Creating KDE "Chromebook" for the parent's PC

General
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Heya legends. I wasn’t sure if this belongs in General or Kinoite, seeing as my goal here is probably closer to upstream.

I have just checked the wiki on this site of custom images, but didn’t quite see what I was looking for but got some ideas…

Goal: A KDE Plasma image that is basically a lightweight version of Aurora? Much closer to upstream Kinoite. Basic, minimal batteries included, going for that “Chromebook” use case with only basic PC usage required, browser, codecs, auto updates of flatpaks, automatic staging, but possibly utilising the ostree “apply” instead of stage option to schedule weekly reboots into the new image. This PC would be living in suspend, never getting shut down, so possibly need a wake up timer, then run the apply on the new image…?

I don’t want any container or dev specific batteries or jazz, that even the non-dev aurora still seems to have, just basic AF, “can’t break it” type deal!

Would people please suggest if the base image is adequate as is, as I see on that particular page, it is suggested not to be used as is, but doesn’t say why? Or should I fork Aurora and rip the guts out of it?!

Also, my parent’s are currently on stock fedora kinoite, but i thought updates were automatic when i installed it so will be rebasing into u-blue at this stage. Was going to put an override conf on timer and change from check to stage, but I then run into the issue of manually needing to rebase from one fedora version to the next…

I am currently career changing into web/ software dev, so i have looked at the github image creation template, but haven’t quite grasped the instructions of it yet. Will keep at it though!

Thanks in advance to anyone who might have some insight, tips and suggestions.

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I would just install Aurora and be done with it.
Anything you do, such as creating a custom image, could lead to support calls from your parents.

Not sure what wiki you’re referring to that would say not to use Aurora as is.

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Aurora is a 7gb monster, so would rather avoid it if possible, but thanks for your input.

I was referring to the base image, not Aurora itself. The base that Aurora is derived from is a u-blue image not reccomend as it, but I’m not sure why.

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Fedora OSs might be very “vanilla”, not lightweight in terms of space or apps installed.

I’d say too just “go with Aurora”.

Also, don’t watch ISOs space.

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If you want a smaller download, download Fedora Kinoite and then rebase to Aurora.

It will be atleast smaller bump, the ISOs are currently big as we have to include “two OSs” on the ISO

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6

I’m not sure if it’s helpful at all, but I’m using Aurora as my daily driver (laptop) and Bluefin on a miniPC that acts like a media center in my family room.

Gnome desktop in Bluefin is much more like a Chromebook experience. In fact, I may switch my wife over to Bluefin (from Windows) as it’s just simple to get around.

KDE in Aurora is like Windows on steroids. It may be too overwhelming for some, especially if the goal is a “Chromebook-like experience”.

I’m new to the Universal Blue ecosystem, but that’s been my experience.

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i agree, i successfully converted so many windows users to Linux with bluefin and they never called me for help because it is simple and it just works even for those old ladies who just know the bare minimum , exactly that chromebook type experience.

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I concur with the answers of “just install Aurora as is”. Frankly it’s already a Chromebook like experience. For the extra ability stuff that Linux has, like installing any deb/rpm in a Distrobox container etc… the solution is to simply not do that.

Put another way, it’s unlikely your parent’s will break anything without deliberate action. Even “meddling” style actions are fairly safe.

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Thanks for people’s input so far!

So they are already on stock Kinoite (so they know KDE already) which requires manual rebasing via the KDE Discover app (no a huge deal as its a GUI solution, but is still a manual step required every 6 or so months to jump up fedora versions)… Also the lack of automatic updates isn’t ideal either. Neither of which I was aware of with initial install…

I think with regards to just using Aurora, regularly downloading and rebuilding (system upgrade) new images with a ton of unused packages is sub-optimal solution, at least for me and my efficiency, bare bones kind of mentality.

These are the base images i was referring to and wondering why Universal Blue doesn’t recommend usage as is… How to Install Universal Blue's Base Images

I think at this stage, until I understand pros and cons of stock Fedora Kinoite vs u-blue base Kinoite, maybe i’ll stick with stock Fedora Kinoite and add some systemd services and timers for flathub autoupdate, and also a weekly wake from sleep and reboot into new image.

Any further thoughts are welcomed and appreciated.

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Interesting about the two OS’s on iso… Are you referring to two complete images? Like an A/B kind of redundancy?

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I don’t understand what you mean, sorry. Are you saying Fedora Kinoite is not light weight compared to Aurora? I would have thought the opposite to be true?

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Another way you can do is to create your own image repo, from which you can manage when do they get their updates. For them, they just track “latest” on your channel, but for the repo, you can manually define version 41 or 42 as the version you track.

For automatic update, you can just have topgrade running in the background every weekend or something.

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I’m also interested in this.

My naive thinking is:

  1. Fedora intends Kinoite to be a usable OS as-is

  2. The “kinoite-main” image in the ublue-os/main repo is basically Fedora’s Kinoite, plus a few included batteries.

  3. So “ublue-os/kinoite-main” should be at least as usable as Fedora’s Kinoite.

So, while I like to tinker and will probably build my own image based on “kinoite-main”, I’m interested in why that image isn’t recommended to install as-is.

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14

It can work perfectly fine, it’s just not a use-case the maintainers of Universal Blue want to support. All it’s intended to be is a starting point for fully loaded images like Bazzite and Aurora. Anyone who wants to consume the base images is expected to be technical enough to handle anything related to operating them and consuming them for building their own custom images.

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