Awesome! I didn’t know this existed, but I definitely have to check that out. Thanks!

Usually only as long as I play games. After that, I shut it off. Why?

• I run Bazzite, which updates itself in the background, but needs a restart to complete
• It boots in seconds, because modern hard drives are crazy fast
• The standby-LED is annoying when I sleep

My laptop is usually on for a week, but I restart it from time to time, for the same reasons, and because devices need some sleep too! 😴

Fedora Atomic IS immutable. Rpm-ostree just layers (or hides) stuff on top of the already existing image. If you layer something, e.g. Nvidia drivers, you still download the same image everyone else uses, but basically compile the driver from fresh and put it on top. And that takes time. This is the reason using rpm-ostree to layer stuff is not recommended.

That’s why uBlue exists for example. It gives you a sane start setup, where all drivers are already built in into the image. And then you can either use the clean base and add your own stuff to create your own image, or use already great ones like Bluefin or Bazzite, where everything you want is already included.

Atomic just means that every process is either completed without errors, or not at all. This way, you don’t get an half updated and broken system for example in case you loose power. Happened to me quite a few times already, but never with Fedora Atomic.

Pretty much anything outside of /var/ (even /home/ is placed inside /var/) is read-only, and if you want to modify your install, you have to build your own image. Therefore, it is both immutable AND atomic.

That’s why I prefer the term “image based”

• You can still apply updates live, e.g. on Bazzite (Fedora Atomic) with the --apply-live tag (or however it’s spelled).
• The root partition isn’t read only per se, but you have to change the upstream image itself instead of the one booted right now. You can use the uBlue-Builder for example to make your own custom Bazzite spin just for you if you want.
• Both aren’t inherently secure or insecure. It’s harder to brick your system, yeah, for sure, but you can still fuck up some partitions or get malware. It’s just better because everything is transparently identifiable (ostree works like git), saved (fallback images), containerised and reproducible.
• And you can still install system software, e.g. by layering it via rpm-ostree. Or use rootful containers in Distrobox and keep using apt or Pacman in there.

FYI, the creators of Aurora/ Bazzite/ Bluefin are currently working on bootable CentOS stream based OCI images. This means, that you will get a LTS version, similar to Debian, but image based and WAY more slow paced.

My experience with uBlue has been flawless, but I don’t know if I would recommend it to an elderly person, because they might change a bit, and change is a stress factor for many people that age.

KDE Connect has a remote feature for presentations. Maybe one can create a small interface/ WM for it?

For example, Niri WM, configured with just left, right, and laserpointer as confirmation button. Based on uBlue, so it updates itself. Does that sound practical?

Not only that. It can either be an almost 1:1 replacement for SteamOS (if you choose the -deck variant), or just a normal desktop distro with a lot of gaming optimizations, like the fsync-kernel, gamescope, hardware enablement, and quite a lot of QoL improvements.

It’s basically a “Download the iso and begin gaming in 30 minutes”-distro.

It also ships some additional software that is optional, but quite neat. For example, I discovered LACT through it, which made over a year of GPU humming gone by allowing me to set fan curves.

For some diehard Arch users, it might be “bloated”, but I find it just right. I never had the feeling that the included tools are useless, and those that might be (e.g. Discord, OBS, etc.) are only installed when you tick the checkbox in the installer.

I’m using it for years now to control the laptop from my couch? And it works great.

Bazzite

“Cloud native” means in this context, that the images are being built centrally by “the cloud” (in this case, it’s GitHub actions, but could be replaced by something else) and then the identical copies of the OS are distributed downstream.

Contrary to traditional package manager based distros, this is more efficient and reliable.

At least that’s the mission from what I know, but I also might be wrong. Then please correct me :)

You could maybe get an advertisement screen. You know, those you find at train stations and stores.

Maybe, you could even get something like those touch panels McDonald’s uses, that would be nice!

The option(s) other commenters gave are great! But just to give you more options, I’ll give you a few additional ideas.

1. KDE Connect: You can still use a normal desktop (preferably KDE or Gnome), set your display scale to 150+%, and then use your phone remotely to control the cursor, media playback, and more.
2. Bazzite: often used to replace SteamOS, it also boots into Steam big picture mode by default, where you can set applications in the start menu. It has a nice console-like interface, and you don’t have to maintain anything, e.g. updating. It also supports Waydroid and webapps by default.
3. An old laptop or mini-PC with Bluefin or Aurora. They are basically like Bazzite, but without gaming stuff. You can set the display scale to 200% and enjoy a worry-free experience. Optionally, you can install Phosh or Plasma Mobile on top, which is made for mobile devices.

If you’re a fan of that principle, then consider checking out Logseq.

