[Article Proposal] Silverblue/Kinoite (ostree systems) setup after installation

Team Workflows Fedora Magazine
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Article Summary:

This article will include the basic and advanced modification that the user can do to their system as well as its comprehensive description of what it is about and else.

Article Description:

Since there are barely materials that covers a good setup after installation for Fedora OSTree, there is a need for a comprehensive and a detailed one which will cover what are the things that can be done and the improvements it will give. Moreover, the article will also include tip and tricks that the user can do to improve their workflow and the system overall, for example, disabling of some of the apps that is not needed, or turning off the workqueue for SSD which is not needed, among other things.

There are articles that do not cover these, but if they do, they do not give what are those for or what it will improve, along with its consequences and potential dangers. Thus, I decided to propose this one.

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+1. Thanks!

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@iaacornus I have created Pagure ticket #198 to track your article. It appears that you have not signed into Pagure or to the Fedora Magazine WordPress site in the past. This means we can’t assign the ticket to you and you can’t create your article yet.

If you can sign into those two sites using your FAS account, and let us know with a comment here, one of the editors will assign the ticket to you.

We use comments on the ticket to communicate between authors and editors and to track the status of the article. You can see the work flow here.

There is information about creating your article here.

In the WordPress dashboard you can start your article by selecting the + New button in the header.

If you have question about anything please let the editors know and we will be glad to assist.

Thanks for volunteering to write for the Fedora Magazine.

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@iaacornus I don’t believe you have signed into Pagure at Pagure ticket #198 so we can not assign the ticket to you. I also don’t think I see an article in the Fedora Magazine WordPress instance.

Can you give us a status update on your article, please?

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Any activity on your article @iaacornus? I’m not seeing your user information in Pagure . So we can’t assign the Pagure ticket to you. I don’t see your FAS ID in WordPress, either. If you have any questions, please let the editors know by leaving a comment here. We will be glad to help.

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I’ve managed to create account in Pagure and Fedora Wordpress, I’ll start working on my article now, I apologize, I have been busy on the past month. I’ll sign into pagure at ticket 198

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I’ve already written an article and submitted it for review, it has been about a week, how can I know what is the progress on it?

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The main editor is traveling this week. However, I should be able to get it out sometime in the next few days.

Thanks, and sorry about the delay.

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oh, its fine, no worries about it, I apologize for appearing to be demanding, I’m not aware of the review process, thank you.

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Hello @glb and @rlengland and @iaacornus ,
I have set up my (old) Dell Inspiron 1501 with Silverblue. I will be going through the article from end to end to try the examples and also for editing. This is unfortunately likely to take me more than one day though, so please be patient. I wonder if @siosm would mind me bugging him on occasion since I am not as familiar with Kinoite. Also I did try out SERICEA, and there are several things different from Sillverblue I found out. I think it is generally a good idea to have a"what to do after installation" guide, the community has been asking for some time. But it would be good due diligence to test out and find the best way’s and the potential pitfalls etc…

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I’m planning on doing a full review and will answer questions asked here or on the forum.

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And I am going to need to use a VM to test (no issue) since my Dell is frightfully slow. I got the install done on it but man it is taking forever to update!

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it’s fine, I really appreciate the effort and help in making the article successful, thank you very much.

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Here is a first review:

What is Fedora libostree (Silverblue/Kinoite/Sericia)?

In general we don’t use the “libostree” name that much and not for those variants. We use “Fedora ostree based desktops” or “Fedora immutable desktops” for now until we have a better name.

It fetches the image and “layers” it on top of the current one during an upgrade, providing more robust and reliable system upgrades.

Each new deployment (version of the system) that is installed is created from scratch, it is not layered on an existing one.

Although it is not as customizable as Fedora Workstation.

You are free to change anything in Silverblue. It is not done the same way as it is in Workstation but you can still do it.

System Update

For Silverblue & Kinoite we should probably recommend using GNOME Software or Plasma Discover to update the system and then fall back to the command line if it does not work for any reason.

The first thing users should do after the installation is apply updates and reboot immediately.

Mount External Drives

This section is not specific to Silverblue/Kinoite. Users will also likely mount their external drives using the graphical file manager.
If we keep this section then we should add notes about the paths that should preferably be used on Silverblue (anything under /var).
It is also recommended to add the nofail option to those fstab entries to avoid breaking the boot if the device is not plugged in.

Flatpak Setup

Flathub is now unfiltered by default in Fedora: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/UnfilteredFlathub
The user should be prompted to enable it on first boot. Updating users may not have it fully unfiltered.

