I’m considering trying out an immutable distro after using Tumbleweed for the last 6 years.

The two major options for me seem to be Fedora Kinoite or uBlue Aurora-dx

My understanding is that universal-blue is a downstream of Fedora Atomic

So, the points in favor of Kinoite is sticking closer to upstream, however it seems like I would need to layer quite a few packages. My understanding is that this is discouraged in an rpm-ostree setup, particularly due to update time and possible mismatches with RPMFusion

uBlue Aurora-dx seems to include a lot of the additional support I’d need - ROCm, distrobox, virt-manager, libratbag, media codecs, etc. however I’m unclear how mature the project is and whether it will be updated in a timely manner long term

I’m curious what the community thinks between the two as a viable option

  • boredsquirrel
    1•6 months ago

    Distrobox updates automatically

    True, forgot that you use topgrade

    Atomic Fedora should not have Firefox in image

    There are many relevant issues and it is not a clear choice.

    Irrelevant. Not everybody does.

    Yeah and nobody knows about user namespaces or seccomp filters. This is about at least 2 user groups and one is not necessarily more important than another.

    It is again not a clear choice.

    a way to continue to prevent it, I will.

    * in your opinionated images, I hope.

    You start to sound like a GrapheneOS dev. It makes no sense to prevent users from reinstalling removed packages.

    Which btw also include the Fedora Flathub repository.

    • boredsquirrel
      1•6 months ago

      You also didnt answer to the security issue of removing an entire sandboxing layer, or to the point about not being able to upgrade Distroboxes.

      Do you solve the second problem by building a latest distrobox container following the uBlue releases?

      • @[email protected]
        1•6 months ago

        We solve this problem by treating distroboxes as cattle and not as pets. Blow them away at any time.

        • boredsquirrel
          1•6 months ago

          So what happens to the apps installed?

          And what about running different distros in the same homedir, and dotfile clashes?

          • @[email protected]
            2•6 months ago

            Use the distrobox assemble command, that’ll let you have an ini file with all the stuff you want and then when the assemble command runs it’ll remake the entire thing. Then just toss the assemble in cron and you’ll always have a fresh container with your exact setup.

    • @[email protected]
      1•6 months ago

      Which btw also include the Fedora Flathub repository.

      We no longer touch the repos as Fedora is now in agreement with using Flathub.

      You start to sound like a GrapheneOS dev. It makes no sense to prevent users from reinstalling removed packages.

      It’s for user security. I have no interest in debating this decision, my reasons are outlined.

      • boredsquirrel
        1•6 months ago

        It’s for user security.

        As said, this has pros and cons. I will try the Distrobox method though.