Bluefin

This image is considered Beta

A familiar(ish) Ubuntu desktop for Fedora Silverblue. It strives to cover these three use cases:

• For end users it provides a system as reliable as a Chromebook with near-zero maintenance, with the power of Ubuntu and Fedora fused together.
• For developers we endeavour to provide the best cloud-native developer experience by enabling easy consumption of the industry's leading tools. These are included in dedicated bluefin-dx and bluefin-dx-nvidia images.
• For gamers we strive to deliver a world-class Flathub gaming experience.

"Let's see what's out there." - Jean-Luc Picard

Usage

1. Download and install the ISO from here:
2. Select "Install ublue-os/bluefin" from the menu.
   • Choose "Install bluefin:38" if you have an AMD or Intel GPU.
   • Choose "Install bluefin-nvidia:38" if you have an Nvidia GPU.
3. Follow the rest of the installation instructions.

Rebase

For existing Silverblue/Kinoite users AMD/Intel GPU users only:

1. After you reboot you should pin the working deployment so you can safely rollback.
2. Open a terminal and rebase the OS to this image:

Bluefin:

sudo rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:38

Bluefin Developer Experience:

sudo rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin-dx:38

Nvidia GPU users only

1. open a terminal and rebase the OS to this image:

   Bluefin:

   sudo rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin-nvidia:38
   

   Bluefin Developer Experience:

   sudo rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin-dx-nvidia:38
   

2. Reboot the system and you're done!

Revert

To revert back run:

sudo rpm-ostree rebase fedora:fedora/38/x86_64/silverblue

Check the Silverblue documentation for instructions on how to use rpm-ostree.

We build date tags as well, so if you want to rebase to a particular day's release you can use the version number and date to boot off of that specific image:

sudo rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:37-20230310

The latest tag will automatically point to the latest build.

Features

This image heavily utilizes cloud-native concepts.

System updates are image-based and automatic. Applications are logically separated from the system by using Flatpaks, and the CLI experience is contained within OCI containers.

For Users

• 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.

Roadmap and Future Features

• Fedora 38 will be the initial release and will be considered Beta.
• Fedora 39 is the target for an initial GA release.

These are currently unimplemented ideas that we plan on adding:

• Provide a :gts tag aliased to the Fedora -1 release for an approximation of Ubuntu's release cadence.
• Provide a :lts tag derived from CentOS Stream for a more enterprise-like cadence.
• Firecracker - help wanted with this!

Applications

• Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Extension Manager, Libreoffice, DejaDup, FontDownloader, Flatseal, and the Celluloid Media Player.
• Core GNOME Applications installed from Flathub:
• GNOME Calculator, Calendar, Characters, Connections, Contacts, Evince, Firmware, Logs, Maps, NautilusPreviewer, TextEditor, Weather, baobab, clocks, eog, and font-viewer.
• All applications installed per user instead of system wide, similar to openSUSE MicroOS. Thanks for the inspiration Team Green!

Recommended Extensions

The authors recommend the following extensions if you'd like to round out your experience. Use the included "Extensions Manager" application to search for these extensions; everything you need to get them to run is already included:

Note

Installing extensions via extensions.gnome.org won't work, the extensions must be installed via this application.

• Tailscale Status for VPN.
• Pano for clipboard management.
• Desktop Cube if you really want to go retro.

Frequently Asked Questions

What about codecs?

Everything you need is included. You will need to configure Firefox for hardware acceleration

How do I get my GNOME back to normal Fedora defaults?

We set the default dconf keys in /etc/dconf/db/local, removing those keys and updating the database will take you back to the fedora default:

sudo rm -f /etc/dconf/db/local.d/01-ublue
sudo dconf update

If you prefer a vanilla GNOME installation check out silverblue-main or silverblue-nvidia for a more upstream experience.

Starship is not for me, how do I disable it?

You can remove or comment the line below in /etc/bashrc to restore the default prompt.

eval "$(starship init bash)"

Should I trust you?

This is all hosted, built, and pushed on GitHub. As far as if I'm a trustable fellow, here's my bio. If you've made it this far, then hopefully you've come to the conclusion on how easy it would be to build all of this on your own trusted machinery.

Contributor Metrics