We are rolling bluefin:gts and bluefin:latest into bluefin:stable for one "Bluefin". No action will be required on your part, this will happen automatically during the week of March 1st, 2026.
We're doing this for a few reasons:
The value GTS provided is "older software works better". What it really means is "no one messed with this", changes still made in Bluefin affect this branch immediately.
bluefin:latest - this one is an antipattern, you want to be able to pin something, and people make assumptions of what it means. We'll transparently move you to bluefin:stable-daily.
If you're new here there's no need to panic, bluefin:gts and bluefin:stable always share the same version twice a year for a few weeks. We're in that period now, they're both at Fedora 42.
Where is F43 in bluefin:stable?
The promotion of bluefin:stable is delayed until next week due to waiting for the ZFS module to catch up to Linux 6.17. This typically doesn't happen but we're monitoring the situation and will make the release next week or the week after, depending on the completion of the work.
In the meantime let's pretend it's out so that we can continue to Bluefin's new model. The workflow looks like this currently:
At first this looks like a rename, so let's go over the changes:
bluefin:next - all changes will land here first. We make no stability guarantees. It will build daily. This will not replace bluefin:latest because we will for sure break things in here. This will build at least daily and every time a change lands
bluefin:testing - When changes in :next have been tested by at least one person they queue up to land in testing. We anticipate things to sit in here for a week or two at a minimum unless we need to fix a regression. This builds daily.
bluefin:stable - This is effectively the current version of Fedora, except all changes going into this will have at least be vetted by the previous branches.
We do NOT have this promotion process today. This is the goal. If you are on bluefin:latest we will point you to bluefin:stable-daily so that you are still getting daily builds. We purposely are not moving you to next because that will be volatile. Both the next and testing branches will be opt in.
Testing workflow allows for super fast iteration and two stages of testing before hitting end users. This is the #1 reason to do all of this
We no longer have to keep GTS bits around the rest of the org to support it, freeing up builder space and resources
Better alignmed with Fedora CoreOS development
This does mean that we will no longer be shipping the stock Fedora kernel in any branch. We're fine with this since we prefer to keep all our users on a gated kernel.
Guardians, today Bluefin GTS switched its base from Fedora 41 to Fedora 42. The gathering of raptors has begun. In a two weeks Bluefin (aka bluefin:stable) releases on Fedora 43 and we will start the cycle all over again!
Looking for Fedora 43? That's here too in bluefin:latest, and will roll out to bluefin:stable users in 2 weeks. It's tough to write two of these, so we'll likely just move to spring/autumn announcements and whenever major things land. When bluefin:stable upgrades I will post it as an addenum in the discussion thread for this post.
As it ends up F43 will be coming to bluefin:stable while we're in Atlanta, GA, for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, come say hello! As a bootc reference architecture we tend to align with the release cadence of other projects. This usually means that I'm on the road when there's a Bluefin release happening, so we do status reports like this depending on where we are in the world at the time, and to ensure transparency. It's also our chance to gather with attendees and get feedback on how we can make Bluefin better and gather feedback.
You'll receive this update during your next update window, or you can run an update manually by clicking on this icon:
If you've never experienced a Bluefin upgrade before, McPhail has a full writeup. Here's the major release information:
Bluefin is an operating system for your computer. It is designed to be installed on a device upgrade for the life of the hardware – we accomplish this by sharing the maintenance and care of our systems together as a community. It is designed to be as “zero touch” as possible by providing a curated GNOME experience.
Bluefin GTS (aka bluefin:gts) is our standard release, designed to be one cycle behind the most current Fedora release. This one's been in the oven for about six months and is ready to go. In a few weeks the bluefin:stable branch will move on to Fedora 43. If you're brand new you can use the website to pick the right image or select from the grid below:
This unidentified Dromeasaur is by Dr. Natalia Jagielska, a world renowned expert paleontologist and paleoartist! We reached out to work with her on bringing her artwork and style to Bluefin, and she said yes! This rendition will be revealed in November, or you can just manually pick it in the wallpaper chooser.
I am so stoked about this, an actual scientist! We're retconning that this is just Bluefin enjoying a nice day at the lake. We have two more wallpapers from her coming soon. I have come to really appreciate the world of flying reptiles. They are terrifying.
Natalia's artwork was vectorized and remastered by Delphic Melody, please consider donating so that the collaboration can continue!
