How to use/install Applications in Silverblue / best way to keep system clean and organized

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1

Hi,

I switched recently to Silverblue, and even if I struggle a bit I like it. With traditional distributions, after some time the system ended in a big mess requiring reinstall, and here I see a clear advantage in Silverblue.

I would be interested to know how other users organize their system. I know there are basically 3 means to install applications, rpm-ostree, flatpak and dnf inside toolbox. rpm-ostree should be avoided, understood. But what if an application is not available as flatpak? Inside toolbox? What about SW that exists only as source? Do you have several toolboxes, for example one for dev, one for lets say office…? Or one toolbox with many apps? It seems that a toolbox uses quite a lot of space, or does btrfs through de-duplication optimize the usage on disk?

Example of tools / applications I want to use, not complete:

  • LTSpice (Wine)
  • Altera Quartus (officialy supports RHEL, Ubuntu, OpenSuse)
  • Xilinx Vivado

I apologize for the number of questions, but it’s not clear to be how to keep my system organized well.
With traditional distributions, after some time the system ended in a big mess requiring reinstall, and here I see a clear advantage in Silverblue.

Greetings,
Jordy

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2

I also new to Silverblue and already like it a lot.

I am at the earliest stage of exploring it.

I am still just using rpm-ostree install almost same as dnf install.

I know I am far away from fully utilizing the potential of SB, but I really enjoy the benefits of SB.

Thanks for this topic, I am also eager to learn how to use containers especially the toolbox.

3

As far as I understood, usage of rpm-ostree should be kept as minimal as possible.

The list of applications I listed are only a few examples. More important to me is to understand what is the recommended approach to install of any kind of application not available as flatpak. I tried already building own flatpaks, but I want to focus on my work and not spend to much time building and maintaning custom packages.

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