F45 Change Proposal: Build Atomic Desktops disk images with Image Builder [SystemWide]

Project Discussion Change Proposals
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Build disk images for Atomic Desktops with image-builder

Wiki

Announced

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary :open_book:

We will switch the builds of the Fedora Atomic Desktop ISOs over from lorax to image-builder. Additionally, we will introduce extra artifacts (qcow2, raw image) for those variants where an out-of-the-box setup is available.

Owner :open_book:

Detailed Description :open_book:

Currently the Fedora Atomic Desktops (Silverblue, Kinoite, Sway Atomic, Cosmic Atomic, Budgie Atomic) are built using lorax. Weā€™ve slowly been reducing our usage of lorax over time; migrating mostly to kiwi for live media and disk images, and image-builder for artifacts that require ostree or bootc-based content.

The Fedora Atomic Installers are boot.isoā€™s with an embedded ostree-commit. These are nearly identical to Fedora IoT installer ISOs which are already produced with image-builder.

For this change proposal we will switch over the pungi configuration for the above listed variants to build their ISOs with image-builder, reducing lorax usage more.

Additionally, since image-builder can produce multiple other types of artifacts out of ostree-commits we will introduce a qcow2 image for Fedora Silverblue and Fedora Kinoite and a raw image for those variants (but only for aarch64) to be used with arm-image-installer for users of single board computers (such as the Raspberry Pi).

We would love to also enable qcow2 and raw images for the other Fedora Atomic Desktop variants but we are blocked on Anacondaā€™s initial-setup not working (upstream issue).

If this gets resolved before Beta Freeze we could potentially also enable the additional artifacts for those.

Feedback :open_book:

None yet.

Benefit to Fedora :open_book:

With this change and the additional (unrelated, but in the same area) change to Modernize the boot.iso we will reduce our usage of lorax and simplify our deliverable process to be done by two tools, instead of the current three.

It will also enable (in the future) to migrate the Fedora Atomic Desktops to be bootc-based either in Koji, or potentially in Konflux depending on the timing.

The availability of qcow2 images will make ā€˜testdrivingā€™ Fedora Atomic Desktops easier as users can immediately spin up a virtual machine with them. In the same fashion, the availability of raw images will make it more feasible for users to run Fedora Atomic Desktops on their aarch64 single board computers.

Scope :open_book:

  • Proposal owners:

  • Implement the embedding of flatpaks in image-builder.

    • Implement the Fedora Atomic Desktop installers and disk images.

  • Other developers:

    • Review fedora-pungi pull-requests.

  • Release engineering: #13170

  • Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

  • Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

  • Alignment with the Fedora Strategy:

    • Easier local builds and more artifacts for Fedora Atomic Variants make them more easily available.
    • Alignment with the RHEL and CentOS build processes (which use image-builder).
    • Alignment with bootc-deliverable conversion (which uses image-builder) easies future migrations.

Upgrade/compatibility impact :open_book:

None.

Early Testing (Optional) :open_book:

No.

How To Test :open_book:

Once the relevant pungi changes have been made Fedora Rawhide composes will contain new ISOs. These can be used in the same fashion as current ones; so testing would consist of ensuring that they behave functionally the same after that point.

The new artifacts will also be part of composes after the same point; users could download and try them out :slight_smile:

User Experience :open_book:

User experience for Fedora Atomic Desktops will not change. A new user experience will be available (qcow2, raw).

Dependencies :open_book:

There are no dependencies. The work for this change proposal does touch the same areas as the modernization work for the boot.iso and might simplify the implementation of that change proposal but is not a prerequisite.

Contingency Plan :open_book:

  • Contingency mechanism: Revert pungi configuration changes.
  • Contingency deadline: Beta freeze.
  • Blocks release? No.

Documentation :open_book:

We will be documenting local builds of Fedora Atomic Desktops in the Fedora Atomic Desktops documentation as part of this change; though likely after the contingency point.

Release Notes :open_book:

N/A

Last edited by @siosm 2026-01-26T19:12:14Z

Last edited by @siosm 2026-01-26T19:12:14Z

2

How do you feel about the proposal as written?

  • Strongly in favor
  • In favor, with reservations
  • Neutral
  • Opposed, but could be convinced
  • Strongly opposed
0 voters

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3

I would title this ā€œBuild Atomic Desktop ISOs with Image Builderā€.

To me a very core principle of ā€œAtomicā€ and bootc is that we are OCI container image centric - disk images should generally just be shells around the container. And Image Builder isnā€™t currently involved in the build of the containers (but it could be! thatā€™s a whole other interesting conversation especially around blueprint-in-container, partitioning etc.)

But I think the key thing to clarify is this is just about the ISOs.

2 Likes
4

I could make it include ā€œdeliverablesā€ or ā€œartifactsā€.

Indeed we are not building the ostree-commits these artifacts are based on but the change proposal does include that we will also be building these ostree-commits into both qcow2ā€™s and raw disk images so itā€™s not just about the ISOs :slight_smile:

Perhaps this is already part of the confusion but the current Fedora Atomic Desktop artifacts that are downloadable on the fedoraproject.org website and part of the composes are produced from ostree-commits that are built in Koji (see: Making sure you're not a bot! , and Making sure you're not a bot!).

There are plans and ideas to in the further future consume bootc containers instead of ostree commits to produce these deliverables but thatā€™s likely after Fedora 45, and will likely happen in Konflux instead of in Koji.

5

This change proposal has now been submitted to FESCo with ticket #3545 for voting.

To find out more, please visit our Changes Policy documentation.

6

How about ā€œGenerate disk images for Atomic Desktops with Image Builderā€

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Speaking of this, I filed Renaming this project to `bootc-disk-generator` Ā· Issue #1182 Ā· osbuild/bootc-image-builder Ā· GitHub

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That sounds OK to me. Iā€™ve edited the title here and on the wiki to be ā€œBuild disk images for Atomic Desktops with image-builderā€.

9

Thank you, Iā€™ve addressed your concerns there.

I do want to stress that this change proposal does not refer to `bootc-image-builder` (which Colin is suggesting to rename), it uses image-builder.

In the future bootc-image-builder will be folded into the image-builder repository as functionality currently exists in two places and weā€™d like to have a single place :slight_smile: For more about that I wrote about this on my weblog a while back.

1 Like
10

This change has been approved by FESCo and will be included in Fedora Linux 45.
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FESCo Issue: Making sure you're not a bot!