The base commit you are referring to is the ostree commit that was generated when the Kinoite compose was made.
The Atomic Desktops use rpm-ostree/ostree to build and transfer the contents of the OS. The input is a the RPMs that define the OS and the output is the ostree commit.
The base commit is what is produced by the compose process run in the Fedora build systems and then pushed to the Fedora ostree repo.
If you were to perform additional layering/removing operations on your system, i.e. using rpm-ostree install, the system would generate another ostree commit that you would see in your output.
Here’s an example using Fedora IoT (another distro that uses rpm-ostree):
$ rpm-ostree status -v
State: idle
AutomaticUpdates: disabled
Deployments:
● fedora-iot:fedora/stable/x86_64/iot (index: 0)
Version: 44.20260427.0 (2026-04-27T16:34:26Z)
BaseCommit: 35a2e036cdcf8f3067effe5a7a7415993481e9beaaca7eed7eabf53381852192
├─ repo-0 (2026-04-22T13:34:32Z)
├─ repo-1 (2026-04-27T16:29:59Z)
└─ repo-2 (2026-04-22T11:00:17Z)
Commit: 994f39691574fff33afeb1ba59d158d92ca88fe4cc4608883b82e728376ac421
├─ fedora (2026-04-22T13:34:32Z)
├─ fedora-cisco-openh264 (2026-03-24T10:37:04Z)
└─ updates (2026-09-28T00:55:55Z)
Staged: no
StateRoot: fedora-iot
GPGSignature: 1 signature
Signature made Mon Apr 27 16:34:58 2026 using RSA key ID DBFCF71C6D9F90A6
Good signature from "Fedora <fedora-44-primary@fedoraproject.org>"
LayeredPackages: vim
fedora-iot:fedora/stable/x86_64/iot (index: 1)
Version: 44.20260427.0 (2026-04-27T16:34:26Z)
Commit: 35a2e036cdcf8f3067effe5a7a7415993481e9beaaca7eed7eabf53381852192
├─ repo-0 (2026-04-22T13:34:32Z)
├─ repo-1 (2026-04-27T16:29:59Z)
└─ repo-2 (2026-04-22T11:00:17Z)
StateRoot: fedora-iot
GPGSignature: 1 signature
Signature made Mon Apr 27 16:34:58 2026 using RSA key ID DBFCF71C6D9F90A6
Good signature from "Fedora <fedora-44-primary@fedoraproject.org>"
The top entry shows my booted deployment and I have installed vim as part of the deployment. The BaseCommit value of the top deployment matches the Commit value of the rollback deployment (the bottom deployment).
When I did an rpm-ostree install vim, the system created a new ostree commit and generated a new value (994f39691574fff33afeb1ba59d158d92ca88fe4cc4608883b82e728376ac421)
In a sense, the BaseCommit is similar to the concept of a git “parent commit”.
If you want to see the ostree commit history for a particular ref (i.e. fedora/43/x86_64/kinoite ) you can query the ostree remote using the following steps:
- Fetch the commit history for your
ref with the command sudo ostree pull --commit-metadata-only --depth=100 fedora:fedora/43/x86_64/kinoite
- List the commits with
ostree log fedora/43/x86_64/kinoite
- List the contents of a commit with `rpm-ostree db list
Using my Fedora IoT system as an example (I’ve truncated some output for brevity):
$ sudo ostree pull --commit-metadata-only --depth=10 fedora-iot:fedora/stable/x86_64/iot
GPG: Verification enabled, found 1 signature:
Signature made Mon Sep 28 10:05:14 2026 using RSA key ID DBFCF71C6D9F90A6
Good signature from "Fedora <fedora-44-primary@fedoraproject.org>"
GPG: Verification enabled, found 1 signature:
Signature made Sun Sep 27 10:05:38 2026 using RSA key ID DBFCF71C6D9F90A6
Good signature from "Fedora <fedora-44-primary@fedoraproject.org>"
...
11 metadata, 0 content objects fetched; 6 KiB transferred in 3 seconds; 0 bytes content written
$ ostree log fedora/stable/x86_64/iot
commit ebaf060de0ec11044efc5562b3d739d5c1fd2a711414133d6f6867c8f4b76a2f
Parent: bc549c76d249800f038001634aeb0cded2a490ad71e80a2563a4887f36d34d0a
ContentChecksum: 50e7bb8b87ad738e911e8bb56d250396ffa4674c9106069461c6066441ed7287
Date: 2026-09-28 10:04:37 +0000
Version: 44.20260928.0
(no subject)
commit bc549c76d249800f038001634aeb0cded2a490ad71e80a2563a4887f36d34d0a
Parent: eced2d3dab382ba98ed9efd2ebc56e929cd01341edc266ca9b70d51dd3963c1e
ContentChecksum: 128d4da0535fd4739ce02d80c48ca7a0a0aa616b5423f0ad071513c3dedf2c01
Date: 2026-09-27 10:05:16 +0000
Version: 44.20260927.0
(no subject)
commit eced2d3dab382ba98ed9efd2ebc56e929cd01341edc266ca9b70d51dd3963c1e
Parent: 1285483d3bb6598c479a0b9ccda02c70a694949b12c1c52b0072df4df19b4b2f
ContentChecksum: 9720f3e9de8e6a4d811ed5aca2f09474f28b2879877c6d4e32ea6fcf4e9c070c
Date: 2026-09-26 10:04:46 +0000
Version: 44.20260926.0
(no subject)
...
$ rpm-ostree db list eced2d3dab382ba98ed9efd2ebc56e929cd01341edc266ca9b70d51dd3963c1e
ostree commit: eced2d3dab382ba98ed9efd2ebc56e929cd01341edc266ca9b70d51dd3963c1e
ModemManager-1.24.2-3.fc44.x86_64
ModemManager-glib-1.24.2-3.fc44.x86_64
NetworkManager-1:1.56.1-2.fc44.x86_64
NetworkManager-libnm-1:1.56.1-2.fc44.x86_64
NetworkManager-wifi-1:1.56.1-2.fc44.x86_64
NetworkManager-wwan-1:1.56.1-2.fc44.x86_64
aardvark-dns-2:1.17.1-1.fc44.x86_64
alternatives-1.33-5.fc44.x86_64
atheros-firmware-20260916-1.fc44.noarch
attr-2.6.0-1.fc44.x86_64
audit-libs-4.2.1-1.fc44.x86_64
authselect-1.7.1-1.fc44.x86_64
authselect-libs-1.7.1-1.fc44.x86_64
bash-5.3.9-3.fc44.x86_64
bash-completion-1:2.17-2.fc44.noarch
bootc-1.16.13-1.fc44.x86_64
bootupd-0.2.35-1.fc44.x86_64
brcmfmac-firmware-20260916-1.fc44.noarch
bubblewrap-0.12.0-1.fc44.x86_64
bzip2-libs-1.0.8-23.fc44.x86_64
...