uBlue Linux: Immutable Fedora With Batteries Included

Key Takeaways

over the past couple of weeks I have seen a few too many people tell me about you blue and by that I mean more than one because as of a few weeks ago I had no idea this project existed and then all of a sudden people are telling me they are running it I thought it was some fancy nudistro that I just happened to miss the news on but it's not actually new it's been around for quite a while previously existing at this repo here a familiar-ish Ubuntu desktop for Fedora silverblue and people have been talking about it here and there since at least a year ago and then eventually moving over to a new GitHub org now it's at you blue OS but the important thing isn't this the important thing is about two weeks ago they started shipping a test ISO this is a pre-production alpha product and should not be relied on for a system you actually want to be stable but a lot of people are suddenly relying on it okay all of that sounds cool but what even is you blue well what it isn't is a distro at least in the traditional sense what you blue stands for is universal blue this is a set of custom images based on Fedora used for replacing the images used on things like silver blue Kino away kenoi whatever you say the name is and then use these images instead now when I say image I'm not talking about pictures I mean a snapshot of your system an image of the system we are talking about a mutable Linux distros and the goal of the pre-made images is basically to be Fedora with the batteries included Fedora with all of the extra stuff you need to make it reasonable to use in a modern context now as it stands there are 15 different images these are broken down into two categories Main and Nvidia where the Nvidia ones are used for NVIDIA GPU users and then main for AMD and Intel and then possibly in the future if needed there'll be support for other things as well with images marked as main adding things like Hardware acceleration and codecs distro box for terminal CLI and user package installation a selection of udev rules and service units these are just general things that are nice to have if you want to go and have a look at all of them go ahead and do so we're not going to do so here but these are going to be here lib wrap bag to configure supported mice via Piper this is basically the general way to configure mice it works for Logitech and a bunch of other companies various other tools check out the complete package list when I checked this last time the page was dead the page is still dead the docs are still a work in progress uh sets automatic staging of updates for the system sets flat packs to update twice a day and then everything else desktop artwork Etc remains stock so you can use this as a good starting image now this is by no means an exhaustive list of General main changes and doesn't even remotely include the changes made to the individual desktop images now with the Nvidia images all of these main changes are also made with the inclusion of some Nvidia specific changes like the inclusion of multiple Nvidia driver streams Cuda support container runtime support secure boot Hardware accelerated video playback SC Linux support and multi-gpu support with super gfx CTL and alongside these changes the individual desktop images the ones you're actually going to be using make their own additional changes one of those images being Bluefin this is Fedora silver blue for Ubuntu expatriates what it basically does is takes what silver blue does and then Builds on top of it a more ubuntu-like experience that doesn't mean using snaps everywhere but you can go and use them if you want to what it means is giving you a like a gnome that is more a bunch you like so Ubuntu doesn't run stock genome but for Dora silver blue does this includes a bunch of extra extensions to make it feel a little bit more familiar but along with this including something nice with distro box a shortcut to load yourself into an Ubuntu user space so you can be running this Fedora based system and then doing everything you do on a day-to-day basis and because this is inside of distro box you can go and install packages and anything else you want to do like you would on any regular system now if you don't know what distro box is I highly recommend you watch my video but for now basically what it is is a program to let you run a distro in a container this is not a virtual machine it is running on Native Hardware but it's separate from the rest your system so you can go and install things in this box and not affect anything outside of it but these containers are fairly open so the programs in that box can still run on files in your home directory but if you don't like the Ubuntu box and maybe you want something from the Aur you can go and spin up an Arch Linux box and do exactly that and the nice thing about distro box and how open it is is you can even run GUI applications from these boxes now Bluefin is one of the older concepts for the project but it's by no means the only image set available there are also things like Buzzard a gaming Focus build of You Blue OS with Arch distro box images for gaming Nvidia support and future support for valve's steam deck we have things like kin away a base Keen away main image with batteries included we have lxqt we have mate we have just regular old silver blue this is silver blue without all of the extra Ubuntu things and there's things like vauxite which I believe is the xfce image but why you even bothered with all this why not grab something like Kino away like silver blue and then just layer on the additional packages you need to get the functionality you want package layering is basically you have an immutable distro like silver blue and then you can add additional packages on top of that the issue with package layering