What would it take for the Atomic Desktops to be the default option in Fedora?
I tried to answer that question in my talk at this year's Flock to Fedora conference.
You can watch the recording (from the livestream) at: https://www.youtube.com/live/LvkFho1l238?t=7391s
Get the slides at: https://cfp.fedoraproject.org/flock-to-fedora-2025/talk/8HKWCC/
The wonderful folks from the french speaking Fedora community have just published an interview with yours truly where we talk about Fedora, Atomic Desktops, CoreOS and KDE.
It's in french and you can find it on linuxfr.org: https://linuxfr.org/news/20-ans-de-fedora-fr-quatrieme-entretien-avec-timothee-contributeur-des-systemes-immuables-et-kde
I've completely reworked how I build the sysexts for Fedora Atomic Desktops, Fedora CoreOS and other image based Fedora systems.
We now have a pretty website listing them: https://extensions.fcos.fr
This is still an unofficial/experimental project but it has been working well for me for a while now.
Next step: writing a manager for all those sysexts to make installing/removing and updating them easier.
I will be presenting at Flock to Fedora in Prague this June about the Fedora Atomic Desktops, the future plans and what would be needed before we can make them the default option.
If anyone is interested in sharing an hotel room with me to save on travel cost, feel free to reach out privately. I'll book the hotel soon.
The Fedora 42 Atomic Desktops are out! You can find all the details in the Fedora magazine article: https://fedoramagazine.org/whats-new-for-fedora-atomic-desktops-in-fedora-42/
We also have experimental bootable container images for Fedora Asahi Remix.
#NixOS is interesting. Pretty reliable (not as much as #AtomicDesktops in my noob tests) while also performant
Note that such old hardware will have #microcode vulnerabilities and locking it down will further slow it down. At least thinking of #spectre or #meltdown (not sure if hyperthreading was even thought of back then)
For users who want to try Linux, I recommend this: Do not listen to people who tell you to use Ubuntu, Linux Mint or other variants. They all use the same complex and often breaking mechanisms, and can cause a lot of hassle.
Instead, I recommend these systems:
- #Fedora #AtomicDesktops
- #UniversalBlue #Aurora #Bluefin #Bazzite
- #HeliumOS
Looking forward to #SerpentOS too!
These systems are reliable like an Android phone, while offering you more freedom.
Here is how you can keep your system updated while using a pinned #kernel version:
https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/7113
Just not updating the entire system is not really a good option.
I need to try again but with my tests kernel 6.13.5 (with the supposed fix) did not fix the issue in #KDE #Okular #Flatpak
No idea if this is a different issue, doubt it kinda. Happens on 6.12.13 too, unlike the other apps
I'll be at FOSDEM this weekend! I'll be giving a talk with Allison on composefs and how it fits well for image based systems: https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5191--signed-sealed-and-delivered-with-ukis-and-composefs/
Feel free to reach out if you want to meet and chat about Fedora CoreOS, Atomic Desktops, sysexts, KDE or Flatpaks. I'll likely hang around the image-based, container or Rust dev rooms.
Fedora 41 has been released! Here are the release notes for the Fedora 41 Atomic Desktops: https://tim.siosm.fr/blog/2024/10/30/fedora-atomic-desktops-41/
I'll also post it as a Fedora Magazine article later.
Bootable Containers are the future of Fedora Atomic Desktops and we presented that at @allsystemsgo.
Introduction by @cgwalters and Ben: https://media.ccc.de/v/all-systems-go-2024-266-bootc-generating-an-ecosystem-around-bootable-oci-containers
Then take a look at how we could use sysext's to improve the local layering story with @tormath1: https://media.ccc.de/v/all-systems-go-2024-313-waiter-an-os-please-with-some-sysext-sprinkled-on-top
And then finally dive into Trusted Boot with UKI and composefs with @jbtrystram: https://media.ccc.de/v/all-systems-go-2024-309-the-road-to-a-trusted-and-measured-boot-chain-in-bootable-containers
Manual action needed to resolve boot failure for Fedora Atomic Desktops and Fedora IoT.
Since the 39.20240617.0 and 40.20240617.0 updates for Atomic Desktops and the 40.20240617.0 update for IoT, systems with Secure Boot enabled may fail to boot if they have been installed before Fedora Linux 40.
I'm at #DevConf_CZ ! Come find me around the Fedora booth if you want to talk about Fedora Atomic Desktops, Fedora CoreOS or Fedora Asahi Atomic. Or ping me on Matrix. #Fedora #CoreOS #AtomicDesktops
Just in time for the weekend, I've completed the initial work to create Live installation ISOs for Fedora Atomic Desktops!
This is using the Live ISO support in Kiwi.
We're making progress on Fedora Atomic Desktops support for Fedora Asahi Remix!
Initial experimental images and instructions coming soon!
Ptyxis, a toolbox/distrobox container aware terminal from Christian Hergert is now available on Flathub!
Due to a bug in rpm-ostree, the '/etc/[g]shadow[-]' files in Fedora CoreOS, Fedora IoT and Fedora Atomic Desktops have the world-readable bit set.
To fix impacted systems immediately, run the following command as root:
$ chmod --verbose 0000 /etc/shadow /etc/gshadow /etc/shadow- /etc/gshadow-
For more details, notably the full list of affected versions, see: https://github.com/coreos/rpm-ostree/security/advisories/GHSA-2m76-cwhg-7wv6
So I recently ran across this post and thread by @vwbusguy, and I would like to try to address some of the questions/misconceptions/etc that come up in the thread.
If you have questions, please, ask. What we do with #Kalpa isn't *identical* to what #Fedora does with their #AtomicDesktops, but many of the concepts for the end user are going to be similar/the same.
Fedora 39 has been released!
I gave a talk with @me at the Fedora 39 release party about what's new and what's next for Fedora Atomic Desktops (Silverblue, Kinoite, Sericea and Onyx) and wrote the summary in this blog post: https://tim.siosm.fr/blog/2023/11/22/fedora-atomic-desktops-39/