this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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Fedora Atomic is the bomb (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by marcie@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
59 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I've been feeling gushy about my setup lately, I think I've finally found my home on Linux. For decades I've distrohopped each year and never was really happy with it all, but Fedora Atomic has changed that.

Some things I can do with Fedora Atomic that I cannot do with other Linux distros:

  • I can rebase to Bazzite for gaming performance when I feel like having a long gaming session.

  • I can rebase to Secureblue when I think I will not be gaming and would prefer a more secure linux setup.

  • I can update my system and not have to worry about special instructions, its extremely stable. Many times in the past, running a small ma-and-pa distro with most things pre-configed for performance would end with it breaking after a couple of major updates. This isn't true for configs like Bazzite and Secureblue, they are remarkably stable across many major updates due to how rpm-ostree functions.

  • Distrobox and Flatpak are more than enough at this stage for most programs and they help you avoid making too many alterations to the base image, greatly speeding up the swaps between major images.

The kicker? Your user configs and home files are never changed when you 'image hop'. It always feels like you just installed a fresh distro whenever you upgrade, and the performance benefits are noticeable. You don't have to tinker and do the same changes over and over, its all handled for you by rpm-ostree.

10/10 this is the future of Linux. I hope for a future where I can rebase entire Linux distros while maintaining my configs with one simple command, but for now, Fedora Atomic is fantastic.

The downsides:

  • There is one major downside, and its that all of your system files are read-only. Personally, I've found a dozen ways to get around this, it requires thinking inside the Distrobox. It is a notable issue for many people, though. This means you cannot make specific tweaks without making a whole new image for yourself. Though in practice, I have found the ecosystem has grown a lot. Other people have already made the best tweaks available for you with only a few simple commands.

  • Rpm-ostree also is slow to update because its essentially building a whole git tree to make sure your updates never break and are as stable as possible. You also have to reboot each time you alter it, which can be annoying, but if you stick to flatpaks and distroboxes, this issue is mitigated significantly.

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[–] Kirk@startrek.website 3 points 9 hours ago

10/10 this is the future of Linux

Totally agree

[–] Mwa@lemm.ee 1 points 7 hours ago

I never see the cons (excluding nixos) being that only a few desktops(eg kde,gnome,i3 and budgie) are offered compared to mutable distros

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I've updated enterprise Linux machines automatically for decades. The score is tens of thousands of upgrades, 1 problem I caused, 1 packaging glitch.

You don't need to take on risky drek like flatpaks to get there. It's one command in enterprise and you're kinda done forever.

Glad you like your setup. I hope it works for you and you never learn the risks of flatpaks.

[–] rmrf@lemmy.ml 5 points 9 hours ago

I was gonna comment this, decided not to, then decided the info should be part of this thread either for OP or future readers, so here goes:

Enterprise Linux distributions are unbeatable for their purpose. To your point, I've never in my entire career had even the smallest issue maintaining one, they're wonderful. They achieve this, though, by being a stable, truly versioned release that will never see anything beyond minor upgrades. The reason why nobody recommends server distros for gaming is because of hardware compatibility and library support, and you end up maintaining more of your own junk anyway. Got the latest gpu? Great, compile your drivers.

Enterprise Linux distros are awesome and the most painless Linux experience imaginable, as well as a great workstation experience too BUT they typically are among the worst options for gaming if you want a simple system.

[–] synestia@lemmy.ml 4 points 12 hours ago

Care to elaborate on 'the risks of flatpak'. If you are refering to the practice of people using unofficial flatpaks: Yes I think that poses a certain risk because you are adding an additional party to your threat model.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

EL 7 is EL 7. But that time is over

[–] Jaberw0cky@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I agree it is great, but am I the only one running Opensuse MicroOS?

[–] HayadSont@discuss.online 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (2 children)

Totally get why you'd ask if you're the only one on openSUSE MicroOS, especially with all the buzz around Fedora Atomic. Let's explore what the latter has going for it that have helped their adoption race ahead:

  1. Head Start & Delivering Desktop Variety: Fedora Atomic desktops' efforts simply got rolling earlier. Importantly, they also managed to deliver a solid KDE Plasma option (Kinoite) alongside their GNOME flagship (Silverblue) in a reasonable timeframe. For instance, the ideas for Fedora Atomic started around April 2014, and Kinoite hit beta by November 2021. Now, consider openSUSE: their work in this immutable space (with some roots in Project Kubic around May 2017) is still, as of May 2025, working towards a beta release for Kalpa (the KDE version). This extended wait for a polished KDE experience – a desktop environment hugely popular within the openSUSE community and beyond – undoubtedly has implications for overall adoption and even the perceived momentum of MicroOS as a desktop project. When a major DE option, especially one with KDE's broad appeal, is lagging, it can slow things down.

