Draft: Handing off ublue-os/bluefin and bluefin-lts to the next generation #4951
Replies: 20 comments 40 replies
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Yeah ... I think the "Rule of Three" makes a lot of sense - prioritize these going forward:
LTS never made sense to me. I'm on Dakota more or less to stay because pretty much everything I do is a flatpak or can be put in Podman rootless containers. About the only things I'm using from Homebrew are Chairlift and Neovim, and the only I do want to test Utah as long as there's a way I can build and install RPMs on my own machine. If I have to make a container to run a source package I don't need the extra complexity over Dakota. |
Does that mean projectbluefin/bluefin will lose layering at some point? Sadly, this is a critical feature for me. Should I move back to ublue-os/bluefin then? |
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It would be nice to have a clear status each image : maintained, in dev or soon to be deprecated; there's so much that has been going on recently. The migration isn't going to happen ? What does that mean for ublue-os/bluefin or projectbluefin/bluefin ? Of course I'd be interested in maintaining it, because I have installed it for my whole family and I'm waiting for Dakota to have a stable release to switch everyone to it. I'm just not sure if I'm the most available guy for it. |
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I think that if Fedorafin is to lack official support, it should be deprecated. I understand that many people are still using it, and that providing an upgrade path to Dakota or Utah may not be possible, but letting people run unsupported software on their computer is just asking for trouble. At that point, I feel it's better to just be honest and ask people to migrate. If you lack time and resources to provide support for both Fedorafin and Dakota, that's ok. You are doing this for free, and it never came with a guarantee the project would run forever. Natural selection at work. I'll probably switch over my laptop to Bazzite-Gnome in the near future, even if I prefer Fedorafin, because I know Bazzite won't be lacking support in the next few months/years, and because that laptop needs a custom image in order to connect to my printer. Long live Dakota. |
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Thanks for communicating this! 👍️
Giving the users options is good (especially since there are new options available!). For ublue-os/bluefin users, if I understand correctly, the options are:
And current status (please correct me if I am wrong):
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Hey @castrojo, I want to take you up on the Raid invite. I’ve been daily driving Bluefin for the past 1.5 year, so I know the system well from a user’s perspective. While I haven't maintained an OS image before, I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and learn the ropes. If the offer for tutoring and mentoring stands, I’d love to help maintain ublue-os/bluefin, tackle the issue backlog, and help with the F45/F46 testing. |
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@castrojo I think I can help too. I took a look at the contributing page. I use git, containers, and bash all the time (I use python too). But I'm a beginner when it comes to GitHub Actions. Also, when it comes to supporting ublue-os/bluefin would we get to piggyback on the existing infrastructure plus the new infrastructure that's up-and-coming? For example, you mentioned a software factory. I also think moving to a bst based system makes sense in the end. I think there are a few of us that rely on bluefin's ability to layer 🫤 (I know it's not supported... but I appreciate it) |
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Funny how the world works. How can i help @castrojo ?! |
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Thank you for this article (and all the effort going into it, I really appreciate it!). Maybe I can explain my situation a bit, as the recent developments around Bluefin made me a bit insecure. I love Bluefin and the Universal Blue idea. For me, the formula is simple: The most clean and modern approach to linux, with batteries included. Coming from Fedora, I opted for bluefin-lts as I want a system that "just works". I don't need to be an early adopter for the newest features, just want to have a reliable (but of course cleanly architectured) OS. I started to question my decision a bit when ublue-os/bluefin-lts stopped getting updates some months ago. For me, this is the exact opposite to what I was aiming for: Suddenly, the OS was not calm, stable and secure, but rather outdated. I then made the premature switch to projectbluefin/bluefin-lts which is better as it gets updates but more often than not, I land in failed boots. So all in all, I am a bit clueless about how to live on. How does my use case fit into the "new world" of three images as outlined by you, @castrojo ? If you guys tell me there is a sensible way to get where I think my use case lies, I am happy to reinstall my system again. Right now, I would just wish for a more reliable Bluefin (and I am deeply grateful for all the work going in and I am sorry that I don't have the capacities to help). Thank you for your time! |
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If someone is also looking for another "Classic DLC" quest: ublue-os/uupd is in need of some love. Manual only, we need to ensure we're taking full advantage of that thing it has some great features. That would also help out Bazzite and Aurora! |
