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I have... I switched to Bluefin, which is a branch of Universal Blue, which is flavour of Fedora. Sounds complicated, but in fact is the best thing to ever hap

I have... I switched to Bluefin, which is a branch of Universal Blue, which is flavour of Fedora. Sounds complicated, but in fact is the best thing to ever happen to Linux. I get all the ease of use of something like macOS but pre-built with tools for development like distrobox, and then I can just build my dev environments and get shit done in no time, without having to worry about breaking updates or nuking the whole file system because my bash sucks. Its Linux for babies, and it makes me happy. ===== Further ass-kissing: Also I forgot to mention I tried gaming on it via Steam and it works like a charm... Not so sure about bleeding edge AAA games since I don't play any of that, but at least for all my oldies it works just fine. Oh!, and the one thing I miss is Affinity Designer.

iinnPP 9mo ago
As another anecdote in favor of Universal Blue's approach. My mother (who can't use a computer but to check email or regular websites) has been swapped to Aurora and has nothing but positive feedback. Been 90 days with zero issues.
- pelagicAustral 9mo ago
  I thought about mentioning my mom, since she's been my number 1 tech support client since ever... And I was going to say that, I am so certain of how solid this distro is, that I would even install it on my mom's laptop without any hesitation.
- odie5533 9mo ago
  I've not heard of Universal Blue before, so thank you both for mentioning it! Seems like a great step forward for Linux Desktop!
  - 747-8I 9mo ago
    It's very good
- flexagoon 9mo ago
  To be fair, the people who barely use the computer are the easiest to move to Linux. As Mental Outlaw said, "to a normie, an OS is just a bootloader for Google Chrome". If all you do is check emails, it doesn't really matter what OS you have installed. Switching to Linux hasn't been an issue for those users for a long time - it's usually gamers, users of professional software, or IT people with deeply established workflows who have troubles I guess the only part that matters is updates, and atomic systems like Fedora Silverblue do allow you to enable automatic updates without the fear of breaking everything, which is great
  - odie5533 9mo ago
    Laptop battery life suffers greatly on Linux. When their Google Chrome bootloader is out of battery all day, it matters which OS they installed.
    - fuzzy2 9mo ago
      Doesn't matter though. Every single one of these "casual" users I know has a terribly outdated device with a broken battery that doesn't even charge anymore. And I agree: if it works, why replace it?
    - tapoxi 9mo ago
      This doesn't make much sense, ChromeOS is itself Linux, and those are prime "computers for parents" machines.
      - johnny22 9mo ago
        not the same thing at all. Different userspace that may or may not be that efficient at power, as well as well tested power management in the kernel for specific devices.
    - evilduck 9mo ago
      People who care deeply about unplugged battery life aren't on Windows to begin with.
    - 9mo ago
- comprev 9mo ago
  When my dad (83) was looking to replace his ancient Win7 Dell PC I convinced him to buy a MacMini since he's had an iPad for a long time, and more recently an iPhone. Initially he was concerned about the "new" interface after using Windows since 3.11 days, but within an hour he was happy doing his usual "basic tasks" (email, basic Excel, Word for letters, printing, etc). He was amazed both his printers (colour/scanner, b&w) worked with zero hassle after simply plugging them in. Now he loves the ability to FaceTime anyone in the family (kids, grandkids, etc.) at the click of a button using the webcam plugged into the Mini, and really enjoys the sync of photos, emails, notes, etc. I think he would have really struggled with Windows 11 so I was tempted by an older-person friendly Linux distro if macOS wasn't an option.
  - aeroevan 9mo ago
    Chromebooks are also pretty good if google sheets/docs would suffice for excel/word.
    - QuercusMax 9mo ago
      They usually work well with printers, but I've run into some situations where I was just plain unable to get it to work with my Brother laser printer after a certain ChromeOS update. They screwed up something with the CUPS drivers and it just never worked. On MacOS at least I have a chance of being able to fix this stuff. ChromeOS is so locked down you can't even fix things.
  - KellyCriterion 9mo ago
    Apple is by far the best integrated ecosystem for nontechsavy users; its incredible how they follow this approach; iPhone is since V1 (?) without manual. Im looking fearfully into the future: What will happen to Apple product perfectness if any of these MBA or even PE guys is taking over CEO role?