  2. The uBlue Phenomenon: Can't stress this enough – community projects like uBlue (and its offshoots) have been an enormous catalyst. They make Fedora Atomic super accessible with pre-configured images including NVIDIA drivers, codecs, and common tools. They've likely single-handedly tripled or quadrupled the user base for Fedora Atomic by just making them work out of the box for more people.

  3. Fedora's Broader Reach: Generally, Fedora just has a larger overall user base than openSUSE. While both are fantastic, top-tier distros, Fedora's wider existing audience naturally gives its specialized spins, like Fedora Atomic, a larger initial pool of potential users to draw from.

So, what's the deal with openSUSE MicroOS (or Aeon/Kalpa for desktop)?

Right now, its approach to being "managed" or declarative feels a bit milder. When people dive into immutable/declarative systems, they often see a spectrum:

  • Fedora Atomic: A great middle-ground. Solid immutability, familiar tools, and not an overwhelming learning curve.
  • NixOS: The deep end – full declarative power, but its language can be a beast.

People often move between these. If NixOS is too much, Fedora Atomic becomes a common landing spot. If they love what Fedora Atomic offers but crave even more control, they might look to NixOS. For someone already in this mindset, openSUSE MicroOS's unique draw isn't as sharply defined yet. And let's be real, for many long-time openSUSE aficionados, the fact that YaST – arguably a killer feature and a huge USP for the traditional distro – isn't really part of the Aeon/Kalpa experience (or MicroOS generally in the same way) definitely stings a bit. It feels like a missed opportunity when such a cornerstone tool doesn't quite make the jump to the new paradigm.

Where I think openSUSE MicroOS Desktop is compelling is as a super logical next step for openSUSE Tumbleweed users. It's less about being an entirely new, radical thing like NixOS (or even Fedora Atomic in some ways). It's more like it takes the best bits from atomicity and transactional updates (think easy rollbacks with transactional-update and a read-only root) and blends them into the fantastic Tumbleweed foundation.

So, it’s an evolution of a trusted model, beefing it up, rather than a completely different animal. This is probably the openSUSE team's vision. Time will tell how it fully distinguishes itself, but it’s a smart way to get modern robustness without throwing out all the familiar openSUSE goodness.

Hope that lands better! It's definitely a space changing fast.

[–] Jaberw0cky@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

thanks, that's comprehensive, I recommend it at least :-)

[–] HayadSont@discuss.online 2 points 6 hours ago

thanks, that’s comprehensive

Thanks fam for the appreciation!

I recommend it at least :-)

I totally get it and I actually appreciate your efforts. Which shouldn't be surprising as I favor anything 'atomic' over the traditional model. Heck, were it not for Fedora Atomic, I would probably have daily-driven openSUSE Aeon instead.

Uhmm..., my apologies for sidestepping to a topic I would rather not... But here goes nothing...

Perhaps you might have noticed the discussion that has been going on elsewhere in this thread😅. And thus..., you might have become aware that an LLM was used (by me) for wording/phrasing/punctuation the earlier 'info-dump'. Note that the content is still mine. I just wasn't able to commit to put out a decent writing myself. Instead, I speech-to-texted my input. Asked the LLM to make it legible. After which we had a bit of back-and-forth until we arrived at the final result.

Anyhow, now that you're aware of the context, I would like to ask you the following: What would you have preferred?

  • (Either) That I didn't do any of that and thus not comment at all.
  • (Or, rather) Our current situation in which I did whatever I did.
[–] mholiv@lemmy.world 5 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Why are you using ChapGPT to make comments on lemmy? What’s the point?

[–] HayadSont@discuss.online -3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

In this case, I woke up in the middle of the night. I couldn't sleep. Saw this and wanted to answer somehow. Went to use speech to text for a first draft, you may find it below. As I've got pains related to RSI, however, I couldn't be bothered to make it all slick and crisp myself on a phone. My laptop + split-keyboard setup was tucked in my bag. So, at that moment, I asked an LLM -unsure at the moment if it was trained by my own data to replicate my style of writing- to perform the 'act'. After some back and forth, we got to the final result. Content-wise, I'd say, it's all just me. The LLM only did wording/phrasing/formatting etc.

