bluefin

Fedora Silverblue for Ubuntu Expatriates

This image is considered Beta

A familiar(ish) Ubuntu desktop for Fedora Silverblue. It strives to cover these three use cases:

For end users it provides a system as reliable as a Chromebook with near-zero maintainance, with the power of Ubuntu and Fedora fused together
For developers we endeavour to provide the best cloud-native developer experience by enabling easy consumption of the industry's leading tools. These are included in dedicated bluefin-dx and bluefin-dx-nvidia images
For gamers we strive to deliver a world-class Flathub gaming experience

"Let's see what's out there." - Jean-Luc Picard

Usage

Download and install the ISO from here:
- Select "Install ublue-os/bluefin" from the menu
  - Choose "Install bluefin:38" if you have an AMD or Intel GPU
  - Choose "Install bluefin-nvidia:38" if you have an Nvidia GPU
- Follow the rest of the installation instructions

For existing Silverblue/Kinoite users

After you reboot you should pin the working deployment so you can safely rollback.

[AMD/Intel GPU users only] Open a terminal and rebase the OS to this image:

Bluefin:

 sudo rpm-ostree rebase ostree-unverified-registry:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:38

Bluefin DX:

 sudo rpm-ostree rebase ostree-unverified-registry:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin-dx:38

[Nvidia GPU users only] Open a terminal and rebase the OS to this image:

Bluefin:

 sudo rpm-ostree rebase ostree-unverified-registry:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin-dx-nvidia:38

Bluefin DX:

 sudo rpm-ostree rebase ostree-unverified-registry:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin-dx-nvidia:38

Reboot the system and you're done!

To revert back:

 sudo rpm-ostree rebase fedora:fedora/38/x86_64/silverblue

Check the Silverblue documentation for instructions on how to use rpm-ostree. We build date tags as well, so if you want to rebase to a particular day's release you can use the version number and date to boot off of that specific image:

sudo rpm-ostree rebase ostree-unverified-registry:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:37-20230310

The latest tag will automatically point to the latest build.

Features

This image heavily utilizes cloud-native concepts.

System updates are image-based and automatic. Applications are logically seperated from the system by using Flatpaks, and the CLI experience is contained within OCI containers:

For Users

Ubuntu-like GNOME layout
- Includes the following GNOME Extensions
  - Dash to Dock - for a more Unity-like dock
  - Appindicator - for tray-like icons in the top right corner
  - GSConnect - Integrate your mobile device with your desktop
  - Blur my Shell - for dat bling
GNOME Software with Flathub
- Use a familiar software center UI to install graphical software
Built on top of the the uBlue main image
- Extra udev rules for game controllers and other devices included out of the box
- All multimedia codecs included
- System designed for automatic staging of updates
  - If you've never used an image-based Linux before just use your computer normally
  - Don't overthink it, just shut your computer off when you're not using it

For Developers

Built-in Ubuntu user space
- Ctrl-Alt-u - will launch an Ubuntu image inside a terminal via Distrobox, your home directory will be transparently mounted
- A BlackBox terminal is used just for this configuration
- Use this container for your typical CLI needs or to install software that is not available via Flatpak or Fedora
- Optional ubuntu-toolbox image with Python, NPM, and other convenience development tools. just distrobox-bluefin to get started
- Optional universal image with Python, Node.js, JavaScript, TypeScript, C++, Java, C#, F#, .NET Core, PHP, Go, Ruby, and and Conda. just distrobox-universal to get started
- Refer to the Distrobox documentation for more information on using and configuring custom images
- GNOME Terminal
  - Ctrl-Alt-t - will launch a host-level GNOME Terminal if you need to do host-level things in Fedora (you shouldn't need to do much).
Cloud Native Tools
- kind - Run a Kubernetes cluster on your machine. Do a kind create cluster on the host to get started!
- kubectl - Administer Kubernetes Clusters
- Podman-Docker - Automatically aliases the docker command to podman
Nix-powered Development Experience (Alpha)
- Introducing Fleek - a user-friendly wrapper around Nix and Nix Home Manager
- Run /usr/bin/ublue-nix-install to get started, then fleek help to learn more
- This feature is experimental and not considered ready for production. It is for experienced users only, but is improving quickly
Quality of Life Improvements
- systemd shutdown timers adjusted to 15 seconds
- Tailscale for VPN
- Just task runner for post-install automation tasks
- zsh available as an optional shell, use just zsh and follow the prompts to configure it

bluefin-dx - The Bluefin Developer Experience

Dedicated developer image with bundled tools. It endevaours to be the world's most powerful cloud native developer environment. :) It includes everything in the base image plus:

VSCode and related tools
virt-manager and associated tooling
Cockpit and goodies for local and remote management
podman extras (docker compat tools and convenience shortcuts too)
LXC/LXD
A collection of well curated monospace fonts
hashicorp repo included and enabled
- Too many to list
- None of them installed by default, but you can just add them to the Containerfile as you need them
Kubernetes Tools
- helm, ko, flux, minio-client -- if it's an incubated project we intend to add it where appropriate

Roadmap and Future Features

Fedora 38 will be the initial release and will be considered Beta
Fedora 39 is the target for an initial GA release

These are currently unimplemented ideas that we plan on adding:

Provide a :gts tag aliased to the Fedora -1 release for an approximation of Ubuntu's release cadence
Provide a :lts tag derived from CentOS Stream for a more enterprise-like cadence
Firecracker - help wanted with this!

Applications

Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Extension Manager, Libreoffice, DejaDup, FontDownloader, Flatseal, and the Celluloid Media Player
Core GNOME Applications installed from Flathub
- GNOME Calculator, Calendar, Characters, Connections, Contacts, Evince, Firmware, Logs, Maps, NautilusPreviewer, TextEditor, Weather, baobab, clocks, eog, and font-viewer
All applications installed per user instead of system wide, similar to openSUSE MicroOS. Thanks for the inspiration Team Green!

Recommended Extensions

The authors recommend the following extensions if you'd like to round out your experience. Use the included "Extensions Manager" application to search for these extensions, everything you need to get them to run is already included:

(Note: Installing extensions via extensions.gnome.org won't work, the extensions must be installed via this application)

Tailscale Status for VPN
Pano for clipboard management
Desktop Cube if you really want to go retro

Verification

These images are signed with sigstore's cosign. You can verify the signature by downloading the cosign.pub key from this repo and running the following command:

cosign verify --key cosign.pub ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin

Building Locally

Clone this repository and cd into the working directory

git clone https://github.com/ublue-os/bluefin.git
cd bluefin

Make modifications if desired
Build the image (Note that this will download and the entire image)
```
podman build . -t bluefin
```
Podman push to a registry of your choice.

Rebase to your image to wherever you pushed it:

sudo rpm-ostree rebase ostree-unverified-registry:whatever/bluefin:latest

Frequently Asked Questions

What about codecs?

Everything you need is included. You will need to configure Firefox for hardware acceleration

How do I get my GNOME back to normal Fedora defaults?

We set the default dconf keys in /etc/dconf/db/local, removing those keys and updating the database will take you back to the fedora default:

sudo rm -f /etc/dconf/db/local.d/01-ublue
sudo dconf update

If you prefer a vanilla GNOME installation check out silverblue-main or silverblue-nvidia for a more upstream experience.

Should I trust you?

This is all hosted, built, and pushed on GitHub. As far as if I'm a trustable fellow, here's my bio. If you've made it this far then hopefully you've come to the conclusion on how easy it would be to build all of this on your own trusted machinery. 😄