MrPowerGamerBR 9mo ago
> Oh!, and the one thing I miss is Affinity Designer. While I haven't experimented with it that much yet, Affinity (the new one, the one after the Canva acquisition) does work in Wine 10.20. Now, I won't say it is a smooth experience, one of the workarounds that I needed to do is use Wine's virtual desktop so Affinity's tooltips are rendered correctly instead of being pure black, and the GUI does seem to not render correctly sometimes (it renders as white until something causes a redraw). The Canva global marketing lead did say that Linux support is "being discussed seriously internally": https://techcentral.co.za/affinity-for-linux-canvas-next-big-move-could-reshape-the-desktop-software-market/274861/ https://techcentral.co.za/affinity-for-linux-canvas-next-big... This makes you wonder: How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux support"?
- dotancohen 9mo ago
  > How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux support"? First 80% of a job typically takes 80% of the allocated time. The last 20% of a job typically takes another 80% of the allocated time.
  - snitch182 9mo ago
    Yeah, the 80/80 rule. That made me smile.
- flexagoon 9mo ago
  > This makes you wonder: How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux support"? CodeWeavers (developers of CrossOver and one of the main contributors and sponsors of Wine and related tools) actually offer something like this as a paid service for companies called PortJump: https://www.codeweavers.com/portjump https://www.codeweavers.com/portjump
bob_theslob646 9mo ago
How does bluefin compare to Linux Mint? I ask because I always thought mint was Linux for babies.
- pelagicAustral 9mo ago
  I think bluefin is more of a distro for babies in the sense that it really protects itself leaving the user with very limited capacity to break things while mint, also an awesome distro is more of a nice drop in for users that want to feel familiar with their desktop environment and traditional configuration
AlecSchueler 9mo ago
Not that there aren't trust issues with bigger projects but don't folks worry that the further down the "branch of a flavour of of a branch of a flavour" chain they go the higher and higher the risk of someone sneaking nefarious code through becomes? I guess there's a natural barrier in that the lesser known code bases become less of a target. Sometimes I just find it wild with how much we talk about containers and sandboxes for the user space code we run that there's still regular recommendations for the random distro of the week published by who knows who.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- w4yai 9mo ago
  We don't talk about that here. We're here to spit on Microsoft.
- wongogue 9mo ago
  Universal blue images are built via public GitHub Actions runners. If you don’t trust them, fork it and use your own image.
  - AlecSchueler 9mo ago
    How would that solve the problem of running the unaudited changeset between Fedora and Blue Fin and then between that and Universal Blue?
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
fragmede 9mo ago
I'm currently working on converting an ARM Chromebook to run a different userland from ChromeOS and have been wondering which distro to use. I've starting getting Nix on it, but I think I'll switch over to Bluefin based on your recommendation.
GlacierFox 9mo ago
Keep an eye on the Graphite vecor app that's in development. It's Linux native I think.
andrei_says_ 9mo ago
I have an old pc lying around and will be installing bluefin today. Thanks for the inspiration.
scoopdewoop 9mo ago
Bluefin, Aurora, and Bazzite are taking over my home. I've been using desktop linux since before ubuntu, and I have never had so much confidence in my linux rigs. They are dependable, which is refreshing after boot-breaking updates have ruined my setups before.
xedrac 9mo ago
> The current Linux desktop didn't get us there, but we believe that what was made, can be unmade. This is a strange thing for them to say when they are pretty much a clone of Fedora Silverblue, with a few minor tweaks. If Bluefin works for you, great. But I find their marketing rather pretentious.
monkaiju 9mo ago
I was originally blown away by Bazzite, which I run on my Legion Go, but then I discovered uCore (https://github.com/ublue-os/ucore https://github.com/ublue-os/ucore) and haven't looked back! Running it on my homelab and multiple servers at work, its a wonderful server OS.
faust201 9mo ago
I am curious. Does the flatpak Firefox allows access to all folders?
- pelagicAustral 9mo ago
  Heya, not by default, but you can allow it.

