Welcome to Bluefin

A custom image of Fedora Silverblue, offering a familiar(ish) Ubuntu-style desktop.

For end users it provides a system as reliable as a Chromebook with near-zero maintenance while providing developers with a powerful cloud-native development mode. Built with next generation tech, for people who need their machines to get work done.

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Is Bluefin for You?

Bluefin, like all Universal Blue images, is a next generation Linux desktop, generally speaking it trends towards progressive improvement; the team rigorously and aggressively moves away from legacy technologies as soon as possible in order to provide the best possible experience.

Bluefin is:

  • Flatpak First - The application model in Bluefin is centered around isolated apps that are maintained in Flathub. Applications that do not work well with modern components such as Wayland, Pipewire, Flatpak Portals, etc. may provide a poor experience and are not recommended.
  • Purposely Invisible - Bluefin is not a distribution. Your relationship is with Flathub, homebrew, and whatever you put in your containers.
  • Optimized for the 96% - Not the 4% - Bluefin takes a “stronger together” approach towards features. You can always do what you want, but the value is to share best practices, the team doesn’t spend much time on edge cases.
  • Cloud Native (For Developers) - The developer experience is focused around containers and exposing new Linux users to the tools used in cloud native. See Universal Blue’s mission statement for more information.

If your requirements are outside of this scope, then Bluefin might not be the best fit for you. We recognize that in order to make a better desktop that many parts of the traditional Linux desktop experience will not be coming with us. Here’s a video on why we take such a focused approach to the desktop. The video is about Bazzite.gg, which is a sister project, but the same applies. If this appeals to you, then Bluefin is for you!

“Evolution is a process of constant branching and expansion.” - Stephen Jay Gould

Introductory Videos and Podcasts

Ship It! 122: Linux distros – Listen on Changelog.com