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Thoughts for integration on this new point?: Why two raptors? Let's just kill the idea that any of this matters. You get the exact same stuff on both. This is more about who you roll with. Both will be good. The contributors feel like F1 drivers, we all want our dream livery! (screenshot of livery options in control center) F1 does this all the time. Imagine Bluefin has two cars in F1, it's an independent team but has a Red Hat logo on the rear wing, something where it's an obviously important partnership. But Red Hat also have their own Factory Team. These kinds of technical partnerships are common in racing. Open wheel, endurance, etc. We're both starting to realize that the list of packages and versions are just abstracted away now, which lets us concentrate on the workload. This little gui control panel will really bring some nice features to bluefin without going crazy, we're levelling up our game! |
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New subthread, we are getting reports of people rebasing to utahraptor so post here if you've tried it! |
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I can see switching over to Dakota once it is out of the Alpha stage (when will it be in Beta?). Until then, still a little rough around the edges. Plus, no alsamixer installed which allowed me to change the impedance for my headphones and turn on microphone boost. I know of no other way to do that (PulseAudio Control does allow increasing microphone input signal, but I see no means of changing impedance on headphone output.) |
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I would like to have Brave Origin instead of Firefox in Bluefin Dakota. Is it possible to use BlueBuild to build a Bluefin Dakota image with Brave Origin? I made a Bazzite image with Brave Origin using BlueBuild so I'm hoping I can do the same to make a Bluefin Dakota image with Brave Origin. |
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I depend on Fedora tooling, I want its features, how could you deprecate Fedora flagships, if your other images are in Alpha? Most don't even work and you want to push utah, and Dakota, pick a lane, please. And Utah barely even has any packages, it's built on a minimalist distro, I wanted a working developer distro, Bluefin stable provided that. But now it's being phased out |
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hey @castrojo Funny enough, I’m in a very similar position to @nikhil00shinde and I’d also be interested in taking you up on the mentorship / Raid offer. I’ve been daily driving Bluefin for over a year now, and I’ve also deployed it across my entire company. I’ve installed it for quite a few friends as well, so I’ve ended up depending on ublue-os/bluefin quite a bit more than the average personal desktop user. For the kind of gaming most of us actually do, which is mostly browser games and some Dota 2, Bluefin has also always felt like the better fit. Bazzite is great for what it targets, but for our use case a lot of the extra gaming-specific tooling just felt unnecessary, while we really enjoyed the devtooling setup on Bluefin, so Bluefin ended up being the cleaner everyday desktop for both work and light gaming. Over the last 4-5 months I’ve spent a lot of time fixing our own local user experience because parts of Bluefin had started feeling stale or rough around the edges. That eventually pushed me from just being a user into actually digging through how the images, Homebrew integration, containers and the rest of the stack work, and recently into contributing fixes upstream as well. Long term I’m completely open to where Bluefin is heading. I’ve been following Dakota, Utah and projectbluefin/bluefin closely and I’m very interested in all of them. Right now though, ublue-os/bluefin is still the system I can actually rely on. I’ve tried rebasing my Dell Precision 7560 with NVIDIA to projectbluefin/bluefin and the experience was considerably rougher for me than current Bluefin. I’ve also tried Dakota, but so far I haven’t been able to boot any of the Dakota ISOs on that machine at all. They do boot on my AMD gaming PC, but I’m not comfortable moving my work machines or company systems onto alpha or beta releases yet. So realistically I expect to remain on ublue-os/bluefin until projectbluefin/bluefin, Dakota or Utah reaches the point where I’m comfortable deploying it to machines I depend on every day. That also means I have a pretty strong interest in keeping Classic healthy during that transition. I’ve actually been in the Discord for quite a long time as well. I’ve chatted a few times, but mostly I kept quiet, watched, learned and tried to figure things out on my own. For a long time I felt a bit out of place because I didn’t really understand enough of the system or how everything fit together to feel like I had much useful to contribute. I don’t really feel that way anymore. I still haven’t maintained an OS image before, and there’s obviously plenty I don’t know, but after spending the last several months digging into the stack, fixing things for our own systems and recently even contributed upstream brew, I feel much more comfortable getting involved properly and want to learn more. I was actually planning on PMing you about this on Discord these days, before this annoucement came out... So if the mentorship offer still stands, I’d definitely be interested in starting with ublue-os/bluefin, working through the backlog, helping with F45/F46 testing and learning the maintainer side of things from there. I’m also happy to help with Dakota, Utah or the newer Bluefin work wherever I can be useful and I have lots of spare time. |