iinnPP 9mo ago

As another anecdote in favor of Universal Blue's approach. My mother (who can't use a computer but to check email or regular websites) has been swapped to Aurora and has nothing but positive feedback. Been 90 days with zero issues.

pelagicAustral 9mo ago
I thought about mentioning my mom, since she's been my number 1 tech support client since ever... And I was going to say that, I am so certain of how solid this distro is, that I would even install it on my mom's laptop without any hesitation.
odie5533 9mo ago
I've not heard of Universal Blue before, so thank you both for mentioning it! Seems like a great step forward for Linux Desktop!
- 747-8I 9mo ago
  It's very good
flexagoon 9mo ago
To be fair, the people who barely use the computer are the easiest to move to Linux. As Mental Outlaw said, "to a normie, an OS is just a bootloader for Google Chrome". If all you do is check emails, it doesn't really matter what OS you have installed. Switching to Linux hasn't been an issue for those users for a long time - it's usually gamers, users of professional software, or IT people with deeply established workflows who have troubles I guess the only part that matters is updates, and atomic systems like Fedora Silverblue do allow you to enable automatic updates without the fear of breaking everything, which is great
- odie5533 9mo ago
  Laptop battery life suffers greatly on Linux. When their Google Chrome bootloader is out of battery all day, it matters which OS they installed.
  - fuzzy2 9mo ago
    Doesn't matter though. Every single one of these "casual" users I know has a terribly outdated device with a broken battery that doesn't even charge anymore. And I agree: if it works, why replace it?
  - tapoxi 9mo ago
    This doesn't make much sense, ChromeOS is itself Linux, and those are prime "computers for parents" machines.
    - johnny22 9mo ago
      not the same thing at all. Different userspace that may or may not be that efficient at power, as well as well tested power management in the kernel for specific devices.
  - evilduck 9mo ago
    People who care deeply about unplugged battery life aren't on Windows to begin with.
  - 9mo ago
comprev 9mo ago
When my dad (83) was looking to replace his ancient Win7 Dell PC I convinced him to buy a MacMini since he's had an iPad for a long time, and more recently an iPhone. Initially he was concerned about the "new" interface after using Windows since 3.11 days, but within an hour he was happy doing his usual "basic tasks" (email, basic Excel, Word for letters, printing, etc). He was amazed both his printers (colour/scanner, b&w) worked with zero hassle after simply plugging them in. Now he loves the ability to FaceTime anyone in the family (kids, grandkids, etc.) at the click of a button using the webcam plugged into the Mini, and really enjoys the sync of photos, emails, notes, etc. I think he would have really struggled with Windows 11 so I was tempted by an older-person friendly Linux distro if macOS wasn't an option.
- aeroevan 9mo ago
  Chromebooks are also pretty good if google sheets/docs would suffice for excel/word.
  - QuercusMax 9mo ago
    They usually work well with printers, but I've run into some situations where I was just plain unable to get it to work with my Brother laser printer after a certain ChromeOS update. They screwed up something with the CUPS drivers and it just never worked. On MacOS at least I have a chance of being able to fix this stuff. ChromeOS is so locked down you can't even fix things.
- KellyCriterion 9mo ago
  Apple is by far the best integrated ecosystem for nontechsavy users; its incredible how they follow this approach; iPhone is since V1 (?) without manual. Im looking fearfully into the future: What will happen to Apple product perfectness if any of these MBA or even PE guys is taking over CEO role?

