Stargazer #3 - Aurora October update

Aurora
,
1

Hello stargazers,

Time for another Stargazer update as things are ramping up again after the chill summer season. Let’s get right into it!

Fedora 43 Beta is here

We have just pushed the first builds of Fedora 43 beta based builds.

This is a move to Fedora 43 and we will ship KDE Plasma 6.5 before it is considered stable by Fedora. This is possible by the awesome work of the Fedora KDE SIG!
Additionally we are looking for testers of the flatpak preinstall-feature, more on that in the Bazaar section.

If you want to help test the new beta images, please rebase with the following command:
For example:
sudo bootc switch --enforce-container-sigpolicy ghcr.io/ublue-os/aurora:beta

Image deprecations

HWE

Just a last reminder that all of the HWE images (asus, surface etc) are going to be deprecated when F43 starts rolling. We have already moved them to a weekly schedule.

Nvidia-legacy drivers

As we have previously communicated in a prior update post, images with the old proprietary Nvidia Drivers will no longer be built when Aurora 43 releases. If you have a Turing card (this means RTX 2000/GTX 16XX or newer) and are still on this image, please move to the nvidia-open images which feature the newer driver.

sudo bootc switch --enforce-container-sigpolocy ghcr.io/ublue-os/aurora-nvidia-open:stable or
sudo bootc switch --enforce-container-sigpolicy ghcr.io/ublue-os/aurora-dx-nvidia-open:stable if you have previosuly enabled developer mode.

Bazaar changes

We will also change how Bazaar is deployed. Currently Bazaar is an rpm bolted to the image.

renner has done some work and we now have a way to do Bazaar as a flatpak. We will be testing this method with the beta images.

You can check the merged PR here.

Bazaar will then receive updates more frequently as it is now decoupled from the image.

As a headsup so you can prepare, we will remove Discover and the workarounds we put in place with the Fedora 44 Release next spring. Bazaar will become the only option to install applications on Aurora going forward. (This has been taken under review because of issues noticed)

Font changes

We will be also removing extra fonts from the image.

These fonts can be installed from Brew. You can use our ujust recipe to install them:

ujust install-fonts

You can check the fonts the recipe installs here and see all available font casks from brew formulae

Known issues

Currently known issues for F43 betas:

  • AMD Series 7040 series might not boot correctly (atleast FW13 AMD 7040 laptops are having this issue (propably also others with this chipset))
    • fix: you need to remove rhgb kernel parameter to get succesfull boot (you can do rpm-ostree kargs --delete=rhgb)
10 Likes
2

Thanks for all the hard work you do @inffy!

I actually like bazaar now, so much better than discover. Only thing in dislike is that it is gtk and that gtk apps enter the kde space so much more easily and become first ranked over QT.

Will aurora also adopt xfs as the default instead of btrfs?

2 Likes
3

Aurora is still very Fedora-based, so only if Fedora (and Kinoite) changes on that front.

2 Likes
4

There is a preliminary PR for that to happen, but I don’t think we will move to XFS. This was discussed briefly when the kernel had that last long lasting btrfs bug.

But I don’t we will gain that much if we would switch.

XFS is fully supported on Fedora, it is just a config option that would need to be changed in our ISO config.

In anycase it wouldn’t affect old installation, only new ones.

3 Likes
6

Not that I have anything against XFS, but one reason I prefer ZFS first, and then BTRFS if I can’t use ZFS for the root filesystem or for other reasons is compression. I know storage is cheap, but my old sixth generation ThinkPad only has a 1TB SSD. While I understand that future versions of Aurora won’t affect me, I’d still be disappointed if I were ever forced to use a non CoW filesystem without compression.

1 Like
7

Is zfs compression so much better than btrfs compression?

8

I would say “different” rather than “better.” Both have access to and can use the same compression algorithms. ZFS does compression at the block level, while Btrfs does it at the file level. Each has its pros and cons depending on your workload and what your file system looks like in terms of file size.

2 Likes
9

I actually like bazaar now, so much better than discover.

What I miss is a way to list the available updates. As far as I can tell, Bazaar only shows you an icon telling you that there are X updates available, and a “Install Now“ button, but you can’t tell what is being updated.

Any way, thanks for the great work. Aurora is better than ever!

10

I liked zfs actually. That was the time when I used FreeBSD. But because of too many problems where software I needed wasn’t available aso. I switched to Linux in 2006 or so. Later (I don’t remember when, but it must have been some time before 2014) I switched to btrfs (from ext4/xfs) because it was much closer to what I was used when using zfs in FreeBSD.

11

Klara Systems and others have done tremendous work on OpenZFS, and it’s truly an excellent filesystem. I use it on my main storage system at home.

I think the main reason it hasn’t seen broader adoption on Linux, although quite a few people do use it, is licensing. The ZFS license (CDDL) is incompatible with the GPL used by the Linux kernel, which prevents it from being integrated directly.

12

Sneak peak :wink:

image
image1786×810 132 KB

5 Likes
13

Yes, licensing was/is the issue here.

14

Updated the first post.

Also, KDE 6.5 is now available in the newest beta image version. Its installed from Fedora KDE SIGs copr and should be pretty much the final version that will land to Fedora little after Fedora 43 release. But possible fixes etc will land on beta after they are pushed to SIGs COPR repo.

2 Likes
15

Bazaar does have a screen where it shows what will be upated

image
image379×325 16 KB

16

Hey everyone!

I recently switched to beta channel. Can anyone direct me where I can report possible issues?

Thanks in advance!

P.S.: BIG KUDOS TO ALL AURORA CONTRIBUTORS! THIS IS THE BEST OS EXPERIENCE EVER! :slight_smile:

17

GitHub - ublue-os/aurora: The ultimate productivity workstation if you think its an aurora issue. Upstream issues should be reported to upstream

F43 releases on tuesday so beta is also closing then.

1 Like
18

Winboat is making headlines everywhere right now. Would it be a good idea to integrate Winboat into Aurora?

19

They have an appimage that seems to work fine. Use that, no plans currently to add it to the image

1 Like
20

Thanks a lot!

I’ve checked F43 forums, and it is indeed upstream problem. Lets wait till official release.