Bluefin Administrator’s Guide

Day to Day Operation

Bluefin is designed to be installed for the life of the hardware without reinstallation. Unlike traditional operating systems the image is always pristine and “clean”, making upgrades less problematic. Updates are automatic and silent by default.

This usually means you can set it up as part of the setup process and then likely not have to come back here. 🙂

I want that “defaults lifestyle” –Matt Ray

Installing Applications

Graphical Applications

Use the GNOME Software Center to install applications from Flathub. System updates and upgrades are not handled by this application, it’s scope has been reduced to only install Flatpaks from Flathub. The Warehouse tool is included for management.

Command Line Applications

The brew application is the package manager used for installing command line applications in Bluefin.

• Homebrew Documentation
• Homebrew Packages
• Cheatsheet

System Updates

Bluefin is designed to be “hands off”. System updates apply weekly, and Flatpaks update twice a day in the background. Updates are applied when the system reboots. Therefore, it is recommended to routinely power off your device when it’s not being used to ensure kernel updates are being applied. Application updates (like the browser) happen independently of this and don’t require a reboot.

Machine firmware updates are provided through the standard Software Center:

Upgrades and Throttle Settings

Bluefin publishes images based on the current and last stable version of Fedora. This is to give users maximum flexibility by allowing them to rebase to the version they want. You can choose from three rolling tags, or lock to a specific version of Fedora.

• gts: This is the default image and is always aliased to the previous stable version of Fedora. It targets the majority of users. It is slang for “Grand Touring Support”, to signify a faster cadence than an LTS
• stable: This is for enthusiasts who want the latest version of GNOME and Fedora. It is always aliased to the current version of Fedora but follows the Fedora CoreOS release schedule and not the Fedora Silverblue release schedule
• latest: For users who want the very latest Fedora has to offer, an ungated kernel-fsync linux kernel, daily updates, full open throttle 🔥

The major difference between latest and stable is when they update. latest will upgrade to the next major Fedora release as soon as it is available and it builds daily. stable will upgrade when CoreOS does it’s userpace upgrade, which is usually a few weeks afterwards, and only builds weekly.

One of Bluefin’s strengths is being able to atomically adjust versions. All the tags are built from the same repository and are essentially the same, the version numbers will just be different. gts for a work machine and stable for your hot rod. Additionally the ability to rebase between release cadences lets users repurpose machines for different use cases without needing to reinstall.

Gated Kernel

The gts and stable tags feature a gated kernel. This kernel follows the same version as the Fedora CoreOS stable channel, which is a slower cadence than default Fedora Silverblue.

kernel-fsync

The latest tag features Sentry’s kernel-fsync, which includes expanded hardware support, and uses the BORE CPU scheduler. This is the same kernel version as the latest version of Fedora and the exact same kernel that Bazzite uses.

Asus and Surface Devices

Asus and Surface devices use their own dedicated images and only follow the :latest tag. This is to ensure proper support for those devices.

Note: The kernel-fsync kernel removes the need to have dedicated Asus and Surface images, users will be rebased to the generic image at some point in the future and these images will be deprecated.

Switching between channels

Note that the stable and latest channels update more aggresively and may introduce new changes from Fedora (including regressions), take the user’s Linux expertise into account when changing the update cadence.

Use the ujust rebase-helper command to select rebase and select a specific channel:

Or select date and choose an older image.

Switching between tags manually

Here are the manual commands with rpm-ostree, we recommend becoming familiar with them if you find yourself rebasing often. Before changing a channel it is recommended to remove any locally layered packages:

rpm-ostree reset

Then run a status:

rpm-ostree status

and look for the image you are on, look for a terribly long line like this: ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:gts

The ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:gts is the important part, with bluefin being the image name, and the :latest being the image tag. That is the image you are currently on. Look for :gts, :stable, :latest, or in certain cases the version like :39 or :40. Use the rpm-ostree command to move to a newer or older version:

Manual Rebase Examples

In this example we’re rebasing to :stable, which is the latest stable release of Fedora (currently 40):

rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:stable

To always be on the :gts (default) release:

rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:gts

Explicit version tags of the Fedora release are available for users who wish to handle their upgrade cycle manually:

rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:40

Additionally rebasing to a specific date tag is encouraged if you need to “pin” to a specific day or version:

rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:38-20231101

If you use an nvidia machine, remember that the -nvidia is important! (This is why it’s important to note the image name when you ran that previous status command:

rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin-nvidia:stable

Use the skopeo inspect command to query information from an image:

skopeo inspect docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin

This will show all the available tags and useful metadata like image and kernel versions.

Check the Fedora Silverblue User Guide for more information.

Overwriting System Defaults

Most Bluefin and Aurora system defaults are shipped on the base image along with Fedora configuration in /usr/etc. Most of these can be overridden by placing a file in /etc.

For example, the Distrobox configuration is in /usr/etc/distrobox/distrobox.ini. Your customization options will be placed in /etc/distrobox/distrobox.ini. This is useful for situations where you need a copy of the original file for reference.

Check the XDG Base Directory Specification for more information on configuration options, in particular ~/.local and ~/.config.

Managing Extensions

Bluefin uses the Extension Manager by Matthew Jakeman to manage the desktop extensions. The application is included by default. You can access it via the Logo Menu (thanks Aryan Kaushik!)

This is useful if you decide you do not want to use some of the ones bundled with Bluefin.

Note: If your session crashes, then all of your extensions will be disabled.

Remote Management

Note

This feature is incomplete and needs contributors to make it a reality

Bluefin and Aurora include Cockpit for machine management. We’re hoping to include more out-of-the-box management templates, please check this issue if you’re interested in volunteering.

Terminal Configuration

Changing the default terminal shell

Bluefin ships pytxis as the default terminal. It shows up as Terminal in the menu. It is strongly recommended that you change your shell via the terminal emulator instead of system-wide. Click on the Terminal settings and edit your profile:

Then select “Use Custom Command” and then add the shell you want to use. /usr/bin/fish and /usr/bin/zsh are both included on the image:

Adjusting the transparency

Ptyxis has a transparency option that you can toggle: ujust ptyxis-transparency 0.95. It accepts values between 0 and 1.0 to set the level of transparency.

See the bluefin-cli section for more terminal goodies.

Verification

These images are signed with sigstore’s cosign. You can verify the signature by downloading the cosign.pub key from this repo and running the following command:

cosign verify --key cosign.pub ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin