this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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Linux

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 11 months ago (9 children)

What's the Linux desktop for the playful developer? 🤔

[–] [email protected] 43 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I don't know but non-serious developers use Slackware.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

NixOS according to my local fetish community.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 73 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Are other distros not serious? I don't understand what this is.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You're just not cloud-native enough to understand how revolutionary it is to run GNOME on Fedora.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

We are really experiencing a cloud native generation. These Zoomers don't even know how life was without a cloud over their heads.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago

Just a bad attempt at marketing.

They should feel shame.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 11 months ago (1 children)

YaNJaLD.

Yet another not just another Linux desktop.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Lmao I first read that as

Yet another Newly Jank ass Linux Distro

[–] [email protected] 40 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

uses the GNOME interface

yeah thats a no from me.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

You're just not a serious developer 😒

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 11 months ago (3 children)

🥱

What a shitty tagline. What have I been doing these past few years, lol?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ahh you must be a frivolous developer

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Or a funny one.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 11 months ago (3 children)

A serious desktop got serious developers who are seriously serious about their serioucity

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Are you cereal?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Damn, that sounds serious.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I can't take that much seriousness.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

I don't get it. What's the spirit of ubuntu? Is the underlying OS based on ubuntu instead of fedora?

What's the actual difference to fedora silverblue?

Half the answer to "why did you make your own linux?" is that it's awesome being able to revert back to the original fedora OS.

Because it follows a cloud-native approach, the end user has the flexibility to rebase back to the stock Fedora or any Universal Blue image. It's more like having someone install, configure, and maintain a polished Fedora setup for you.

And the other half doesn't provide any info either

Bluefin utilizes Fedora's OCI features to compose and build an OS image. This process is overseen by a well-structured community that is committed to automation and sustainability. The end result is akin to a configuration management tool like Ansible or Salt, but without the typical challenges associated with maintaining a custom distribution.

Source

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, they don't have a clear mission statement to explain the delta of "why does this exist, and what problems does it solve".

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I think it boils down to: "because we can". "We can automatically build our own setup on github and that's what we do"

Installing tailscale, zsh, fish, vscode, extension manager, codecs, etc. out of the box isn't enough for a new distro. Especially because you break the signing of fedora by doing so.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

out of the box isn’t enough for a new distro.

I'm a bit surprised that they mentioned "distribution" on the Bluefin website, as the Universal Blue site (the base project behind Bluefin) explicitly mentions not being a distro - and I know that Jorge tends to be very clear that they're not building a distro:

This isn't a distribution, you can always rebase back to Fedora without reinstalling. This is a unique relationship between upstream and downstream that is popular in cloud, but still new to the Linux desktop. "Custom images" seems to be a decent place to start since that's what people call them in cloud.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

What’s the actual difference to fedora silverblue?

Hi! Co-maintainer here, you can find the differences in the github repo: https://github.com/ublue-os/bluefin

And there's a doc page going over it here: https://universal-blue.discourse.group/docs?topic=41

If you have any other questions I'd be happy to answer them!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Hi! Co-maintainer here, you can find the differences in the github repo: https://github.com/ublue-os/bluefin

I checked the github page you link and can find no differences listed, just three bullet points that appear to have be written by a PR team. You say an Ubuntu Desktop experience melded with Fedora Silverblue. Don't you mean GNOME? Ubuntu isn't a desktop environment, it's a Linux distro. GNOME is the desktop environment. That seems like an embarassing blunder in your copy when you claim to be building a distro for "serious" developers.

If it weren't open source, I'd think this was a scam. Weird choice.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

IIRC, Bluefin uses the GNOME extensions that Ubuntu uses - so yes, GNOME in the same way that the current version of Pop!_OS is GNOME + their own extensions.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Instead of linking to articles full of buzz-words, can you explain what's the difference between this distro and Fedora Silverblue?
I'm guessing the "spirit of Ubuntu" means they took Silverblue and preconfigured some stuff.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

This is the umpteenth time I’ve come across this project but I just don’t get what they’re going for here.

These are just custom images, are they not?

If I wanted Ubuntu I’d use Ubuntu. If I wanted Fedora I’d use Fedora. Maybe I’m not getting it but I wonder how big of a population that’s out there that wants some Ubuntu mixed in with a touch of Fedora and some buzzword salad thrown into the mix.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sorry, I only know silly, goofy developers. Can't recommend this to anyone.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah same, I'm a silly goose developer, can't use this. Sorry!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

I prefer to have a minimal linux ditro and install the apps I need.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Can someone tell me the recent hype about immutable distros? What exactly is the immutable part, and why is it attractive?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

The base OS is a known unchanging set of bits. Squirt this datastream onto a storage volume and boot to it and you have a known-working system. Then you can futz around with all the self-contained packaged apps you want, and no worries about weird interactions fucking over your whole system.

It's not for me, but I kinda see the appeal.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

It's when you can't set the volume to 0% so that everyone around you has to hear how hard you're working.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The system (the os files to be precise) is only mutable by package manager for specific tasks like updating. It can break certain workflows if the user wants to change system files, because they can't.

Bonuses from that are security and reproducibility. You can be sure that whatever package you have will look and behave exactly the same as on another device with the same OS. Malware won't be able to mess around with your OS so trivially as it does on mutable distros.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Interesting. Sounds like DevOps folks would love it. Maybe I’ll look into it more. Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

"Cloud native" technology is double speak for your shit is running on other people's computers who will be tracking your use and selling it to pay for server upkeep and also maybe profit?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago (1 children)

In this case it's referring to the fact that the OS is built upon the same containerization technology used on cloud platforms such as Kubernetes. As a marketing tool it's a bit buzzwordy, but it's not about running the core OS components outside of the physical machine here.

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