ublue-custom

Archived

TL;DR bOS is the successor to ublue-custom. ublue-custom builds have ceased.

Long story: After nearly two years of building and using ublue-custom on multiple systems, I'm shutting it down. Originally, I really wanted a very personalized custom OS, and Universal Blue gave me something to build upon. Then, I started contributing to the project, too.

I've continued to be involved and now am very active in helping to maintain Universal Blue's infrastructure, plus Bluefin and uCore. ublue-custom was nearly identical to Bluefin, which means I was making a lot of duplicate effort. So, I wanted to reduce my workload, and make sure the energy I put in benefits the most people.

But this isn't the end! Of course I'm still maintaining the upstream projects linked above, and I still want some extra personalization in my images. So bOS is the successor to ublue-custom.

*Apologies in advance KDE and Sway users... I just wasn't using those images so you won't find them in bOS.

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Custom Fedora immutable desktop images which are mostly stock, plus the few things that are needed to make life good on my family's laptops.

What is this?

These images are customized how I want, based on the great work by team ublue os.

Images built:

• Silverblue (Fedora GNOME immutable desktop)
• Kinoite (Fedora KDE immutable desktop)

Based on:

• ublue-os/main for good foundations
  • adds distrobox, freeworld mesa and media codecs, gnome-tweaks (on gnome), just, nvtop, openssl, pipewire-codec-aptx, ratbagd, vim
  • sets automatic staging of updates to system
  • sets flatpaks to update twice a day
• ublue-os/nvida for nvidia variants adds:
  • nvidia kernel drivers
  • nvidia container runtime
  • nvidia vaapi driver
  • nvidia selinux config

Features

In addition to the packages/config provided by ublue-os main images, this:

• Removes from the base image:
  • firefox
  • gnome-extensions-app (replaced with Gnome Extensions flatpak)
  • gnome-
• Adds the following packages to the base image:
  • akmods fromublue-os/akmods
    • openrazer driver
    • v4l2loopback driver
    • xbox controller drivers (xpadneo/xone)
  • docker-ce docker's community edition, disabled by default
  • p7zip
  • pcp - Performance Co-pilot monitoring temporarily disabled until I sort out some issues
  • ptyxis (pronounced tik-sys) is a container oriented terminal
  • powertop
  • tailscale for VPN
  • libvirtd and qemu backend for running kvm VMs
  • virt-manager UI for managing VMs on libvirtd
  • waydroid
  • wireguard-tools for more VPN
  • zenity - for UI scripting
  • Only on Silverblue: Gnome specific packages
    • default font set to Inter and monospace font to IBM Plex Mono
    • gnome shell extensions (appindicator, caffeine, dash-to-dock, gsconnect, no-overview, search-light, tailscale-gnome-qs )
    • gsconnect (plus dependancies)
  • Only on Kinoite: KDE specific packages
    • k3b
    • libadwaita(-qt)
    • skanpage
• Sets faster timeout on systemd waiting for user processes to shutdown
• Sets gnome's "APP is not responding" check to 30 seconds
• Sets some custom gnome default settings (see etc/dconf)

Applications

• Flatpaks
  • This image does not actually change Fedora flatpak application defaults, but suggests changing them
    • Silverblue (Kinoite, etc) by default, only come with the "fedora" flatpak remote pre-installed, and the Gnome apps which come on Silverblue are installed from that location
  • I suggest using the included just setup-flatpak-repos command to remove the fedora flatpak remote (and all apps from it) and setup the flathub remote (see below)
  • Then run just install-apps-gnome to install the now missing apps (plus a few nice extras)
  • Run just recipe with -n for a dry-run, eg: just -n install-apps-creative
• Lightly-tested scripts for easily enabling/disabling LUKS auto-unlock using TPM2.
  • luks-enable-tpm2-autounlock - backup /etc/crypttab and systemd-cryptenrolls TPM2 for unlock; requires existing LUKS2 password
  • luks-disable-tpm2-autounlock - restores the backup of /etc/crypttab and safely systemd-cryptenroll wipes TPM2 unlock slot

Just Customizations

A just task runner default config is included for easy customization after first boot. It will copy a template to your home directory.

After that run ujust to get a list of default commands ( a sample set of commands is included below ):

`ujust
Click here to view the Universal Blue just documentation
Available commands:
 - bios                           # Boot into this device's BIOS/UEFI screen
 - changelogs                     # Show the changelog
 - configure-nvidia ACTION="prompt" # Configure the Nvidia driver
 - distrobox-fedora-custom        # Create a Fedora (bsherman custom) container
 - enroll-secure-boot-key         # Enroll Nvidia driver & KMOD signing key for secure boot - Enter password "ublue-os" if prompted
 - install-apps-creative          # Install Creative Media Apps
 - install-apps-gnome             # Install typical GNOME apps
 - install-apps-misc              # Install Other misc apps for my home users
 - install-apps-productivity      # Install Productivity and Communications apps
 - install-games-educational      # Install educational games
 - install-games-light            # Install light/casual games
 - install-games-linux            # Install Linux games
 - install-games-minecraft        # Install Minecraft games
 - install-games-steam            # Install Steam with MangoHud, Gamescope and Prototricks
 - install-obs-studio-portable    # Install obs-studio-portable from wimpysworld, which bundles an extensive collection of 3rd party plugins
 - install-pwa-flatpak-overrides  # Give browsers permission to create PWAs (Progressive Web Apps)
 - logs-last-boot                 # Show all messages from last boot
 - logs-this-boot                 # Show all messages from this boot
 - toggle-updates ACTION="prompt" # Turn automatic updates on or off
 - auto-update ACTION="prompt"    # alias for `toggle-updates`
 - toggle-user-motd               # Toggle display of the user-motd in terminal
 - update VERB_LEVEL="full"       # Update system, flatpaks, and containers all at once
 - upgrade VERB_LEVEL="full"      # alias for `update`
 - update-firmware                # Update device firmware

Check the just website for tips on modifying and adding your own recipes.

Installation & Usage

Install from Upstream

For the best experience, install from an official Fedora OSTree ISO:

• Silverblue (GNOME)
• Kinoite (KDE Plasma)

Rebase to Custom

After installation is complete, use the appropriate rebase command to install one of these custom images.

For IMAGE_NAME in the commands below, substitute one of these image names:

• silverblue-custom
• silverblue-nvidia-custom
• kinoite-custom
• kinoite-nvidia-custom

For TAG in the commands below, substitute one of these tags:

• latest - Fedora 40 with the current released kernnel
  • this currently points to Fedora 40, and will update after upstreams have released and the current image is tested satisfactorily
• stable - Fedora 40 with the last Fedora CoreOS stable kernel
  • this delays kernel upgrades a bit to avoid kernel regressions

We build date tags as well, so for particular day's image, there are:

• FR-YYYYMMDD, eg 40-20240913 - latest is referenced by Fedora release number (FR) and date
• stable-YYYYMMDD , eg stable-20240914 - stable is referenced by stable and date

sudo rpm-ostree rebase \
    ostree-unverified-registry:ghcr.io/bsherman/IMAGE_NAME:TAG

Verification

These images are signed with sigstore's cosign using both OpenID Connect with Github and a repo specific keypair. You can verify the signature by running one the following command:

cosign verify \
    --certificate-oidc-issuer "https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com" \
    --certificate-identity-regexp "https://github.com/bsherman/ublue-custom" \
    ghcr.io/bsherman/IMAGE_NAME:TAG

cosign verify --key cosign.pub ghcr.io/bsherman/IMAGE_NAME:TAG