I’m curious which packages Silverblue users have decided to layer. What packages have you installed with rpm-ostree?
Edit: Google turned up this old thread with some responses from last year.
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For what it’s worth:
RemovedBasePackages: firefox 99.0.1-1.fc35 LayeredPackages: libvirt virt-manager
I replaced Firefox with the flatpak version and the added packages are for when I need a virtual machine.
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Are you working in a VM or a container? Maybe I should have also asked what the primary toolbox container has installed.
Mostly container. What is in there: htop, bmon, gcc, rust, python stuff.
VM is for testing a kernel or if needed to run Windows. Or testing stuff I want to try-out before I run it on my system. To be sure I do it correct. Just good to have around when needed I think.
Flatpaks for Firefox, vscode, libreoffice, vlc, Spotify and probably some I forget right now.
Just editor, language packages, and stuff for running virtual machines.
RemovedBasePackages: firefox 99.0.1-1.fc35
LayeredPackages: emacs langpacks-en langpacks-en_GB langpacks-sv langpacks-th qemu virt-manager
Sometimes when working on a project with containers that for some reason won’t run in Podman, I also layer moby-engine during that project on my work machine.
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heh…
RemovedBasePackages: firefox 99.0.1-1.fc35
This is on my main Desktop.
On my “server”
LayeredPackages: autofs
So I can auto-mount an external usb hard drive.
For me …
RemovedBasePackages: power-profiles-daemon 0.10.1-3.fc36
LayeredPackages: asciidoc bat dutree exa fd-find fish fzf
gstreamer1-plugin-openh264 guake java-latest-openjdk-devel
java-latest-openjdk-jmods maven openvswitch ovn ovn-central
ovn-host ovn-vtep sd tldr tokei tuned vim vim-enhanced
vim-syntastic-asciidoc wireguard-tools
Power Profiles Daemon was not behaving well with my desktop motherboard, considered it a low powered laptop, and tuned provided better monitoring and control IMO. I lost the battery charge indicator in Gnome though, oh well.
I like Vim as my console editor and I use asciidoc a fair bit so that vim-syntastic-ascidoc plugin is kinda handy.
I have been really liking some of the command line tools coming from the rust developer camp, like ‘exa’ ‘bat’ and tldr’.
And I like fish as my shell except when doing testing specifically for Fedora Linux where I use bash. Though fish is not 100% posix compliant, I don’t often run into that being an issue in my use cases so far.
Other packages I have layered currently are variable in lifetime dependent upon what I am working on.
So I think it’s obvious from the responses that there are many ways to setup your Silverblue based system, and they generally depend upon your particular uses.
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RemovedBasePackages: firefox 99.0.1-1.fc35
LayeredPackages: bcache-tools fish gnome-shell-extension-appindicator gnome-shell-extension-system-monitor-applet rpmfusion-free-release
rpmfusion-nonfree-release snapper virt-manager virt-viewer
Base firefox is removed, as I use the flathub version.
bcache-tools, as my home partition is on bcache.
fish, my preferred shell.
A few gnome-shell extensions. I forget why I chose to layer these rather than install them in my user profile using the gnome extensions app.
snapper, for automatic btrfs snapshots.
virt-(manager|viewer), for VMs.
Thanks for the responses! I like the minimal approach so I think mine will look a lot, if not exactly, like @torbuntu’s. I have a Containerfile to build my toolbox, including a GUI terminal emulator. Not having things like micro, bat and lsd on the base system will encourage me to work exclusively in the container.
