Layering packages can cause severe consequences including:
Pause system updates until package(s) are uninstalled.
Prevent rebasing to different images until package(s) are uninstalled.
Conflict with existing packages as part of the image leading to dependency issues.
Updates taking longer to download as you layer more packages to your system.
Layering packages are mostly intended for system-level applications, libraries, and other dependencies. It is recommended to use Flatpak, Homebrew, Distrobox containers, AppImage, etc. before installing software with rpm-ostree. Typical users should not be using rpm-ostree to install end-user graphical applications at all to avoid problems in the future. It is highly recommended to only layer packages when absolutely necessary especially if the application can be obtained through other methods.
There should be a big fat blinking red warning in the terminal when a user attempts to layer a package. It should tell them that any question for support if they run into problems with will start with “remove all layered packages and reboot”
…because Wayland has been quite the mess for us photographers. It seems it might be coming together.
I’m well aware of this, but have not had a problem with the stuck upgrades before. I guess it was bound to happen. It’s not like I’m sprinkling layered packages all over the place? Looking at the packages I’ve layered they are quite hard to install in other ways. pcmanfm-qt has no Flatpak and no AppImage and needs to integrate well with the OS. Distrobox does not seem optimal for a file manager. apfs-fuse is not available in homebrew and does not seem optimal to install via Distrobox either.
Is there a way to see what layered package is causing the problem?
I’m pretty sure it I had to little system drive storage to upgrade. Cleared up some space, and removed pcmanfm-qt, upgraded and rebooted. I’m on 20251005 now.
But well, point taken, layered packages seems to be strongly advised against judging from the replies to to my post. I don’t know if the KDE Linux will be a better choice in this regard.
I second the recommendation to make a custom distro, but wanted to more specifically recommend using Blue Build to do so. It took me only an hour or two to get the hang of Blue Build, and I’ve had three machines running on my lightly customized Aurora for a few months now. I’m only adding a few OS-level packages (Emacs, Bitwarden, and NordVPN), but it was worth the moderate setup time, and now those get updated automatically with everything else.