is when you go and update your system so you go and swap into a new image all of those packages need to then be layered on top of the new image the more packages you have layered the slower your updates are going to be so if you need the program anyway why not just skip the whole layering step and then have it be a part of your image and that's why everything I've said so far is basically just the beginning you blue also wants to help you make your own custom image now the documentation for this is currently you know a little bit lacking this is very early in the Project's life but the goal is to encourage Jesus you want something to be completely custom to be able to make something completely custom the idea with things like silver blue like Kino and things like that a lot of people think they are really locked down and limit the amount of customization you can do they don't the way the customization is done is just very very different from a regular traditional system so this is going to help you go and do that and guide you to having your own custom images and this image here basically demonstrates the model the architecture whatever term you want to use of how the different images link into each other so we start with the Upstream for Dora images and from that the opinionated you blue main is Created from this you can either use main directly in the case of like you know Bluefin and things like that or you can go down one more step and then use the Nvidia version or use the rock conversion if that existed or any other architecture that might need to be supported but from this there is also starting point starting point is a starting point for custom images and if you're a tinkerer you can use this gun make your own image and have it work exactly the way you want it to work to anyone using an immutable distro it should have been pretty obvious that custom images already could have been made the only issue is they're not really well documented and it's really hard to get into it if this can actually make it easier at least approachable I think that's a really good goal and I think a lot more people would be willing to try out an immutable system I don't really care for it but maybe on like a capture PC or something like that I actually would go and use it now one thing I haven't addressed is something that sounds really interesting mentioned on the home page that being these images reflect a more Cloud native approach to running Linux on your desktop that sounds you know really fancy oh Cloud native Cloud that all sounds real weird and the dev has a 16 minute video going into all the details about what cloud native means what it means to the user all that stuff but basically Cloud native is just Giga nerd speak for you have a core OS that is Rock Solid this core OS the user never touches and then everything you want to do on that OS is done in in containers whether that's flat packs or distro box or anything else out there and this is a very common approach when working with web servers generally you'll have a core OS that you don't touch and then everything you do on the OS is done in things like Docker Docker is the technology behind distro box so it's taking this Cloud concept and rather than doing it on a remote server it is done natively on your Hardware now I know a lot of people are really not a fan of containers and if that's the case this is not the project for you but for those who are this might be interesting to have a look at and one other thing I didn't address is the iso if the iso is so new how is the project is two years old and how will people actually using it well keep in mind this is not a regular Linux distro this is an image based on Fedora and one of the nice things with these image-based systems is you can swap in and out any compatible image if you're using silver blue for example you can get rid of silver blue and replace it with the kinoy image or some Custom Image or anything else out there and that's exactly what was being done in the past in the past this was just the image and you were expected to install something like silver blue and then swap in the image and there's actually still instructions on how to do that over on the website if we go over to images this Command right here RPM os3 os3 dash unverified dash registry uh colon ghcr dot IO slash the name the thing it's pretty straightforward but what the iso does is removes the need to have something already installed what it's going to do is set up the system for you and get the image loaded in so it makes it a lot more approachable now I didn't hear about it from here but apparently when the iso came out it got a bit of attention over on Reddit when that happened it kind of popped off it's now up to a hundred thousand image pulls which is you know quite a lot for a project that a couple of weeks ago basically nobody knew about this is absolutely not a project for me and it may not be a project for you but I'm really interested in it new and exciting ways for using Linux and I knew without a doubt that distro box was going to open up a bunch of random doors for people that have interesting ideas and I'm glad to see my prediction came true I think this is a really cool project and if you do as well go and check it out go check out the website all that stuff is in the description down below and let me know are you using you blue are you using silver blue just regularly are you using some other random system out there that sounds pretty cool I would love to know so if you like the video go and like the video and if you really like the video and you want to become one of these amazing people over here check out the patreon scrub Linked In the description down below that's gonna be it for me and if you didn't notice the website is you blew it which is a great URL [Applause] foreign [Music]