I remember hearing even all the Fedora-based atomic distros don’t use UKI, so they are vulnerable to initramfs modifications

This has been a thing for the longest time. But the situation has been changing since about a year ago. That work has eventually led to the release of so-called sealed bootc images. Which, in turn, has led (some) projects to start active development on that. From what I know, projects like secureblue are even dogfooding their respective UKIs as we speak.

So, we’ve come a long way and it wouldn’t surprise me if many projects will ship their respective sealed images (alongside their regular images) before the end of the year.

However, there are some glaring issues that need to be addressed, most prominently of which is the loss of layering. Sealed images don’t support layering and probably won’t either. Of course, many different alternatives exist, including system extensions, creating your own custom image with those packages baked in, going the RakuOS-route and probably many others I’m unaware of or forgot about. But, AFAIK, none of the alternatives are as mature as layering has become.

What problems does bootc have? I’m genuinely curious*.

IIRC, it’s another brain child of Mirko Brombin; the prolific designer that’s also prominently involved with Bottles, Singularity Desktop/OS and Vanilla OS.

I wish it the best. Especially since Flatpak’s sandboxing didn’t have any competition up till now. At least, AFAIK*.

Thank you! This is actually very helpful! And we can definitely reverse some of their doing 😉. Below I will repeat the invoked commands and provide some context/explanation. So, without further ado.

sudo rpm-ostree kargs --append-if-missing=zswap.enabled=1
sudo rpm-ostree kargs --append-if-missing=zswap.max_pool_percent=25
sudo rpm-ostree kargs --append-if-missing=zswap.compressor=lz4
sudo rpm-ostree kargs --append-if-missing=systemd.zram=0

The commands found above were used to change the kernel arguments through rpm-ostree. You can still find these back with rpm-ostree kargs --editor. You can even outright remove them, then and there. It’s also possible to literally revert those commands by invoking the following:

sudo rpm-ostree kargs --delete-if-present=zswap.enabled=1
sudo rpm-ostree kargs --delete-if-present=zswap.max_pool_percent=25
sudo rpm-ostree kargs --delete-if-present=zswap.compressor=lz4
sudo rpm-ostree kargs --delete-if-present=systemd.zram=0

sudo rpm-ostree initramfs --enable --arg=--add-drivers --arg=lz4

Unfortunately, I don’t have any experience with this.

sudo swapoff -a
sudo rm -rf /var/swap
sudo semanage fcontext -a -t var_t "/var/swap(/.*)?"
sudo restorecon -Rv /var/swap
sudo btrfs filesystem mkswapfile --size 32G /var/swap/swapfile
sudo semanage fcontext -a -t swapfile_t "/var/swap/swapfile"
sudo restorecon -v /var/swap/swapfile
sudo swapon -a

Basically, the commands found literally above affect the contents of /var. As such, they’re outside of the ‘jurisdiction’ of rpm-ostree. Reverting these is the same as on any other Linux system.

The following commands change the contents of /etc. As such, they’re being tracked and can be reverted to their original states. Though, I’m not sure if it’s possible to revert them back to their respective versions without those changes.

sudo sed -i '\|/var/swap/swapfile|d' /etc/fstab

I’ll be honest with ya. I don’t know what this one does 😅. I have used sed in the past but wasn’t able to decipher this one. FWIW, it tries to make some changes to /etc/fstab . And, if I’d have to make a guess, I think it deletes any lines that contain /var/swap/swapfile.

echo "/var/swap/swapfile none swap defaults,nofail 0 0" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

This added some text to /etc/fstab. To revert it, go to /etc/fstab, and remove /var/swap/swapfile none swap defaults,nofail 0 0

echo "vm.swappiness=120" | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/99-swappiness.conf

This created a file named 99-swappiness.conf and placed it to /etc/sysctl.d/. As such, a simple sudo rm -rf /etc/sysctl.d/99-swappiness.conf suffices.

sudo rpm-ostree install policycoreutils-python-utils

This was an optional command. If you did have to invoke it, then you should find policycoreutils-python-utils when invoking rpm-ostree status. It should be mentioned as a layered package.

To undo it, simply invoke rpm-ostree uninstall policycoreutils-python-utils.

Bazzite’s messaging has merit, but we’d be making a mistake by regarding it as absolute. It makes more sense to take them as carefully written guide lines for a specific audience.

Furthermore. with all due respect, but OP’s writing doesn’t imply installing/managing software with rpm-ostree. Which, is actually the subject of the documentation entry you quoted. As such, I think you might have misunderstood them.

Youre breaking a core tenant of immutable distros by installing system level packages.

Finally, FWIW, I absolutely disagree with the above. The page you quoted from seems to agree with me on this: “Layering packages are mostly intended for system-level applications, libraries, and other dependencies.”

I made some changes using rpm-ostree related to zram and swap

Could you be more transparent and/or elaborate in this regard? Like, what did you actually do?

FWIW, I’ve been on Fedora Atomic since before Bazzite’s existence, but I’ve never once considered using rpm-ostree to make changes to zram and swap. So, I’m a bit confused. To be clear, it’s perfectly possible that what you did is 100% legit, but that it just happened to expose a gap in my knowledge.

I had assumed that, because I used rpm-ostree, the changes would become part of the “tree” and I could rollback to the original settings. But when I went to look at Bazzite’s rollback tools, it seemed solely focused on rolling back to previous official releases, and I couldn’t find any reference to the specific changes I made.

Basically, while rpm-ostree does offer git-like control on your base system; hence, why it’s so powerful to begin with. It does not keep more than two deployments around; at least, by default.

If you would like to keep around a specific deployment (for whatever reason), you can do so with the ostree admin pin <insert number> command. The git-like control also enables you to keep track of:

• the changes applied to /etc; invoke ostree admin config-diff to see what files have been added or modified since installation
• layered packages; simply invoke rpm-ostree status

Keeping track is cool and all, but its usefulness is in full display with powerful applications such as:

• rpm-ostree reset; this basically removes all permutations. That is, two people on the same image, will have the identical base system after this. (Note that this still isn’t as powerful as a factory reset. For that, refer to this issue tracker on bootc^[1].)

Finally, the git-like structure ensures actual reversibility. On most other systems, installing A -> installing B -> uninstalling A will yield a different state than just installing B. With rpm-ostree, the base system between the two will be identical.

For completeness’ sake, I’ve used “base system” above to just mean the contents of /usr and /etc (and maybe some other subdirectories of /). Crucially, the contents of /var are not part of the “base system”.

Aight. We seem to have found the culprit. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.|

I mean why would it say a stable image has a testing id and bootloader if its not testing

I’m not familiar with the Bazzite Update Tool. I tried to find it on GitHub, but failed 😅. But, if I’d have to guess, it looks at the same wrong place that fastfetch does.

A couple of issue trackers I found that may (or may not be) related:

• https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/issues/5255
• https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite-dx/issues/209
• https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite-dx/issues/198

Question: Could you paste the output of rpm-ostree status?

Can someone please provide a TL;DW? Much appreciated!

Beyond none of its branches actually satisfying my preferences, I feel like the way it handles major version upgrades is way too involved. I suppose it makes sense; it’s paying back the accumulated debt of a couple years worth of bliss…

Having said that, my experience on Fedora Atomic is (almost) equally blissful without requiring any of that whenever a major version update strikes.

Don’t get me wrong; I definitely do believe Debian has its uses on desktop Linux. But I can’t shake off the feeling that they’re definitely more niche compared to say Fedora.