I tried Silverblue.
And I wanted to run it without layering, cause everyone tells you to avoid it, since it kinda defeats the purpose of an atomic distro in the first place.
First of all, it was buggy. As an example, automatic updates didn’t work, I had to click the update button and reboot twice for it to actually apply, even though it was activated in the settings.
None of the docs helped (actually, there wasn’t any in-depth documentation at all). And no one had a solution besides “It should actually just work”.
That’s the main advantage (the devs test with the exact same system you run) gone right from the start.
Then Firefox is part of the base image, but it’s Fedora’s version, which doesn’t come with all codecs.
If you install Firefox from Flathub, you now have 2 Firefox’s installed, with identical icons in the GUI. So you need to hide one by deleting its desktop file. Except you can’t. So you have to copy it into your home directory and edit it with a text editor to hide the icon.
Then I went through all the installed programs to replace the Fedora version with the Flathub version, cause what’s the point of Flatpak if I’m using derivative versions? I want what the app’s dev made.
Then it was missing command line tools I’m used to. Installing them in a container didn’t work well cause they need access to the entire system.
Finally, I realized even Gnome Tweaks wasn’t part of the installation, and it isn’t available as Flatpak.
That’s the point where I tipped my hat and went back to Debian. Which isn’t atomic, but never gave me any issues in the first place.
Maybe it’s better now, I was on the previous version. Or maybe the Ublue flavours are better. But I don’t see any reason to start distro-hopping again after that first experience.
I tried Silverblue.
And I wanted to run it without layering, cause everyone tells you to avoid it, since it kinda defeats the purpose of an atomic distro in the first place.
First of all, it was buggy. As an example, automatic updates didn’t work, I had to click the update button and reboot twice for it to actually apply, even though it was activated in the settings.
None of the docs helped (actually, there wasn’t any in-depth documentation at all). And no one had a solution besides “It should actually just work”.
That’s the main advantage (the devs test with the exact same system you run) gone right from the start.
Then Firefox is part of the base image, but it’s Fedora’s version, which doesn’t come with all codecs.
If you install Firefox from Flathub, you now have 2 Firefox’s installed, with identical icons in the GUI. So you need to hide one by deleting its desktop file. Except you can’t. So you have to copy it into your home directory and edit it with a text editor to hide the icon.
Then I went through all the installed programs to replace the Fedora version with the Flathub version, cause what’s the point of Flatpak if I’m using derivative versions? I want what the app’s dev made.
Then it was missing command line tools I’m used to. Installing them in a container didn’t work well cause they need access to the entire system.
Finally, I realized even Gnome Tweaks wasn’t part of the installation, and it isn’t available as Flatpak.
That’s the point where I tipped my hat and went back to Debian. Which isn’t atomic, but never gave me any issues in the first place.
Maybe it’s better now, I was on the previous version. Or maybe the Ublue flavours are better. But I don’t see any reason to start distro-hopping again after that first experience.