Hmm, well Fedora on its own (so no Silverblue) is very much your classic way of shipping a distro. That tends to mean that, over time, "cruft" accumulates as you upgrade your system, uninstall/reinstall packages, etc. They leave bits of themselves behind that can cause unwanted behavior.

Fedora Silverblue, that Bluefin is based on, treats the entire system layer as "immutable". Basically, it ensures consistency so that upgrades and package upgrades don't leave the system in an inconsistent state.

What Bluefin adds on top of this is a set of opinionated, pre-configured layers suited for getting particular groups of tasks done. Those layers are also immutable and tested as a whole, which makes shipping those layers at velocity easy (faster upgrades, less wonky behavior on upgrade) and easy to swap between, so you can go from gaming to developer mode without worrying about an accumulation of cruft.

Is that helpful at all? There's also this announcement blog post, which I found very helpful in understanding the value proposition.

Because it uses OCI images, it auto-updates like a Chromebook, and you can switch between modes, like say a gaming mode that's a full SteamOS replacement, to a mode that gives you an entire development environment without needing to install and configure these layers or stacks of capabilities yourself.

That's very powerful. For cloud native developers like myself who are used to working with container images as the deliverable artifact, this makes that workflow very easy. Podman is included. You can create entire development environments at will that are totally "pure": no side effects because everything you need is in the container. That's a Dev Container.

Racket but I'll take Guile Scheme as a close second. Then Hy, a lisp dialect of Python. I'm writing a blog written in a DSL of Racket right now, Pollen, that makes authoring a joyful experience. Hy gives me access to the entire Python ecosystem plus access to things like macros. Guile Scheme is the configuration language of the Linux distribution, Guix System. Guile's G-Expressions are so powerful for writing packages.

Come over to team Guix System, we have cookies 🍪

I'm very sad I paid for a Fold and don't get 7 years of updates.

Can't believe I'm the first one to come in with Guix System!! I like it because, just like NixOS, it's immutable, declarative and pure. I also dig that everything is written in Guile Scheme, a full-fat programming language. You don't need to know the language exhaustively to get started. There's some wonderful folks in the community though it's a bit spread out since not everyone wants to chat on IRC and mailing lists.

The Guix sublemmy.

My employer, garden.io, offers pipelines you can run anywhere: in GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, locally, wherever! We capture all your dependencies in a dependency graph, then cache all your inputs: builds, tests, run scripts. We're open source at https://github.com/garden-io/garden

It should be harder to support Docker, which hasn't released a new open source product since before Docker Desktop, which is also proprietary. Podman Desktop? OSS. It'd be hard to name a product Red Hat supports that isn't OSS.

I'm devastated they didn't choose to pick up webOS for this.

Sorry, I should have clarified: Bluetooth or USB-connected trackpad. I use a fancy mechanical keyboard so I need some other input device that isn't my laptop's integrated trackpad.

I use and love Telegram. I use almost all of its features. All of its clients are open source. It has an incredible API for writing bots (which I also do). Their desktop Linux app is native! When I'm traveling I use Stories to share the experience with friends and family. I love the new topics to separate group discussions. It's the one app I've been able to onboard absolutely everyone to. I was never able to do the same when I tried to with Matrix and you only get so many chances before people stop moving.

What is crufty garbage to you?

In the spirit of answering a question of genuine interest, it's because tabs are much easier to process out on desktop, whether to read-it-later archives like Pocket or Omnivore or to project folders or tasks. I'd just sync them up and call it a day but I lost my moment when my tabs crept up over one hundred. There's a lot of good research there, whether for work or home programming projects.

Logseq is FOSS and easily one of the best notetaking apps out there. It's got whiteboards, interlinking at the block level, a big ecosystem of extensions and multiple panes so you can derive context as you write.

It's my choice for the majority of writing I do in my day to day and hasn't let me down once. My only wish list feature is multiplayer but that's coming soon.

If you're looking for the GitLab version of Codeberg's hosted Forgejo Git forge, there's Framagit hosted by Framasoft.

Now that I've finished the first draft of an article on setting up rootless Podman on Guix System, I'm using and building out a set of tools to support a new article covering an all Red Hat stack from inner loop to CI.

So far, it's

• OpenShift for the platform services run on
• Podman for my local container engine
• Podman Compose for inner loop development
• OpenShift Pipelines for CI
• Shipwright for building container images locally with Buildah
• Quay for image scanning and storage
• OpenShift Serverless for scale-to-zero deployments

Pixel Fold. I had a lot of concerns about durability with the scare stories the media has reported but everything about it is fantastic. Big fan of the giant viewfinder and using the rear cam for selfies. The reading experience unfolded feels like reading a paperback. Side-by-side apps unlock a whole new productive side.

I try to write about it as much as I can here! There's also ![email protected]

The Intel discrete cards are fantastic value for money. There's plenty of folks on the internet who can attest to this. Intel's support story in general (so not just graphics cards) on Linux has been nothing less than sterling. If you're using any Linux kernel you can expect Intel stuff to just work. It's been this way for at least a decade.

What has GOG done for Linux? I care about OSS and companies supporting my preferred OSS operating system. To that end, Valve continues to be a steward without peer.

The original EverQuest theme song was mine. Captured the epic wide-eyed wonder of going on an adventure perfectly.