It’s main workflow is that you use the Journal page and write down everything that’s on your mind, may it be projects, research, social stuff, or whatever.

And while writing, you link that stuff with other stuff, and in the end, even when forgetting the exact search cues, you can go hunting for words mentally, and always find what you wrote months ago.

Obsidian, the competitor of it, is also great, but more similar to traditional note taking software, and therefore more hierarchical.

Logseq is FOSS too btw!

I think Bazzite will be way better than SteamOS when it comes to hardware enablement. After all, that’s uBlue’s main priority.

SteamOS is quite a bit behind when it comes to new features, and HDR/ VRR is improving everyday under KDE.

I didn’t use Windows personally for 3 years or so, but I don’t miss one thing when it comes to gaming.

Sure, HDR and VRR are still a bit on the experimental side compared to Windows, but even if it doesn’t work as great, I wouldn’t even miss it when disabled tbh.

The ability to not having to use Windows is far outweighting the lack of some features for me personally.

I edited my comment and corrected it. Thanks.

When I had those problems (and constantly new packages), I probably chose latest and not stable.

I think that was the issue.

I thought about rebasing from other uBlue-variants to it, but quickly disregarded the option for me.

Often, and in this case too, it’s often a spectrum of compromises between convenience vs. security.

I personally, as a casual user, feel absolutely safe enough already with Fedora Atomic. It just works without any hassles, and with the stuff that comes with it (SELinux, containers, immutable base, etc.) I think I am mostly safe.

Secureblue on the other hand is pretty locked down, and as someone who isn’t a professional Linuxer (™), I think fixing stuff is too hard (or annoying) for me, e.g. if KDE Connect can’t find devices, because of some hardened network connection stuff or whatever. I just wanna watch YouTube and play some games, not having 30 tabs open because basic things don’t work as I want.

I just want something that works ootb without any issues, and Secureblue just isn’t it for me. I prefer Bluefin and Bazzite because of that.

Also, I’ve heard about the dev(s) and community being a bit toxic, or at least not being a pleasure to collaborate with. But I can’t verify that.

Thanks for your experience report!

Yeah man, Aurora (and uBlue in general) is fucking amazing. I’m using it on my laptop, and Bazzite on my gaming PC, which is pretty much almost the same tbh.

Sometimes, people here on Lemmy might think I’m getting paid by someone to make advertisements for uBlue, but it’s literally the best distro I tried so far.

It’s one of the few distros I would recommend for non-techy people, like my mum or friends.

The only thing I dislike about Aurora in particular is the release schedule of KDE.

Bluefin (Gnome) offers a gts variant, which offers older (and therefore more stable) packages, so you have half a year of extra testing.

Sadly, KDE doesn’t allow that, so it’s more of a rolling release, like you said. Because of that, my experience with Aurora has been a bit worse than Bluefin, but still better than most other distros with KDE imo.

EDIT: Dumbass me chose aurora:latest and not aurora:stable, no wonder I constantly got brand new packages. Ignore the last part.

I can still recommend you Logseq and Obsidian.

They store their database mostly as plain markdown, so you can just use your sync app of choice (Nextcloud, Syncthing, etc.) to sync everything between devices.

Maybe Logseq offers their sync as self hostable service too, I don’t know.

I find Logseq extremely awesome and would recommend it to you.

Darktable is WAY better than RawTherapee. Like, lightyears ahead.

I don’t want to talk badly about RT, but it’s just trash imo. Development of RT has pretty much stopped, while DT has a huge community and many developers. It has become the only FOSS alternative to stuff like Lightroom.

The only issue I have with DT is that:

1. There’s way too much stuff going on for a beginner, and even with some experience, most features are too hidden due to clutter.
2. Some defaults are just badly set imo. For example, why do you not want lens correction and some other (neutral) stuff applied automatically?
3. Many modules are just redundant and should never be touched. There is soo much niche and legacy stuff nobody wants or needs, like 3 different white balance modules for example.

Great news, this preset fixes both of these issues!

It “removes” many of those unnecessary modules from your UI and applies some stuff already for you, which you would anyways, like said lens correction, so you can focus on the important stuff, like adjusting colors, contrasts, and more.

This preset should be the default imo, and it makes DT simple enough to use.

Awesome!

While this release doesn’t seem to add a huge amount of new stuff on the surface, the devs focused more on usability, performance and smaller improvements, which were all much needed.

Please correct me if I’m wrong and I oversaw something huge.

I’m really excited to see how the performance will improve on my shitty laptop. While the program itself shouldn’t take too many resources to run, it always felt barely usable on that device, and on my gaming PC, it never used the GPU. I’ve often heard many complaints about how Lightroom or Rawtherapee for example run way smoother than Darktable.

What change are you the most exited about?