Great, in-depth review!
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Yea the part at the end with the marketing was really insightful, I canāt wait to make a video response to this! Weāve gotten lucky with two great reviews lately (Trafotinās was excellent too!)
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I have already spoken about this marketing issue like two weeks ago in one another forum thread, but the author of the video nailed it: āThe traditional Linux problem of having nerdy developers attempting to explain the Linux experience to someone who has never had the interest in Linux before.ā But how does Blufin market itself: āIt is not immutable, what ever that meansā¦ but it is cloud native desktop, built with the same technology used to build the cloudā¦ā and another one: āWe are not Linux distroā¦ we just build imagesā¦ā What are we packagers (not to be confused with package maintainers), repackagersā¦?
I really fully agree Blufinās marketing is not great (gently, politely said). But why? Because marketing is a business discipline on its own, requiring an expert in marketing field. That is why company products are way better marketed, because marketing is done by experts in marketing.
Blufinās target users are non-technical, non-nerdy average computer users, that wants to use word processor, web browser etc, then whole new marketing strategy is needed. In this aspect, we need to picture the users and then sell them the idea. Lets imagine we are selling washing machine to my elderly pretty irritated uncle: āThis is super machine, having eco settings, wast amazing spinning options, temperature ranges, it is build on the same technology all other highly modern appliances are madeā¦ā And the response: āI give a damn. I just want to put clothes in, press the button and leave.ā Probably marketing would be much better to say to my I give a shit uncle, the real marketing slogan for real washing machine product: āIt is simple and logical.ā
At the end of the video he adds: āIt is the best new Linux distro I have ever tried.ā
Actually I see the whole video as a result of not the best marketing of Blufin. He starts video with the info he installed āBlufin DXā, this is another great way how to not market the product. Blufin and Blufin DX are completely different products for completely different audience. You donāt market Hyundai i10 and Bentley Continental with Blue and Blue RD (for Rich Dudes). It is even a problem when you download a Blufin it ask if I am a developer and not explaining the average dude what developer is? Sure I am developer, I develop my story in text editor.
At the end of video there is Problems I had:
- kvm issues switching between openSuse to Blufin
- theming in dark mode for some flatpaks e.g. Geany
- default terminal (donāt like)
All this are nerd talking, nothing for average Joe and Jane user. Kvm is totally out of reach of average user. Dark theme is also to my experience with average users not to be used section, weird. Terminal for average user it just no go.
Theming can be real issue by the way, but nerds can fix it for Greany like this:
- Search for some dark Gtk3 theme:
flatpak remote-ls flathub | grep org.gtk.Gtk3theme - Install one of them:
flatpak install -y org.gtk.Gtk3theme.Adwaita-dark - Open Flatseal and scroll down to the Variables section, click on ā+ā and paste:
GTK_THEME=Adwaita-dark - Start Greany and it is in dark mode.
This actually is not Blufin specific, but Blufin greatly relies on flatpak not like most of other distros, so issue is much greater then in most other traditional distros. In my humble opinion this is more of the Flathub issue, because not requiring flatpak to work fine with dark mode. Flathub has its own problems, it is run by volunteers in there spare timeā¦ and we are all grateful it exists, but we canāt expect QA at the level of serious company (e.g. Apple, Googleā¦) and so rules to apply applications are not strict and controlling. We expect to get free as free beer applications and no company is behind to support QA.
There is just one important thing for average user, that it all works. If I would be in charge of marketing of Blufin I would not market it as ācloud nativeā, but āit just works desktopā.
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Iām working on a video on this but the short explanation is that weāre focusing on developers and contributors first and foremost because thatās how we ended up in this horrible situation to begin with. No one will make the software we want if thereās no developers to make apps.
This is the usual Linux enthusiast trap where everyone is over rotating on this mythical ānew userā argument and then use things that only nerds care about as the argument. Normal people do not install operating systems.
Weāre attacking the problem from a different angle ā the linux desktop doesnāt even work right for experts and developers, how can we expect to win a mass market when we canāt even win on our own home turf? OSS development is done on Macs, and those people are passionate about open source. And the linux desktop is NOT good enough for them. They have said this consistently for almost 30 years now, and itās one of the main reasons that itās sitting at 3-4% marketshare.
That is the problem weāre trying to fix. We get developers going, that leads to help and more demand for apps. Weāre a cloud native project, we build from the bottom up, developer experience first. Then enthusiasts like us support and send them money to make it sustainable. It either works or it doesnāt. Some people may not like that plan but the whole āletās wander in the desert for 30 yearsā hasnāt really done the desktop any favors either.
New users donāt install operating systems, they donāt read documentation, or care about any of the things that any ātypicalā Linux users care about. Things like ujust and the documentation are geared towards experts and contributors because thatās the kind of people we need to help out.
Itās for people like us so that when a friend or relative has a perfectly fine computer but is stuck with a shitty OS we can set them up for success. And then they go open their web browser like 99% of the rest of the world and have a working computer.
Itād be great to market towards end users someday, Bluefin on my Framework is incredible and Iām really proud of what weāve built.
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to be fair that [updates] 's not different than any other Linux distro, if on OpenSUSE I update and I get a new kernel or whatever or I get new package libraries that require me to do a reboot, I still have to do a reboot the process is exactly the same : the difference is that itās not automated, so when I do update thatās something that I do and I know once Iāve done that I got to reboot my computer; on Bluefin I donāt ever have to do an update so I donāt remember to do the second part of the process which is rebooting the computer
Same experience
Here is how ChromeOS fixes this : a desktop notification that tells you a reboot is necessary (and has a reboot action if you click on its button)
I believe this would be a perfect addition 
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Just FYI, a single sentence that convinced one of my IRL ānormieā hommie to switch from Windows to Bluefin is this one :
And to some extents, having used ChromeOS beforehand, it also contributed to convince me
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Great video. However, I respectfully disagree. Normal users do install OS.
In fact, I consider myself a normal user, who installs ublue and want to do the same for other normal users.
But I agree, ublue is not ready for the normal users for the time being. Consequently, I am back to Windows LTSC.
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I think ublue is exactly what it set out to be. It is software that enables users to accomplish their goals the realm of computing. It doesnāt matter your background ( developer, or Netflix watcher) ublue accomplishes the goals. For there to be a choice such as this for people to use is extraordinary. I would focus marketing on all aspects of users and have confidence in the product for all. Iāve been using ublue as a set it and forget it device for family and it has been flawless.
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I think when we talk about normal users, they are those that walk on the nearest ātech storeā (like bestbuy/your local variant) and by the Dells/HPs/Asus laptops/desktops when their old one ābecomes slowā.
They donāt care about the OS, as its windows and that is what they āwantā and know.
Then there are the more tech savy users that know about macOS and Linux and want to test it. They might not actually need windows for anything. Is bluefin/aurora for them, well sure as it can do the basic stuff what windows can, sometimes even better without all the hassle of long updates.
I do not agree on ānot ready for normal users for the time beingā statement even if its a normal user. For the tasks that the ānormal userā generally does (surf web, watch streaming services, write docs, email etc) basically any Linux distro handles the job. But then again, do these users have the need to care about updates, I donāt think so. Most of them shutdown their laptop/desktop after they have done their tasks, or at the end of the day. Next time they boot they would have the newest updates (in the ublue realm) ready without them even āknowingā about it. It just continues to work.
I have set my parents laptop on a ublue image few months ago, as they were complaining it getting slow and had issues with printer etc. And they were going to purchase a new laptop (again). So I suggested, that they would try this (didnāt really advertise that it was actually linux). I knew that Gnome wasnāt going to be the correct DE as it would have been too different from the windows experiece, but I guess with some time and proper introduction it would also have been fine. So I set them up with Aurora and they have been pretty happy with it. Although they donāt really use that much, just emails/web/docs.
In these few months I have maybe three times had to help them on phone about something small and one time with a remote connection. The biggest issues have mainly been finding the āappsā what they use as they are named/look little different but all in all good stuff.
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Not in average, and itās not even close
āNormal users donāt install OSā is not meant to be a tautology
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This is unironically the exact same picture I use to explain agile iterations and ādo things that donāt scaleā to my team
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vs.
It is up to the definition what ānormalā user is. I see there are at least three types of users:
- Low tech users - What ever you give them, they use, but they need help like regularly. They do not install OS, they donāt even know what OS is, they donāt even care. They want to use browser and some tools like basic usage of office tools, messaging apps and similar. If you move them from Windows to Linux, they will not care or notice big difference.
- Medium tech users - Users that use computers as they daily work, but are from other fields. This are the hardest to convince to move to anything else that they are used to. Everything works on Windows and Microsoft Office and the way they do it (install program from setup.exe) etc everything that does not work the same way they are used to, it is broken. Linux (what ever distro) it just doesnāt work, LibreOffice is broken etc. It is not broken, they just work differently. You need to learn the differences. The main argument is, why should I switch if everything will be different and I will need to relearn to get the same (or subpair) functionalities. Arguments like open-source, free software, collaboration etc does not work at all - they donāt care, just like I donāt care what kind of software is run on my washing machine. I just want to use washing machine to do the laundry and it is not fun for me (like computers are).
- Tech savvy users - they love to see new things in computer word. Learning new āshitā is fun and interesting. You can āsellā them Linux or what ever. But you have to be careful, a lot of them have some preferences and are in love in some tech and it may be difficult to move them (like politics, sport club fansā¦).
I have watched the video. Now I understand that Blufinās target users are not mainly ānormalā users, but developers and ānerdsā. When things are fixed enough developers will want to use Blufin, then we will get to the next stage of user adoption.
Hey dude, this is the best marketing slogan, you have ever used. 
I have been using Linux desktop for many many years, what I see problems:
- Language. If you are from English speaking country then you can skip this, but if not then this may be major issue of adoption for ānormalā users. I have been trying a plenty of distros and desktop environments and the only suitable for ānormalā users (like 15 years agoā¦ and till now) was Ubuntu. At least for my native language, Gnome was translated in Ubuntu reasonable well - all other was useless (badly or no translation at all). Firefox was translated, LibreOffice was translated etc. What was bad is everything related to printer was not translated and English text all over, so if normal user got into printing issues, it was game over (I was only one to fix it). There are all kind of translation problems. Like every project has its own translation system, translation teams that are gods in there project - and the result the same ideas, stuff are translated differently in Gnome, Firefox, LibreOffice what ever - mess is the correct. Nothing like this happens in Windows, where translation quality is managed from companies that do care about consistency.
- My way only philosophy. Gnome switched from menus to humburger menu icon. This is perfect for simple apps, but for apps that are complex this is bad idea. Finding stuff from menu is way more efficient. But Gnome way is, menus are not modern and should be removed. And every ādamnā program has its own philosophy.
- App sets. If you are using Gnome you should use Gtk ready applications. If you use KDE then Qt applications, if XFCEā¦ Duplication, duplication, duplicationā¦ and user has limited choice inside desktop environment. If the philosophy was, I want users to use my application, then users would have used apps from any desktop environment. But realilty is, you are tied to desktop environment and now pick and choose.
- Constant political wars. Everyone doing there own thing and marketing as true gold. Collaboration is the solution. Ubuntu: snaps all other should be disabled (e.g. flatpak) vs. Fedora flatpak (war to the snaps). Why not it make it happen to use both and users decide which to use. Politics over users.
- Fragmentation. The best thing in Linux is wast majority of choices. Bad thin in Linux is wast majority of fragmentation. For any kind of reason like license for example.
- Volunteers in free time. A lot of software is developed by volunteers in there free time. If something does not work and you need a fix, then you are doomed. I have reported for around 100 bug reports in LibreOffice alone. Some of them are fixed immediately (like crashes), some of them have long debates with no solution, some of them are 10+ years old and nobody touches them. If I pop-up old bug, I can get, you need some professional supported company for this issue. I would use Microsoft Office for this reason.
- Some weird choices. I install Linux operating system for ānormalā user. Normal user in my absence plugs in USB printer and āsudoā is required. Or ānormalā user moved laptop to odd corner of the house where wifi is not working well and wants to change to phoneās hotspot and āsudoā is required. Come onā¦ this is desktop, not server and user that wants to change network/wifi is most probably the only user on desktop.
- X-org vs. Wayland. Some apps working fine on X-org, but not working fine on Wayland or similar technical issues. On my laptop works fine, user using something other and it doesnāt.
- Distro-fragmentation. Every Linux distro has its own set of version libraries and there is no such thing as program for Linux. It is always program for e.g. Ubuntu (deb package) and even more for Ubuntu 22.04 (not the latest LTS) or similar Fedora 40, 41ā¦ and all other Linux distros have there own package maintainers and package, repackage and wasting time. Sandbox solutions e.g. flatpak are currently not perfect. Developers in a lot of cases donāt care, just point to deb/rpm etc that it should work.
- Quality assurance. Bad experience in many ways. Some bug appears and nobody cares for days, weeksā¦ It is free (as beer) and you canāt expect it to work. When asking why donāt you revert back program to working package? I get all kind of āstupidā excuses, like we are waiting for upstream to fix it. No, no,noā¦ First things first, revert back to working version, then wait for upstreamā¦ but we are volunteers in free time. All kind of excuses why someone has taken time to do basic testing and if it fails when released to acknowledge and revert back to not break every damm user.
- Market share. Because of small market share, then everything if fine up till some issue appears. For example banking web application. Some problem appears and my web app does not work properly. It is impossible to get any kind of help. I canāt even explain I am not using Windows or on other side are support people that have no tech knowledge and are just posting one after another solutions that is clear from the sky this is not the solution. And then suddenly silence, they have a lot of users they need to support, and they donāt know how to help me, they just ignore me.
- Solutions are outdated. For example for my company IRS there were instructions for Windows (download setup.exe and install signing application, then user browser and everything works). They claim to support Linux. Then I see only Ubuntu instructions, but instructions are like 5 years old. There is broken link and I need to search upstream for correct version of new application. Everything is explained how to install and installation works fine, but browser does not accept signing application. Why not? Because I use Firefox/snap (on Ubuntu) or Firefox/flatpak on Fedora, but application expects browser is installed natively to have access to SSL/TLS certificates app has installed. But this is not over yet, then I realized Firefox by default has its own certificate store and so some other browser like Chrome/Edge is better suited (or you need to thinker Firefox). Plenty of problems, that only strong will and a lot of time required to fix an issue. Finally over few hours I manage to fix all of the issues and I was stubborn enough to write all of the instructions how to fix a problem and send it to IRS. Good news they have published my changed instructions. Bad news, after few years there are still my currently outdated instructions published there.
- App on Windows works fine on Linux not so well. The same app works fine on Windows, but not so fine on Linux. Reporting bug for Windows and bug fixed soon, on Linux nobody caresā¦ or they just quick test for e.g. Ubuntu. I hope flatpak gets more adoption and then it will not be important what distro I use.
- Theming, language, fontsā¦ A lot of this not strictly by default solutions can be broken and requires nerd to fix. Like theming half baked dark themes that only few of app types support e.g. Gtk4, but not Gtk3. Application gets 1.0.1 release without waiting for translators to translate new strings (why are there new strings in 1.0.1 version?). Fonts are not working for all of the languages, only tested for English language and not others.
- Active Directory and Group policy this is for professional environments. In my day to day job I am forced to use Windows, Blufin would be great for my work, why? Windows administrators do not want to admin another OS. Now they have Windowsā group policy, do the changes and push to hundred of users in one setting. We are few of the users that would like to use Linux, but we canāt even agree which distroā¦ and every distro has its own way. I use Linux desktop (sometimesā¦) in virtual machine to over come some restrictions Windows admin have applied to all of machines.
- No marketing. Because Linux desktop (I assume) is not profitable now, it is not marketed at all. You canāt even market OSā¦ in this way. I see only way to spread Linux is to get installed by default on hardware, like Windows, like ChromeOS etc. When normal users will just by device and use.
There are plenty of issues on Linux, but I still use it and love it. I chose hard way, and I like it.
By the way question. Blufin may get success in short time (probably Bazzite first; maybe notā¦) and the only way normal users will use it, if Blufin is installed on devices by default. For this kind of success it is required a company to take it over, maybe collaboration with hardware companyā¦ But maybe Blufin will stay for nerds for long timeā¦ and never get to normal users.
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@red11 you perfectly summed up the numerous problems faced by Linux on the desktop. Iām by no means new to Linux and have used it off and on since Mandrake and Dapper Drake days but still I find it incredibly frustrating to use and in fact more so these days than I remember few years ago. Pre-2010 or so the landscape was far more unifiedā¦ then Canonical became NIH, Redhat became NIH, everyone diverged and stopped cooperating, Wayland came along, distros exploded everywhere and now even simple things are bewildering to accomplish, especially if you put yourself in the shoes of a newbie from Windows. The ONE thing that has improved remarkably across ALL distros (well except Arch) is the installation. Its now easier than Windows Setup. But once you really start USING the OS, papercuts everywhere. Mysterious little issues, crashes galore. Incompatibilities. Either outdated software or too new to run on your distro. Too many choices and competing implementations with no clear newbie instructions as to which to choose.
Youād think something like Ubuntu would be newbie friendly right? Wrong. Simple customisations in GNOME need obscure extensions. Adding flatpak is a pain but you need to do it anyway since GNOME apps seem to be boycotting the snap store or whatever since all their versions over there are ancient compared to flathub and so on and onā¦ and yeah, Totem the default video player on Ubuntu crashes every single time playing a bog standard mp4 movie. And what you think is an option to delete a film from its history is ACTUALLY really deleting the file!! Thank god for Trash can.
And another last point I want to make is the Linux ecosystem REALLY needs to invest in top-notch UX and UI engineers. The interfaces for every desktop and every GUI app are so inconsistent and clunky as to be too tragic to even write about.
All this without even going into the biggest issue of all in Linuxā¦ Wifi, Bluetooth, power management, touchpad, webcamsā¦ they are actually in a worse state than NVIDIA graphics which you wouldnāt think at first glance. Practically half the threads on ANY Linux support group is among one of these topicsā¦ often Wifi.
Its funny to say it but Linux actually used to be better before laptops and tablets became ubiquitous, back when most PCs where desktops with a wired ethernet connection and simple peripherals.
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When will users grasp the fact that OSās (Windows, MAC or Linux) DONāT create hardware drivers to work with their systems, hardware manufactures doā¦the cost of creating/maintaining drivers for Linux market share is simply unjustifiable. Whine on Garth! Whine on Wayne!
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So many distros with little differentiation and they are doing all the same thing again package Gnome desktop, KDE desktop and many more. Few days ago I have read Gnome and KDE organizations are going to release there own Linux distro. Why? Do on thing and do it well.
Linux desktop installation just shines. Still mystery to me why every distro needs to develop there own installer.
Linux distro are made in concept to install software from Software program. The older the Linux distro, the older software you get. When I started to use Linux desktop several years ago it was pure mystery to me why this concept. Then what I was surprise was that for every little app I wanted to install I needed to searched the web for āHow to install program <program name>?ā and there was instructions how to add additional repository to Linux. This was actually pretty dangerous, because new repos have installed new libraries that broke some other programs.
In order to fix this tied to system libraries some sandboxing solutions appeared: snap (mostly Ubuntu), flatpak (Blufin uses this too) or Appimage.
When I started using Linux desktop this was actually a fun to me. I just searched and fixed problems by my own. Now I see this as annoyance and ānormalā users see this too.
Gnome mentality is simple to use and only few options available. Customisations in Gnome is pain. We can see Blufin how many extensions it preinstalls. But from developer point of few every customisation every single setting must be tested with every other setting and when you add one setting it gets multiplied by all other settings. More settings you add more bugs you have.
Some distros (like Blufin) have it preinstalled. But Ubuntu maintainers decided to have its own way with āsnapā (that was actually developed before flatpak and it was developed for phone and IoT devices first and then desktop).