(The original draft from speech to text:)

Due to the order of how events have happened, i.e. the fact that Fedora Atomic matured earlier, simply by virtue of being earlier into development, and also because the idea to make a desktop out of it wasn't just an idea that was tagged along later, but an important thing a lot earlier into its development These are definitely key reasons for why the adoption of Fedora Atomic has been a lot better than OpenSUSE micro OSes And I haven't even mentioned the fact that a fan project like Universal Blue has had for the adoption of the ladder Heck, it's easy to sum up in retrospect, simply because the data is there, that Universal Blue has single-handedly, maybe tripled or quadrupled the userbase of Fedora Atomic, hence all of the above has helped Fedora Atomic's adoption a great lot Of course, Fedora is, for some reason, more popular than OpenSUSE, while they are mostly just different continental ideas, or distros, rather of the same idea, or close enough Regardless, as to your question regarding OpenSUSE micro OS, I think that with the way they've set it up It is relatively mild, at least at this point in time, to managed-ness

and abiding to the rules of congruent system management which means that if someone likes what Federal Atomic does in this regard as it is, at least in this point in time, by far the most popular of the Atomic branch of together with NixOS they often switch between these i.e. if NixOS is just too hardcore or its language is just a little bit obtuse for what they want out of the system then its easy for them to just simply adopt Federal Atomic instead or if they like Federal Atomic, what it is, but want to increase the level of managedness and going full declarative, then they can go for NixOS instead but having started from either of these, the unique selling point for OpenSUSE microOS Desktop is simply not there yet, or at least not as pronounced as it should be as for what I think, OpenSUSE microOS Desktop seems like a very logical step up from OpenSUSE Tomb Raid, which is probably how they envision the project at least if we would ask Richard Brown of course time will tell if the one will go over into the other or vice versa regardless, it is more interesting, in my opinion, as an evolution of the traditional model that adopts the most minimal of what atomicity and transaction updates has taught us

Rather than being a new paradigm in its entirety that tries to do or be as radically different as either Fedora Atomic or NixOS tries to be.

[–] mholiv@lemmy.world 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Do you always have ideas in the middle of the night and want to post them only to have an RSI flare up and no laptop nearby and decide to use ChatGPT to write your posts?

It’s not just this response. All of your posts read the same way.

Like using AI as a writing assistant is fine and all. But the posts you copy paste over are mostly LLM structured arguments.

[–] HayadSont@discuss.online 2 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Strictly speaking, for my posts^[Which there are only three of at the time of writing.] (i.e. my comments aren't included into the conversation yet), I do heavily employ an LLM as a writing assistant. But the process those undergo is very different from the comment you see above; it takes a lot of time, effort and many revisions until I land on something I like.

As for my comments, it depends: if it's longer, I employ it to help with shortening while retaining the content I meant to convey. Or, to help with wording/phrasing specific troublesome passages that either don't flow well or if I'm unsure if idioms (and whatnot) have been used correctly.

While I don't like to bring it up, some people -naturally- have the tendency to write up texts that are (somehow) reminiscent to what we'd expect from an AI. FWIW, I have many times been accused of this while the text was all just me...

Finally, to directly address the comment found above: No; I don't think I can recall any other comment that was as carelessly composed as that one. And to directly answer your following question:

Do you always have ideas in the middle of the night and want to post them only to have an RSI flare up and no laptop nearby and decide to use ChatGPT to write your posts?

Nope. I can't recall the last time -prior to the one above- in which I did something similar. And, again, content-wise, it is me. The LLM mostly just made it legible.

[–] mholiv@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Would you want a piece of good faith, sincere advice? If not I can drop things.

[–] HayadSont@discuss.online 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Would you want a piece of good faith, sincere advice?

Sure, fam. Hit me.

If not I can drop things.

Though, this confuses me... *confused* 🤔 Would you only drop them if I didn't want it? For now, I'll assume that's just a typo (or something/whatsoever).

[–] mholiv@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

The reason I wouldn’t give advice if you didn’t want it because unwanted unsolicited advice tends to be useless and annoying for most people. If you didn’t want the advice I wouldn’t waste my time.

My advice is to focus on being able to organize your thoughts and write them out in a cohesive structured way.

This helps you:

  1. Express yourself in a clear, understandable, and perhaps persuasive way.
  2. Organize your own personal wants, needs, and desires introspectively.

Both of these are important life skills that are extremely beneficial. Using a LLM to organize and clarify positions is like using a crutch when you should be in physical therapy. On top of this using a LLM completely erases any personality in your writing and replaces it with corpo style speak.

Practicing organizing and expressing your ideas (like physical therapy) can be hard and sometimes painful. But you get better.

Using a LLM is like refusing to go to physical therapy and using crutches for the rest of your life by choice. Easier in the short term but bad for your own quality of life long term.

Places like lemmy are great for writing practice. Rambling nonsense is pretty universally downloaded. Lemmy forces you to organize and classify what you are thinking and why.

If you want to get started I would recommend the basic “5 Paragraph Essay” structure. In the case of a basic lemmy comment take those principles and make it a 5 sentence structure.

I hope this helps.

[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Try NixOS. It's not that hard to use. And also try Home Manager when you'll be on it.