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Thank you very much for writing out at least part of the story here; I think I'm in a very similar boat to many bluefin users, who discovered bluefin at the same time as Bazzite and Aurora. I'm not really a developer and don't have very strong preferences about how my desktop should be; I ran Pop!_OS LTS all the way until last year, and decided I liked gnome better than COSMIC around the same time my system76 machine died. I chose bluefin specifically because it seemed like something that would minimize the headspace of system maintenance, and something that I can install on the laptops of friends and family that want to get away from windows but can't afford to buy into the Apple ecosystem. I hope that y'all accomplish the goals you set out to do, but I'm going to have to move away bluefin because I can't be spending all this time reading blogposts and forums like this trying to figure out what's going on in the sausage factory, and wondering if 'long term support' actually will end up only being ~8 months of support before quasi-abandonment :( I would like to extend my gratitude toward all contributors and supporters; It seems like exciting times for bluefin. Unfortunately, excitement is the opposite of what I need for a linux desktop system. I'll check in down the road when Dakota/Utah are a bit more stable, a bit more boring. |


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aka. "Bluefin Classic"
(Fedorafin is a horrible name let's stop using that before it spreads. Bluefin Classic it is!)
Ok we're at F45 beta and only a handful of people showed up to help transition to projectbluefin/bluefin. It doesn't make sense to move so many people without testing and I can't think of anyone on the core team using Fedora.
Since no one is stepping up we'll leave ublue-os/bluefin there and scrap the plans to migrate people over.
The thing is on cruise control, I unclogged some issues the past week. But the issues are piling up and it's getting further behind the others. I can commit to the F45 upgrade, after that F46 will be easy too if people want to keep it as is without the features we're adding in Dakota. Even in this state it's still better maintained than it used to be:
New Incoming Volunteers
Here are our new raptor wranglers for ublue-os/bluefin
There's no way we can guarantee that a Fedora -> Hummingbird migration will work. I am 100% certain as a person that it will, but we still cannot make that guarantee. So we'll play it safe and leave ublue-os/Bluefin as is. You can optionally move to projectbluefin/utah if you want the latest stuff.
Bluefin LTS has a lead maintainer (Hi Robin!) but 1 is not much better than zero. This is similar to the GTS situation, we could do this, and we could also do something silly like put an LTS kernel in Dakota but that doesn't make any sense. Robin and I are working on this printer container thing, which will actually move a needle. I think that's a better use of their talent.
Strong Opinion Here
I can't tell you what to do but I will tell you what I am going to do. Straight from source right to the image is The Final Shape. There is no more efficient method for us to get what we want, using anything but bst is a waste time.
Our project was founded on the belief that using Linux incorrectly is silly. Bluefin is getting pushed into directions she doesn't want to go. We don't care about 99% of the things Linux users say is important. We do not pander to the mythical "new user" that doesn't exist. The only Linux on the client that is anywhere close to be being used by a normal person is Android. No other Linux is in the same league. This project is for people who want to BUILD that for others. We will never lie about the state of things, everyone knows desktop Linux is a tyre fire. Our purpose is to make this problem go away forever. I'll make sure this is more clear on the next revision of the website.
I'm all in on Dakotaraptor and Bluefin Server. And Utahraptor will be the ultimate destination of you want the Fedora stuff. That thing will be ready to hunt faster than Dakota did. They're evolving, these two new ones will give us what we need. A common platform with Bluefin Server. When you control both ends of the user experience, good things can happen!
And I'm also tired. The original spec for moving Fedora to what is basically Universal Blue was targeted for Fedora 39! I'm five years in to a plan that was already delayed five years, my own son turns ten this month! honestly I'm tired of carrying this banner, at this point it doesn't matter if Fedora ever gives a shit about Silverblue. The entire world has changed.
Therefore this iteration of ublue-os/bluefin is a good middleground for "Silverblue Plus" that people want the layering and all of that stuff. Though if there's changes which don't fit with Bluefin we can always rebrand it, plenty of dinos in the world. Some of you are comfortable in your Bluefins, who am I to take it away. It's time for other people to step up though.
Happy to answer questions!
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