) but god do I wish they had one with cosmic desktop. Fedora atomic does, and it looks like u-blue used to (there's an archived repo), but until then I'm sticking with pop-os

abhinavk 1y ago

I have tried both Silverblue and Bluefin and I realized that I want something in between. So basically Silverblue+codecs+drivers. Maybe https://github.com/ublue-os/image-template https://github.com/ublue-os/image-template is the way to go when I do my setup next time.

anogrebattle 1y ago
Same but for Kinoite and Aurora. I recently rolled my own image off Kinoite using the template you linked. I highly recommend it! It’s fun, pretty straightforward, and it feels good to have a custom base for your exact needs.
rsolva 1y ago
Yeah, I also prefer the default Silverblue, but would like some codecs on top, in addition to my own selection of packages. I'll look into the ublue-os/image-template!

rmunn 1y ago

I was confused by my first several readings of the projectbluefin.io site, due in part to not having prior experience with some of the techs (e.g. their 2023 announcement said "Bluefin is a custom image of Fedora Silverblue by a bunch of cloud-native nerds. ... Originally Bluefin was "Fedora Silverblue for Ubuntu Expatriates". I ... wanted Silverblue but with a more Ubuntu-like desktop." I've never used Silverblue so that told me very little. But I think I'm beginning to understand. Please correct me if I'm getting any of this wrong: - Bluefin is, fundamentally, a container image that you run with your preferred container runtime (Docker, Podman, whatever). - But where most containers are slimmed-down to run just one app, Bluefin is a Linux desktop in a container. - Bluefin includes Podman in its image, so you can run other containers inside your container. (Yo dude, I hear you like containers...) - Because Bluefin is a container image, updates are all-or-nothing, i.e. atomic. You download the updated image, then reboot into it next time you're ready to reboot. - Installing other apps once you're running Bluefin is done via flatpak, rather than snap or apt or dnf or pacman. And there's a graphical app store that connects to Flathub. (I don't yet know what the offically-recommended way is to install software that isn't yet on Flathub). Anything incorrect in that list? Anything major that I left out? (Edited only to add a newline between bullet points, because I didn't realize that Hacker News doesn't implement that part of Markdown. The fact that asterisks around words gives you italics fooled me into thinking that more of Markdown than italics was implemented.)

mtndew4brkfst 1y ago
One foundational misunderstanding in your very first bullet - Universal Blue distros are installable operating systems that happen to use container image formats as a file representation for network distribution and update mechanisms, but you're expected to be running it on actual hardware or as a traditional VM. The outermost "container" part is largely an incidental implementation detail. You don't run these as a workload on like, a Kube cluster, or anything like that. The underlying project in question for the next conceptual layer down is rpm-ostree: https://coreos.github.io/rpm-ostree/ https://coreos.github.io/rpm-ostree/
- rmunn 1y ago