Silverblue impressions

content/thoughts/three-weeks-with-silverblue.md

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