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aria2 axel exa fd-find nnn ripgrep htop joe libvirt-daemon-config-network libvirt-daemon-kvm qemu-kvm virt-manager virt-viewer virt-install libguestfs-tools python3-libguestfs virt-top xz-libs xz-static p7zip bzip2 unzip
The packages listed above are common to whatever desktop environment I use. When I rebase to an ostree branch I build my self or the base tree made by @siosim I layer the following additional packages.
xsettingsd glx-utils mesa-dri-drivers mesa-vulkan-drivers plymouth-system-theme xorg-x11-drv-amdgpu xorg-x11-drv-armsoc xorg-x11-drv-ati xorg-x11-drv-evdev xorg-x11-drv-fbdev xorg-x11-drv-intel xorg-x11-drv-libinput xorg-x11-drv-nouveau xorg-x11-drv-openchrome xorg-x11-drv-qxl xorg-x11-drv-vesa xorg-x11-drv-vmware xorg-x11-drv-wacom xorg-x11-server-Xorg xorg-x11-xauth xorg-x11-xinit xprop xwininfo xkill xev xorg-x11-fonts-100dpi.noarch xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi.noarch xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-100dpi.noarch xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-75dpi.noarch xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-14-100dpi.noarch xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-14-75dpi.noarch xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-15-100dpi.noarch xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-15-75dpi.noarch xorg-x11-fonts-ethiopic gnu-free-fonts gnu-free-mono-fonts gnu-free-sans-fonts gnu-free-serif-fonts awesome picom conky kvantum lxqt-archiver lxqt-powermanagement pcmanfm-qt lximage-qt lxqt-config lxpolkit lxqt-config-randr
On my system, I typically remove Firefox, GNOME Tour, all GNOME Extensions, Vim, GNOME Help, and a couple of other random bits & bobs.
I then just layer FISH, Neofetch, and the Inter fonts to my system.
When I do a new install for the release of 36, I may remove Neofetch from my layered packages and try calling that in my FISH config via Toolbox. Not sure yet, though!
Installed silverblue few weeks back. gnome-shell is sort-of new to me.
LayeredPackages: fcitx5 fcitx5-configtool fcitx5-mozc gtk3-immodule-xim i3status screen sway
A few gnome-shell extensions. I forget why I chose to layer these rather than install them in my user profile using the gnome extensions app.
Installing GNOME extensions on Silverblue is normally a bit wonky, as there isn’t a good way to add extensions…
…UNLESS…
You use the someone new unofficial “Extension Manager” flatpak app instead of the official GNOME “Extensions” app. Extension Manager lets you search for, install, and even update.
With the Extension Manager flatpak app, you can probably remove any GNOME extensions you’ve installed as a layered package.
(Extension Manager is rather new, and I also layered a few GNOME extensions a while back before the app was released.)
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Yes I use it, and the FF browser addon to handle my gnome extensions on Silverblue, much better than layering them IMO.
I haven’t posted my own yet, so here’s what I’ve got at the moment:
RemovedBasePackages: firefox 100.0-2.fc35 gnome-tour 41~rc-1.fc35
LayeredPackages: autofs btrbk keyd
I’m using keyd to configure my keymap (I had to manually install a copr repo, so that’s not great as it’s security liability) and brtbk for backups (I tried vorta and it was too clunky and can’t use the btrfs snapshot feature, which is incredibly fast). Those need access to systemd and/or other layered packages. For fonts, I’ve been downloading them to ~/.fonts so that they’re backed up and persist across updates. The only downside is that they won’t update automatically, if that matters.
Thanks for the tip - I’ll check it out.
I used to manage them non-layered, using either my browser, or the Gnome Extensions app, or some other way. Unfortunately I really don’t remember the details of what issue I ran into, but I do recall falling back to layering as being the least troublesome.
Thanks again! 
Is this stuff basically what’s needed to run under x11 instead of Wayland? If so, are you able to switch sessions back and forth like you usually can on other distros? I’ve got some things that need screen sharing that Wayland is interfering with.
You can select an Xorg session instead of a Wayland session ootb with Fedora Linux. The selection is done in the login screen by clicking on the gear icon after clicking on your user login.
Wait… Even in silverblue? I’m going to have to check this out when I get home.
Yes, even in Silverblue. Don’t confuse it with being that much different than Workstation other than the paradigm shift of how to do some things.
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