this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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The future of desktop Linux might be like OpenSUSE Kalpa/Aeon (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I've been running Tumbleweed for a few years now. It's great, but it's not 100% autopilot, updates often require manual intervention (resolving small problems) or updates try to add 50 packages I don't need (recommends) all the time despite them not being in a pattern. I've been looking for a distro on which I could set up automatic updates and forget mostly about it, while still having recent packages; reliability and peace of mind while being on the bleeding edge. Due to having an NVIDIA GPU, LTS distros are a no-go. I've debated on the following

  • Debian: packages too old, ideal for my server though.
  • Ubuntu 24.04: Plasma 6 not available until next release. Snap is still a problem.
  • Fedora/Ublue: DNF is painfully slow. Immutable variants are interesting but download full GBs worth of images
  • Arch: insanely fast package manager, but can require manual intervention. Automatic updates aren't recommended for arch. It also lacks my printer driver on the repos (only available on the AUR). One of the only distros that can truly satisfy my minimalist itch.
  • KDE Neon: Snaps, no nvidia graphics
  • NixOS: Never tried it but apparently the unusual file structure causes many problems

So I ended up trying again OpenSUSE Kalpa. I had completely forgotten about it, and I really like the concept. It's like the Fedora immutable variants, but instead of downloading whole GBs of images, it creates BTRFS snapshots between normal zypper updates. So you can have the benefits of offline updates without having to wait at boot or at shutdown. Just like silverblue, the concept is to try to install everything through flatpak/distrobox and avoid adding anything unnecessary to the base, so that system updates can be snappy and unproblematic.

I was really tired of opening my laptop, updating everything and then rebooting. I just want to open my pc, have all updates automatically applied in the background through systemd units so that the next time I boot, I have an updated system. No "updating" during next boot. I finally found a distro perfect for me in that regard, and for everyone else who's tired of babysitting their linux desktops, you should give a shot to Kalpa/Aeon.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I agree with you, that the future of Desktop Linux are the atomic Distros. They are more stable and require less intervention, so they can be used more easily by less knowledgeable users and users who prefer a stable OS(in the non-breaking way, not no updates). Making Linux more accessible for new users, is exactly what Linux needs.

I disagree on your view about the Fedora atomic spins, especially universal blue. Who cares if the underlying OS downloads as one big image. It all happens in the background, you don’t notice that. Everytime you reboot, you are on an updated system.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Inefficient data usage is a problem. Network connections arent free, there are people using metered networks, or with really bad bandwidth.

I am really interested in improving this.

I dont agree with "atomic distros are the future" as in my eyes Fedoras approach is the only good one really (and even that has tons of issues, see here).

Some things need to be improved:

  • flatpak runtimes share tons of packages but each gets downloaded individually, even though they may be deduplicated locally
  • podman containers just for installing packages dont need a separate system, it would be perfectly fine if they would just use a symlinked or otherwise deduplicated base system.
  • rpm-ostree has no delta update support, but afaik Fedora neither

So it may be worth the tradeoff for us both, but I definetly see a problem and I am also kinda tired of using podman containers for something they are not supposed to (system upgrades are impossible for example).

I want to experiment with the "linking all the system binaries to a podman container", the flatpak stuff needs to be solved by them.