Fedora has its own Flatpak repository where it filters some of the applications

This is not a filter. Only some applications are available from the Fedora remote because they are not copy/pasted from Flathub, they are built differently, from RPMs.

Afer this, do the first reboot.

You don’t need to reboot after setting up a flatpak remote.

Reinstalling Versioned Third-Party Repositories

This is Simplifying updates for RPM Fusion packages (and other packages shipping their own RPM repos) but in a super vague way. Not sure users will understand that this apply to them.

Theming on libostree systems
Since Flatpaks are sandboxed, they cannot access the GTK theme you’ve installed in your system. One solution is to install the Flatpak version of the GTK theme you are using, which you can find with:

flatpak search gtk3
Or override the themes directory which depends on how the theme was installed:

choose one, you can do all of them but I don’t recommend doing it

if installed in home dir
sudo flatpak override --system --filesystem=$HOME/.themes # if installed in home dir

if layered in your system
sudo flatpak override --system --filesystem=/usr/share/themes

or whatever
sudo flatpak override --system --filesystem=xdg-data/themes

This needs confirmation from a GTK specialist. Otherwise it’s What Not to Recommend to Flatpak Users | TheEvilSkeleton

Permissions on libostree systems
As another Reddit user (u/IceOleg) suggested, you can disable the access to home and host dir with:

Applications that request those permissions are usually doing so for a good reason, and usually because they are not yet fully compatible with the Flatpak way of doing things (using portals). Suggesting user remove those permissions will create weird issues for them that they may not know how to fix.

Focusing on Flatseal is a better experience than using the command line to change permissions.

Theming Extended

See What Not to Recommend to Flatpak Users | TheEvilSkeleton

Disable dm-crypt workqeues for SSD user to improve performance on libostree systems
There are two ways to disable this in Fedora Silverblue:
Option A: /ETC/CRYPTTAB
I do not recommend this method

If we do not recommend something then we should not include it :). Let’s document only the method we recommend.

Removing base image packages on libostree systems
I do not recommend this, but you can do this if you want to.

Again, if we don’t recommend something, then we don’t include it.
Removing packages from the base image is usually not a good idea, and gains nothing in terms of disk space.

Set battery threshold for laptop users

There is graphical support to set that in Kinoite. Not sure about Silverblue & Sericea. This is not something specific to rpm-ostree based systems.

Keyboard backlight

This is not something specific to rpm-ostree based systems.

then you use brightnessctl which is already installed.

It’s not installed on Kinoite, have not checked on other variants yet.

Set suspend to deep sleep
sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args=“mem_sleep_default=deep”

This will not work. This needs to use rpm-ostree kargs ...

Use Fish as default shell
sudo usermod --shell /usr/bin/fish $USER

We do not recommend changing the default shell on Silverblue as it may lead to unexpected issues: [BUG] using lchsh to change the shell brings user back to fedora setup · Issue #307 · fedora-silverblue/issue-tracker · GitHub. You probably want something like [BUG] using lchsh to change the shell brings user back to fedora setup · Issue #307 · fedora-silverblue/issue-tracker · GitHub instead.

Customize Fish (basics)

This is not something specific to rpm-ostree based systems.

touch $HOME/.local/share/applications/code.desktop

You should probably copy the one installed by the app in /usr/share/applications/code.desktop and then modify it.

Since the filesystem is immutable, you cannot import the GPG

We have documentation to add external repos and GPG keys to Silverblue: Troubleshooting :: Fedora Docs

rpm-ostree refresh-md

Not needed.

Block telemetry

OK, but it’s not Silverblue specific? Maybe we should recommend VSCodium instead?

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This one would be my fault (as the editor for this article, I changed OSTree to libostree). I was going from the following information on libostree | ostreedev/ostree :

This project is now known as “libostree”, though it is still appropriate to use the previous name: “OSTree” (or “ostree”). … We expect to transition to the new name over time.

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Completely understand. Unfortunately the new “name” never really took off and “ostree” is still the most used term.

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Hi, please note that the correct name is “Sericea” and not “Sericia”. Thanks :slight_smile:

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@iaacornus can you make the revisions that @siosm has requested and then let us know when the article is ready for another round of review?

Thanks.

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Hello @glb and @iaacornus ,
Please go ahead with the changes as @siosm noted. I will be available if needed for any editing roles. I am going to be busy over the weekend in to about mid next week before I can pay proper attention to it.

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noted, @jakfrost and @glb , thank you for the suggestions @siosm , I’ll incorporate it and will notify you guys when I am ready for the next review.