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158 lines
7.7 KiB
158 lines
7.7 KiB
11 months ago
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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<html lang="en">
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<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
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<title>Julio Biason .Me 4.3</title>
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/print.css" media="print">
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<div class="container sidebar-sticky">
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<div class="sidebar-about">
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me"><h1>Julio Biason .Me 4.3</h1></a>
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<p class="lead">Old school dev living in a 2.0 dev world</p>
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</div>
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<ul class="sidebar-nav">
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<li class="sidebar-nav-item"><a href="/">English</a></li>
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<li class="sidebar-nav-item"><a href="/pt">Português</a></li>
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<li class="sidebar-nav-item"><a href="/tags">Tags (EN)</a></li>
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<li class="sidebar-nav-item"><a href="/pt/tags">Tags (PT)</a></li>
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</ul>
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<div class="content container">
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<div class="post">
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<h1 class="post-title">Three Weeks With Silverblue</h1>
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<span class="post-date">
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2021-07-23
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/fedora/">#fedora</a>
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/silverblue/">#silverblue</a>
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/immutable/">#immutable</a>
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/docker/">#docker</a>
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</span>
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<p>A few weeks ago (four weeks ago, to be exact, based on this post date), my
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Fedora Workstation crashed hard, in some freak accident that, I believe, killed
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my <code>/boot</code> partition. At first I reinstalled Workstation, but then decided to
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give a change to <a href="https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/">Silverblue</a>.</p>
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<span id="continue-reading"></span><h2 id="what-s-a-silverblue">What's a Silverblue?</h2>
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<p>Silverblue is a distribution that is pretty close to what containers do: The
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base system sits on a immutable file system, giving the impression that the
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system is just a kernel and Docker (it uses Podman actually, but it is
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basically the same thing, when we look at the functionality) and a volume with
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all the applications.</p>
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<h2 id="how-does-it-feel">How Does It Feel?</h2>
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<p>Honestly, it doesn't have any difference from the Workstation, in a day-to-day
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perspective. I still use the same editors, the same browser, the same terminal
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and, with a few caveats, everything feels exactly the same.</p>
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<h2 id="what-s-different-though">What's Different, though?</h2>
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<h3 id="install">Install</h3>
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<p>To install packages, you need to use <code>rpm-ostree</code> instead of <code>dnf</code>. The weird
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part is that by installing a package, it doesn't make things available
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immediately -- because it generates a new layer on the top of the current
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volume and you're still using the current (not yet updated) volume. If you were
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using a container system, you would shutdown your container and restart it, so
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the new layer would assume. Since the whole system is (basically) a container,
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you need to restart the whole thing... Which isn't something that weird if
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you use Workstation, 'cause that's the way Workstation works, most of the time
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(which you can completely ignore on Workstation but not here).</p>
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<p>Once a package is installed with <code>rpm-ostree install <package></code>, you can
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restart the whole thing with <code>systemctl reboot</code> (yes, no <code>sudo</code> required). But
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once it reboots, there is no need to run the scriptlets in the packages: Reboot
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loads the new volume and things appear. You can also run multiple installs to
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buy just a single layer on top of the original.</p>
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<p>(So far, I haven't seen anything like "this volume is getting too many layers
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and now it is taking forever; but, then again, three weeks only.)</p>
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<h3 id="firefox">Firefox</h3>
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<p>Firefox bundled in the base file system (the immutable part) comes without any
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codecs, so basically no video on the internet works. You can install the
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Flatpak version -- which is also something you can use for most things -- but
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then you end with two Firefox installs.</p>
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<p>And before Firefox is part of the base, immutable file system, you can uninstall
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it. But you can override the install by putting a new layer which removes
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Firefox from the base install. For that, you use</p>
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<pre style="background-color:#2b303b;color:#c0c5ce;"><code><span>rpm-ostree override remove firefox
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</span></code></pre>
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<p>... instead of the expected...</p>
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<pre style="background-color:#2b303b;color:#c0c5ce;"><code><span>rpm-ostree uninstall firefox
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</span></code></pre>
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<h3 id="extra-repositories">Extra Repositories</h3>
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<p>Silverblue doesn't allow adding extra repositories the way you normally do with
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Workstation -- creating a simple file in <code>/etc/yum.repos.d/</code>. Now you need to
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use <code>ostree remote add <name> <url></code> -- Yup, that's pretty close the way you
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add a Git remote or something.</p>
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<p>After that, installing packages takes the normal <code>rpm-ostree install</code>.</p>
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<h3 id="speed">Speed</h3>
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<p>No, sorry. I didn't notice any speed improvements, although it feels like it
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boots a bit faster than Workstation.</p>
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<p>Kinda related, since I'm running on a laptop, it seems the battery life
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improved under Silverblue, for some reason. I may take a leap here and say that
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maybe the base image is smaller -- since it is immutable and you can uninstall,
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I feel they put the bare minimum to boot a desktop system instead of everything
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that may be useful.</p>
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<h3 id="podman">Podman</h3>
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<p>Not that you can't use Docker on Silverblue, but Silverblue uses Podman by
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default for almost everything -- there is even a tool to create your own small
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containers for running things in isolation, called <code>toolbox</code>. It takes a bit of
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time to understand how it works, specially since, so far, I couldn't find a
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group I can add my user to it so I can run commands without <code>sudo</code>, but
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whatever.</p>
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<p>Besides the <code>sudo</code> thing, you may want to enable the <code>podman.socket</code> service,
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which makes Podman create a socket the same way Docker does, so you can use
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<code>docker-compose</code> like you were using Docker.</p>
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<p>Honestly, I feel I should take a bit more time to properly understand Podman
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instead of using it as Docker, but since I had a docker-compose file already and
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I needed to quickly jump back into work, I postponed this learning so far.</p>
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<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2>
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<p>So far, I'm pretty happy with Silverblue as a main drive. It works, it seems --
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emphasis on "seems" -- to be more lightweight than Workstation and I still have
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everything I need.</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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</body>
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</html>
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