I am thinking of switching from Linux Mint to Fedora. I have always liked Fedora, but have been bitten by some BS like NVIDIA drivers not working and some programs only available as a .deb file (I know about alien… or do I?)
I love GNOME DE, has that modern “I work on a spaceship” feel.
I mostly do music production and some gaming, so pipewire seems intriguing.
Here is the real question: Should I got Silverblue? I just learned about distrobox, so maybe that is my solution for programs I cannot get through flatpak?
You can install silverblue, and then rebase to ublue ( universal-blue.org ). Specifically to the “silverblue-nvidia” variant, and you should get a nice silverblue experience without any of the nvidia struggles, as people at the ublue project take care of that stuff for you.
And yes, distrobox is the goto solution to run stuff that is basically ubuntu-only, or by extension bound to any distro variant / version and not flatpak. This includes graphical applications. Distrobox works great, I do all my work in it.
Oh, I totally misunderstood the OS. I was under the impression that using os-tree should be totally avoided for anything other than necessary system programs, and all other software should be installed with flatpaks or containers.
I now understand that using os-tree for some programs is inevitable, and I should embrace it, though still catiously to maintain as clean of an OS as possible for maximum longevity.
I was under the impression that using os-tree should be totally avoided for anything other than necessary system programs
Interaction with ostree directly shouldn’t occur that often; with sudo ostree admin pin *number* (and its -u option) probably being the commands your average Joe should interact with. You probably meant rpm-ostree.
and all other software should be installed with flatpaks or containers.
It’s indeed true that initially Fedora intended flatpaks should be preferred. If the software isn’t available there, then Toolbx(/Distrobox) is used to access it through a container. And if all else fails, then it’s layered through the rpm-ostree command.
I now understand that using os-tree for some programs is inevitable, and I should embrace it, though still catiously to maintain as clean of an OS as possible for maximum longevity.
You’re getting the drill! Though, I wonder why you weren’t able to rebase to uBlue and had to resort to installing the Nvidia drivers through RPM Fusion instead. It’s fine as long as it works, but I imagine that some issues might arise eventually. So consider sharing the steps you took so that the community might help out; perhaps even over at uBlue Discord. You could also just share it here if you will.
I think the key is restarting at every step it asks you to, and maybe after anything that seems major or is a prerequisite for another set of program installs. I mean, I got a black screen the first time, but after a hard reset, it just worked.
No doubt UBlue is probably a lot easier. I did not realize I could have just downloaded the ISO instead of trying to rebase, but I like what I am running.
Anyways, doing it the hard way is helping me learn the intricacies of an immutable system, so I am having fun.
Indeed, in your case acquiring uBlue through its ISO was probably the best option; but I’m glad to hear that it worked out in the end!
Anyways, doing it the hard way is helping me learn the intricacies of an immutable system, so I am having fun.
Well said!
Just in case; consider the following:
Pin your current working deployment with the aforementioned sudo ostree admin pin 0 command. After which it remains accessible regardless unless you unpin it later on. This should allow you a working deployment if all else fails and thus a safe haven to rely on.
I saw that the image was failing to build, so I took a chance and followed the RPMFUSION guide and installed it successfully. I am learning to use toolbox for CLI stuff, but now I am going to learn about Distrobox!!
To answer your question about lack of dock and system tray, I use the top left hot corner to snap windows in Activities often, and I launch mostly from the built in Applications menu. Don’t use the dock much. As for system tray, it’s a fairly minimal work computer so I boot it every day, run slack, browser, etc. and I know there’s nothing really on the background. Don’t need an icon for slack, it’s always on my screen. In my GNOME-based work environment it’s either running and I can see it or it’s closed.
The Windows style systray is redundant, I dont understand how you guys think you need it. Android style systray (system notifications) would be far better.
I’ve always found that the right click menu is the same for taskbar, systray, and app drawer. Main reason I say its redundant, at least with an Android like system the apps can display information and options in the notifications.
It was a panel that mimics a dock. I can’t remember if it was the existing task bar with modified settings or another panel that can be chosen. However, it’s so customizable that I got it to mimic the macOS dock almost perfectly without downloading anything else IIRC.
Out of the box, would only help searching shell commands that have been run, so for files, things like “vim file.txt”, which is obviously not usually how files are edited (you’d use the file browser in a text editor or IDE)
However if you find a way to list all files on your system by modified time, you can pipe it to fzf for a slick fuzzy find search.
I can’t tell you the number of times I have in fact edited files using vim even with a WM and DE. I just treat my laptop like it’s a server I connect directly to now
Oh, or even better how many times I used the terminal in VSC to vim edit something 😂
I use mostly pure GNOME on my PC. The missing system tray is very annoying, though I really don’t care about the missing dock or desktop icons. I start programs by searching for them, not by clicking on a desktop icon or in a dock. That’s my preferred method. And the alt+tab menu of GNOME is nice enough to find anything when I need it, together with having workspaces to organize everything.
I tried KDE, but it just felt more messy to me. For instance, I tried to move the bottom bar to the side of my screen, accidentally moved something on the bar itself, and then everything looked off and I couldn’t figure out how to get it back. It all felt a bit janky and unrefined. On some systems I also use i3, but that’s only for productivity. For daily use I prefer GNOME, where everything just seems to work.
The verified feature on flathub is a double edged sword, it makes me lean towards verified apps, even if the alternative is better and made by the original Dev ( but they just didn’t verify themselves )
To manage temporary files in Linux, a Bash script can move files untouched for 10 days to a timestamped subfolder, return modified files to the root, and delete files not modified for 90 days. Alternatively, a folder with symlinks to recently accessed files can be created using mkdir, find with -atime -7 to locate recently accessed files, and a while loop with ln -s to symlink each file into the folder. Both approaches help organize files based on access time to avoid clutter and remove stale temporary files. The Bash script offers more automation while the symlink folder provides a manual way to access recent files.
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