MrPowerGamerBR 9mo ago

> Oh!, and the one thing I miss is Affinity Designer. While I haven't experimented with it that much yet, Affinity (the new one, the one after the Canva acquisition) does work in Wine 10.20. Now, I won't say it is a smooth experience, one of the workarounds that I needed to do is use Wine's virtual desktop so Affinity's tooltips are rendered correctly instead of being pure black, and the GUI does seem to not render correctly sometimes (it renders as white until something causes a redraw). The Canva global marketing lead did say that Linux support is "being discussed seriously internally": https://techcentral.co.za/affinity-for-linux-canvas-next-big-move-could-reshape-the-desktop-software-market/274861/ https://techcentral.co.za/affinity-for-linux-canvas-next-big... This makes you wonder: How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux support"?

dotancohen 9mo ago
> How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux support"? First 80% of a job typically takes 80% of the allocated time. The last 20% of a job typically takes another 80% of the allocated time.
- snitch182 9mo ago
  Yeah, the 80/80 rule. That made me smile.
flexagoon 9mo ago
> This makes you wonder: How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux support"? CodeWeavers (developers of CrossOver and one of the main contributors and sponsors of Wine and related tools) actually offer something like this as a paid service for companies called PortJump: https://www.codeweavers.com/portjump https://www.codeweavers.com/portjump

bob_theslob646 9mo ago

How does bluefin compare to Linux Mint? I ask because I always thought mint was Linux for babies.

pelagicAustral 9mo ago
I think bluefin is more of a distro for babies in the sense that it really protects itself leaving the user with very limited capacity to break things while mint, also an awesome distro is more of a nice drop in for users that want to feel familiar with their desktop environment and traditional configuration

AlecSchueler 9mo ago

Not that there aren't trust issues with bigger projects but don't folks worry that the further down the "branch of a flavour of of a branch of a flavour" chain they go the higher and higher the risk of someone sneaking nefarious code through becomes? I guess there's a natural barrier in that the lesser known code bases become less of a target. Sometimes I just find it wild with how much we talk about containers and sandboxes for the user space code we run that there's still regular recommendations for the random distro of the week published by who knows who.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
w4yai 9mo ago
We don't talk about that here. We're here to spit on Microsoft.
wongogue 9mo ago
Universal blue images are built via public GitHub Actions runners. If you don’t trust them, fork it and use your own image.
- AlecSchueler 9mo ago
  How would that solve the problem of running the unaudited changeset between Fedora and Blue Fin and then between that and Universal Blue?
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]

fragmede 9mo ago

I'm currently working on converting an ARM Chromebook to run a different userland from ChromeOS and have been wondering which distro to use. I've starting getting Nix on it, but I think I'll switch over to Bluefin based on your recommendation.

GlacierFox 9mo ago

Keep an eye on the Graphite vecor app that's in development. It's Linux native I think.

andrei_says_ 9mo ago

I have an old pc lying around and will be installing bluefin today. Thanks for the inspiration.

scoopdewoop 9mo ago

Bluefin, Aurora, and Bazzite are taking over my home. I've been using desktop linux since before ubuntu, and I have never had so much confidence in my linux rigs. They are dependable, which is refreshing after boot-breaking updates have ruined my setups before.

xedrac 9mo ago

> The current Linux desktop didn't get us there, but we believe that what was made, can be unmade. This is a strange thing for them to say when they are pretty much a clone of Fedora Silverblue, with a few minor tweaks. If Bluefin works for you, great. But I find their marketing rather pretentious.

monkaiju 9mo ago

I was originally blown away by Bazzite, which I run on my Legion Go, but then I discovered uCore (https://github.com/ublue-os/ucore https://github.com/ublue-os/ucore) and haven't looked back! Running it on my homelab and multiple servers at work, its a wonderful server OS.

faust201 9mo ago

I am curious. Does the flatpak Firefox allows access to all folders?

pelagicAustral 9mo ago
Heya, not by default, but you can allow it.