Where to start? What to do?

General
1

Hello you blue people, thanks for all the great work done so far and for setting up a discourse forum.

I’m asking for advice getting started and a basic roadmap.
I’ve used Linux on laptops for 20+ years with regular distros and have only tried microOS and distroboxes briefly some years ago so help is needed.

Hoping it’ll be a ansible- or Nix- like experience with a declarative image config using any of your magic wands :slight_smile:

// 1 - building from scratch

I want to build ‘my own distro’ once and for all and avoid anymore time spent with tedious post-install tasks.

Currently confused about https://blue-build.org, https://github.com/ublue-os/image-template and bootc.

Are any of those suited for single user setup with various laptops and occasional friends and family IT duties, in some cases setting up a chromebook-ish linux computer for them as well?.

// 2 - hardware

I’m using older intel retina macbooks with rather old Nvidia and AMD GPU; slightly newer Surface Books with almost beefy Nvidia GPU, touchscreen and pen, liberated by linux-surface with a kernel on its own; and touchscreen intel chromebooks liberated by the chrultrabook project.

No disk encryption nor Secureboot or TPM workarounds needed.

// 3 - user space

Basic and trivial stuff, no VPN or gaming requirements. I’m on Niri and Noctalia.

DaVinci, Darktable, chainner and similar media tools on the Nvidia Surface with a graphic tablet (linux drivers are provided). May need some camera vendor tools from wine/winboat/VM.

I’ve tried Sunshine/Moonlight as a virtual KVM with the (superior) macbook keyboard and trackpad controlling the Surface Book by ethernet. Haven’t yet figured out how to set up virtual display, ie. Surface Book as host, macbook as client and its display used as extended desktop from the Surface Book.

// 4 - no NAS

Using external USB SSD and NVME drives to share and store data.

Clonezilla/Rescuezilla and rusty old HDDs are still killing it over here as main backup tool. Feel free to suggest futuristic alternatives.

Any comments appreciated, br

2

https://github.com/wayblueorg/wayblue (courtesy of https://github.com/Malix-Labs/Awesome-Atomic) have a niri image, tempted to try that first

This repo takes the BlueBuild template and builds out minimally-opinionated Fedora Atomic operating system images for the following wayland compositors

3

anyone?

is Discord mandatory?

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4

Hello! … elllo ello ello :waving_hand: :rofl:

(Perhaps the General category doesn’t get visitors as often as before? Aurora and Bluefin moved discussions to github.)

Anyway, since nobody else said anything yet, I will just mention that if you like Niri you will probably be interested in Zirconium, or if you do need to make a custom image, now there is also finpilot. If you do go the custom image route, Universal Blue’s Discord may be a good place to ask for help about that.

5

we don’t take kindly to strangers in Facepunch!? Nor saviours!! :):cowboy_hat_face:

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6

thanks, Zirconium came up earlier today, they call their Niri spin Hawaii - https://github.com/zirconium-dev/zirconium-hawaii

checking out finpilot ASAP

I guess further efforts boils down to how easy/hard/impossible it might be to build a Surface image with that out of tree kernel

Otherwise I’ll probably keep these laptops on Cachy, maybe tinker with containers and distrobox there and install bulletproof vanilla Bluefin for friends and family

And rebasing is a bit tight ATM as my 5G data plan is capped to 150GB/month until June and the only alternative till then is the local library :slight_smile:

7

Zirconium Hawaii is FreedesktopSDK + Niri. (similar concept as Bluefin Dakota)
Zirconium is Fedora + Niri. (akin to regular Bluefin)

For friends and family Bluefin and Aurora are the way to go! :sauropod: :rocket: zero maintenance for the win :+1:

8

It’s been really fun to follow the breadcrumbs of the project while trying to figure out what’s going on and why.

Seems like new architecture directions appeared once or twice per year up until Dakota and Buildstream and ooops Fedora we might go distroless now, see ya :slight_smile:

It also seems that crossovers between Universal Blue, BlueBuild, VanillaOS, FreedesktopSDK and whatever the cloud native tools are called are straightforward at this phase. Makes me hopeful for future desktop Linux options and slightly sad how obvious the packaging struggle is for traditional distros.

Matt @TheLinuxCast nailed it in his Bluefin review (‘it’s fantastic!’) with the ‘Linux as a hobby vs. a tool’ phrase. Or Jorge’s one-liner about users don’t install an OS, they turn on the machine they’ve bought (or been given by a school or workplace).

I’m on ChromeOS while visiting discourse (with a Google account as AUTH sign-on) and the touchscreen and pen (Acer Spin) just works, also in tent mode, also in portrait/landscape switching and a touch keyboard appears when needed. Suspend and hibernation works, fans never roar, RAM never clogs.

Maybe it’s naive to expect a global one-size-fits-all-kernel Android-like experience on desktop Linux. Some Windows and macOS users may face sys admin tasks and version conflicts for their config as well.