[–] e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I really like it as well. I did three major version upgrades so far and they have been flawless. I also really like Flatpak, finally a way of easily installing something on Linux without breaking half of the system because the application you wanted to install uses libfoo 2.0 and not libfoo 1.9.9-patch-1337. With my atomic desktop applications that worked yesterday also work today. Things don't randomly break all the time.

The future of Fedora Atomic also looks exciting; Timothée Ravier is working on sysexts which are a way of installing applications without ostree layering. I could remove most of my ostree layered packages with that.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 1 points 22 hours ago

did three major version upgrades so far and they have been flawless.

To be fair, I've upgraded normal Fedora for like.. 8-10 versions in a row maybe, and never had a problem

[–] marcie@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

Oooh, didn't know about that. Very exciting

[–] skynet@feddit.cl 3 points 1 day ago

it’s also supported by Homebrew Package Manager so you can use command line shells outside containers without layering if you want to

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 66 points 2 days ago (8 children)

10/10 this is the future of Linux.

I hope it's a future of Linux, not the future. I'm not a fan of atomic distros, mostly because if their reliance on flatpak and the like

[–] wolfinthewoods@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

What about NixOS? It seems to be doing something very different from most distros. I used it briefly and it was a refreshing experience to just update the config file to add and remove programs, I know that a lot of people share their configs and it makes it easy to keep programs consistent from different installs. I would have installed it on this laptop if the installer wasn't giving me so many issues, so I ended up with MXLinux instead, but I still look on my NixOS days fondly.

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Having tried NixOS, I gotta say the ability to quickly restore everything from a single config (its main premise) is overrated when it comes to home systems. Invaluable for production environments, though.

The rest can be done on any other Linux, and it would probably be preferred by most.

[–] Pirata@lemm.ee 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 38 minutes ago)

I keep saying this.

If you're a sysadmin in charge of a bunch of computers, by all means use NixOS.

But for personal use? Its easier to install everything by hand every time you reset your laptop (which should be maybe once per year at most) than it is to set up a config file on NixOS.

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago

It's on my list to try!

[–] Pirata@lemm.ee 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Flatpaks are better for security though. Containerization is a necessity for any serious device connecting to the internet.

Linux users got way too confortable giving any obscure package they found on AUR root access to their entire device, lol.

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And that's why it's good that it's an option! I just don't want it to become the only option

[–] Pirata@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Fair. I think for as long as there is a will to maintain traditional distros (which there is), there will be options.

Hell, people are still keeping Thinkpads T480 alive and relatively secure by making custom libre bootloaders! The F(L)OSS community is awesome.

[–] nepenthes@feddit.it 13 points 2 days ago (2 children)

My biggest disadvantage of atomic distros is flatpak reliance too. I hate how bad the terminal interface for managing/running flatpaks is. But I still hope that this will improve in the future.

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

Flatpaks really aren't for terminal stuff, it at least wasn't the intention

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[–] marcie@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I agree. Fundamentally, you still need good distros to plug into distrobox to make swapping between immutable systems quicker. In general I feel like running Fedora Atomic has really opened my eyes to the possibilities of using distrobox + boxbuddy to get quick and easy installs from AUR or something and saving annoying-to-make configs in a backup file somewhere.

Atomic is also absolutely fantastic for throwing on an old computer that you use rarely. The update will not break after letting it sit for so long without them.

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[–] kittenroar@beehaw.org 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I appreciate your mentioning the downside. I am way too much of a tinkerer for a read-only root to be acceptable for me, but I'm glad you found something you like.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 3 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

eh, it's not all root, essentially just the binaries. /etc and /var are RW

[–] kittenroar@beehaw.org 1 points 21 hours ago

Oh, nice!

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[–] peppy@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

does an Atomic / Immutable distro use more disk space than say my Arch install? if yes, how much more? if no, I am moving immediately.

[–] marcie@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

It uses more, yeah. But it's not a lot more. You could maybe compare the iso sizes

[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 32 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Sounds like a good way to do Linux phones.

[–] TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

This is the least of the issues that Linux phones are facing though. It's mostly the drivers that are lacking. Linux phones are also one of the areas where you actually don't want flatpak and docker bloating up your system with duplicated dependencies because you have limited storage.

[–] marcie@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 days ago

Honestly, I haven't considered this before but it sounds like a great idea.

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[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

It's not the future... it's the present for all users running mobile linux-based computing devices called Android smartphones. The paradigm is very similar to Atomic distros. As for what the future might hold for linux, that remains to be seen.

The Atomic UX has proven very popular with mainstream users running by Steam Deck and similar devices as running Bazzite. They may not be aware how they are built, they just know it just works and that's all they need.

As for the maintainers, containerized development removes a lot of development time, provided they have experience in cloud native development environments. Old school developers get annoyed by this constraints.

All in all, it's just another alternative, don't diss it out of fear it might take over the Linux scene... let others have what they need, provided by Linux and open source software.

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