Ubuntu distro decided to release Software app as snap package and they did no add flatpak support, because it is not in there vision. I have read very very very long thread on forum where Ubuntu users are complaining about it, but the answer for Ubuntu developers was this is not in our plan and we have limited resources and we donāt want to spend them to support flatpak. Sure every distro makes own decisions how it spends precious resources.
I use VLC media player like for ages, so havenāt even tried Totem. Sure I agree software should be tested and only released if it is working properly for most day to day cases.
It will not happen until companies see interest. Actually there is some investment by System 76 that sells hardware, but they decided to develop there own desktop environment Cosmic. Yet another fregmentationā¦ donāt know it is really needed. The biggest issue I see is, every desktop environment invest in building its own set of applications. It would be great, if apps are developed in the way they adapt to current desktop environment way. But no, each app looks like alien on another desktop environment.
This is the biggest tragedy of all.
it is market share or better put:
Simplicity works fine. Complexity does not scale. Butā¦ I think Linux destop is much better than it was many years ago. Up till now the main arguments to use Linux desktop was to use open source software and to be free of the strains OS providers envision. Butā¦ now we have another very powerful idea, separation between OS and application, and additionally every app separated by other app. Nothing revolutionary in mobile word, but it is in desktop. Traditional Linux and Windows have common issue, more apps you install more mess you get into. In Blufin every app is in its own sandbox in userland and this scales to infinity and beyond.
We have now in this tread discussed all of the troubles of Linux desktop, but what about solutions my friends, can we say something about them?
- @j0rge solution is to attract developers that will help to reshape Linux distro, because of improving there own working environment.
- Flatpak must become main way of distributing desktop GUI apps ā If this happens then a whole word of maintainers will get freed from packaging software for one single distro version and if only portion of them are āmovedā to package flatpak it would be fabulous.
- Sandboxing everythingā¦ system, apps, containersā¦ the Blufin way or ācloud nativeā @j0rgeās marketing philosophy.
- UI and UX to have application on all desktop environment to look great using portals (flatpaks are using those for example).
- Projects need to have some compelling and enthusiasm leaders that are in love what they are doing and go over the word and do the marketing, @j0rge does this perfectly. More the betterā¦
- Collaboration between projects. Like I see it Blufin is doing it great, it pulls software and ideas from many places.
- ā¦ what more???
It also isnāt the most useful thing to ask. Iām a developer, but the box Iāll be installing bluefin on isnāt going to be used for development.
Do you want development tools would be more actionable.
I think this is going to be tricky. Iām new to linux on the desktop (have maintained a few lowkey web servers) and I know enough to want to make an informed decision, but the information Iād be looking for will be meaningless to others (and Iām having to research to even understand most of it - whatta nerd).
The overall focus feels right to me, especially as things are pretty young (cboot hit 1.0 like a month ago or something) but itās good to not get locked into a perception of your product either. Bluefin is only for devs - someone could just want a nice stable OS to do various things on. Bazzite is only for gaming - someone could choose it for a daily driver for casual computing that -also- plays games and bazzite makes that simpler. Obviously itās good to focus on their strengths to differentiate, but theyāre also more flexible than that.
Perhaps a table above or below the cards for each distro on the main ublue site:
New to Linux or wondering which flavor of ublue is right for you?
| Distro | Stability | Gaming | Everyday | PC | Handheld / HTPC | Appearance | Coding (optional) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aurora | A- | A | S | S | N/A | Windowsish (easily customizable) | General Dev |
| Bazzite | B+ | S | S | S | S | Windowsish (easily customizable) | Gam Dev |
| Bluefin | A | B | S | S | N/A | Macish (more opionated) | General Dev |
| Bluefin GTS | S | B- | A | S | N/A | Macish (more opionated) | General Dev |
Maybe have a column of windows or mac familiarity based on DX. Like bluefin is A tier mac and A- windows, aurora is S tier windows or something.
That would help people make a quick judgement of which one to look into.
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Bluefin-dx is well suited for abnormal users too, such as myself 