j0rge

I'm the author of the blog post and a former sysadmin, there's really no maintenance to do with flatpaks, not having to deal with traditional package manager issues have removed that problem completely from my life.

Distros may or may not provide this functionality, but on my systems they're set up for zero maintenance of the OS base image and the flatpaks via service units and then I don't have to do anything.

Here maybe it's easier if I just paste in the differences:

• 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 that bling

• GNOME Software with Flathub:

  • Use a familiar software center UI to install graphical software

• Built on top of the the Universal Blue 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

• Starship is enabled by default to give you a nice shell prompt

• Solaar - included for Logitech mouse management along with libratbagd

• Tailscale - included for VPN along with wireguard-tools

• zsh and fish optional

• Built-in Ubuntu user space

• Ctrl-Alt-u - will launch an Ubuntu image inside a terminal via Distrobox and your home directory will be transparently mounted for the Ubuntu image to access

• 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, and other convenience development tools. just distrobox-bluefin to get started. To configure just follow the guide.

• 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

• just assemble shortcut to declaratively build distroboxes defined in /etc/distrobox/distrobox.ini

• 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).

The difference between silverblue and your image is that silverblue is signed by fedora and yours isn’t.

Of course Fedora only signs Fedora images, we sign our own images.

There’s no reason for anyone but you to use the image. Even if I were to us tailscale and fish, I’d be better off with silverblue.

Then use Silverblue! If you don't understand the features of something then you might not be the target audience!

This is the way I set it up or you could have any terminal that supports a custom command on launch do it: https://distrobox.privatedns.org/useful_tips.html#using-distrobox-as-main-cli

Yeah, here's the instructions I use: https://distrobox.privatedns.org/useful_tips.html#using-distrobox-as-main-cli

I just set mine up to always go into the toolbox image and then I have all the tools I have in there, that way it's transparent and fast, you shouldn't even notice that it's there.