this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I just want to drop this here

https://projectbluefin.io/

Jorge Castro has been the head of this project and I am excited by his vision. Bluefin aims to be the immutable desktop distro with the most sane defaults that also supports Nvidia.

Give it a whirl!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Looks cool but like so fucking weird they gendered an os

[–] Happybara 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's a mascot for brand recognition purposes, just like Tux the penguin. I don't quite understand what the problem is. I feel like if I were to call anything about it weird, it would be the use of a derpy, chonky dinosaur rather than the gender of said derpasaurus.

[–] FutileRecipe 3 points 10 months ago

if I were to call anything about it weird, it would be the use of a derpy, chonky dinosaur

Bluefin is a Deinonychus antirrhopus, a theropod dinosaur whose name means "terrible claw". Discovered in the 1960s, she revolutionized our understanding of dinosaurs. Before Deinonychus, dinosaurs were often seen as slow, dim-witted creatures. However, she shattered these misconceptions, offering insight into the dynamic world of hot-blooded, rapidly evolving animals that were masters of their domain. We aim for our desktop to embody a similar nimbleness. Power and adaptability.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

And its always female, ships, cars, computers. Fucking weird

[–] AnUnusualRelic 3 points 10 months ago

SuSE is releasing one of those as well. It seems to be the trend nowadays.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Kinda great! Although Guix and nixos are more my thing these days.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If you are a modder that wants to do stuff like replace the kernel, add in rust coreutils etc, then I think NixOS is indeed better. Have not used it but really want to try.

Image based Distros are just perfect for people that want to have perfectly reproducible bugs, or in general not many.

It is a good community concept, but tbh a preset of shared Nix config files could do the same thing too, with ease. Just dont deviate from those configs and you will have multiple people with the same systems.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Exactly. The concept is great, but my Guix system (Nix fork from GNU) is already reproducible and capable of rollbacks and transactional upgrades (and declarative system configuration !)

The learning curve is quite steep tho (the Nix leaning curve is even higher, at least it used to be IMO). If the sway spin of Atomic Fedora was available earlier I probably wouldn't have switched tbh. Both solutions are great.

Overall I'm quite happy with my Guix configuration. I've got roughly the same configuration on all my systems with ease, all config files (also sway for example) in the same language: Guile Scheme (LISP dialect), and the whole thing is in git. I don't imagine going back to a regular distribution anytime soon.

[–] Neon 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

NixOS User here: what made you use Guix over NixOS?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Scheme is a more mature and more expressive language than Nix imo. And you can write your home configs in scheme too.

The differences aren't that big, nix is great but I find (at least I did two years ago) the documentation a bit confusing. Both are great. I like scheme a lot better than Nix (the language), and the tooling is a bit less confusing to me.

[–] Neon 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

And you can write your home configs in scheme too

so you have your own Version of Home-Manager as well?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I didn't know about home-manager, but it seems like it.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Damn, rust really embrace the "Hey, Can I copy your homework?" Meme. I like rust btw, it's just funny how often I see something along the line of "it's like X, but in rust!"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean coreutils in a memory safe language?

Rust is the currently most adopted C replacement

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Rust is the currently most adopted C replacement

Where's the data you're using to measure that?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology

This shows something else. The traditional languages are all more common than Rust.

I suppose Go could be a good competitor, and I read a thread comparing C=Go, C++=Rust.

I just see a lot more rust in many projects, and it is well integrated with GTK for example. I also know of several drivers and modules written in Rust.

At least in Linux, Go seems to be used for WebTech more than for other things.

I am interested in a discussion about that, as I would like to learn one of these languages, but Rust seems to have a better ecosystem with more adaption, ready GUI toolkits, a Linux Desktop, multiple GTK apps etc. in the making, while for example "Fyne", Go GUI toolkit (that I found in the Flatpak "Rymdport") doesnt even have Wayland support yet.

[–] refreeze 1 points 10 months ago

Agreed. I used to use Silverblue and it was very stable but did not solve all the problems that Nix addresses. Once you experience the first reinstall with NixOS you will wonder why we did things any other way. It's amazing to just run one command and have things set up exactly how you like.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I like them a lot, switched to Kinoite⏩uBlue: (Kinoite-main, -nokmods (until that got silently dropped), -main again; 37-39)⏩Secureblue kinoite-laptop-userns

The biggest Problem is that Fedoras Images are not usable.

  • Filemanager movie thumbnails dont work
  • Flatpak browsers are not feature-complete and probably not secure (because they can't create usernamespace-isolated processes for tabs)
  • they have no NVIDIA support
  • powerusers will miss ffmpeg

The idea of immutable images is, to have a base that most people dont need to change. You can, but the moment you add NVIDIA proprietary drivers or full ffmpeg, you are in unprotected territory again.

So I like the Distros for their reproducible bugs and future possibility to be a very secure base (you could just verify the hash of the root system to check for viruses). But they cannot be produced in the US.

Fedora is nice but just like with rpmfusion, ublue is the key part that makes it work. And on immutable images this cannot just be added in a welcome dialog, as you need massive overrides by default.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I can't find an open issue regarding security with flatpaks on librewolf https://codeberg.org/librewolf/issues/issues it would be nice if you could open one such that it may get adressed.

Just install ffmpeg in a distrobox or layer it if you desire

There's at least Fedora atomic with nvidia https://github.com/ublue-os/nvidia

Filemanager thumbnails - I usually don't use big icons (or thumbnails) hence, I don't remember it too well but that should depend on the file manager, right? And aren't there tools for thumbnail creation in case they are missing? (I remember something from my time when I used arch)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

And the Flatpak browser thing is complicated.

Chromium uses namespaces. Nowadays unprivileged user namespaces, but the legacy suid namespaces are still integrated.

If you want to run Chromium (and I think all Electron apps too) as Flatpak, you replace those namespaces with zypak, which instead isolates processes using flatpak and its seccomp filters.

These are the seccomp filters for every app though, so they are probably way too unrestricted. Also it has a small performance hit.

That is the reason why no Chromium Browser Flatpak is official.

Now the thing with Firefox is, I have no idea what isolation they use. Everyone says its less secure. And they adopted Flatpak as if it was nothing, without any comment on that topic.

The issue is that Flatpak uses a single seccomp filter for bubblewrap, that is used by every app. But browsers would need a different one, with just the added permission to create user namespaces.

Currently this is not even possible when using a seperate repo. Really, no idea. Bubblejail is an alternative with custom seccomp filters and usernamespace permission. But it is very different, uses system packages and is very alpha.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

You cant layer ffmpeg, you need to override-remove everything libav and then install everything new from rpmfusion. I did that, its a mess.

If you just want video playback thats just libavcodec-freeworld, thats why I specifically mentioned ffmpeg.

I am not a fan of Distrobox for small tools. For sure possible but unnecessary and the workflow is a pain. And trust me, I use it daily and even ran libvirt in a rootful one, virt-manager in a rootless one, connected over ssh.

There's at least Fedora atomic with nvidia https://github.com/ublue-os/nvidia

My point was that Fedoras product is unusable. Ublue is the solution, their main images are basically Fedora Atomic but fixed.

that should depend on the file manager, right?

No thats libavcodec-freeworld and ffmpegthumbs. Most movies you find on the open sea are not in libre Codecs.