Bazaar makes its debut in Bluefin GTS! All Bluefins are now just using the Bazaar flatpak. You're in for a treat:
It's been super awesome seeing Bazaar move from a random project we found on r/gnome to what is effectively now the premier app store experience for FlatHub and Linux. You can help out tremendously by sponsoring the author.
This is also a major milestone for Bluefin since we've effectively done our part for the GNOME and FlatHub ecosystems and can now consider application installation a solved problem, we can introduce new things into Bluefin as a flatpak to begin with and move us away from distribution specific formats.
I am finding more applications now than I ever have. It's also a milestone for all Linuxes since flatpak's upcoming release gives us the flexibility to do this in a proper way with full lifecycle management. We can now be more flexible with the applications we can ship mid-cycle by plopping a file in /etc/preinstall.d. Those of you making custom images will really take advantage of this!
Shoutout to Sebastian Wick for this work in Flatpak and working on the next release of this cool tech!
What makes us different?
We're committed to a future where authors deliver their applications how they see fit. This should be decoupled from the operating system.
Speaking of packages, we've been doing more work engaging with Homebrew developers, check out this interview I did with Workbrew talking about our hopes and dreams:
Let us know if you're interested in working on Homebrew for Linux, we have opened a homebrew tap so that we can interate on bringing cool new things to you. A huge shoutout goes to Yulian Kuncheff and Ahmed Adan for spearheading this effort, please consider donating!
The fonts have been a disaster for a long time, we're finally ripping the bandaid off and removing a bunch of fonts from the image. For you command line nerds you can install any of the fonts listed in Homebrew or use a tool like Embellish to install more fonts.
If you're in developer mode you can bring the monospace fonts back with ujust bluefin-fonts.
We've dropped the GNOME Quick Settings extension for tailscale in favor of the upstream system tray implementation. For more information, check the docs, this requires manual set up.
The tailscale experience is still not where it needs to be, but now that Tailscale has started work on an official system tray implementation we expect this to solidify over the next few upstream releases.
Extinction is a natural part of life. After a deprecation cycle the following images are now removed:
Nvidia Closed Images: Due to Nvidia's software support changes we can no longer support the older closed modules for Nvidia cards. Not many people are using these, either migrate to the nvidia-open images or move to a stock image to use the built in kernel drivers.
Bluefin HWE Images: Not many people were using these, they have also been removed.
As usual most of the changes we do in GitHub to deliver Bluefin and not so much in the image itself. Major parts of the Bluefin repository have been cleaned up to align with the improvements and lessons learned from building Bluefin LTS earlier in the year. This has been the bulk of the work in the past few weeks.
Bluefin has significantly been simplified, now would be a great time to contribute as we've brought the repository up to the state of more modern bootc projects like Bluefin LTS.
bluefin:gts and bluefin:stable will be publishing on Tuesdays from now on instead of Saturdays. Publishing on Saturday nights is an artifact of pre-automation "reserved time" for testing before a weekly release. This matches the same release schedule as Bluefin LTS.
Bluefin is a deinonychus, and may snap at you occasionally. Four year olds can get feisty of so there might be issues that you discover that we haven't seen before. Filing issues is always appreciated.
Sometimes starting in open source can be a real barrier if you don't know where to start. Don't have the skills to do cloud native things yet? Here's a good way to help out FlatHub. Flatpaks rely on what we call "runtimes" to ensure that the application has the dependencies it needs to run. Do a flatpak list to check them out:
This is important work because we want applications to be updated to the latest runtimes for security reasons. As it turns out, many of these applications have OPEN PULL REQUESTS already with people updating the runtime, you just need to find the app, run the updated version by following the instructions, and then report back to the Flatpak maintainer that the new app is working great (or broken!). Since GNOME 49 just released, there's plenty to do, so feel free to dive in and get started! Also remember, this work helps all of FlatHub, we're explictly sending new volunteers to help upstream.
FlatHub is critical to the desktop
We choose to help move application development forward via FlatHub instead of fragmenting the ecosystem with distribution-specific packaging. This includes shipping a premier FlatHub experience out of the box. You do not have to worry about misconfigured and low-quality Fedora flatpak remotes and packages on Bluefin systems.
Find your favorite app and see if there's a test build available for a new runtime. And if you have the skills to port applications to new runtimes, now is the time to flex. 😄
Nothing makes ops people happier than uneventful things.
Today is really like any other, we just updated a few tags, you always have the option to go to any version we support at any time. Wether you like the chill vibe of bluefin:gts or the refined aggresiveness of bluefin:stable , the raptor abides.
Here's the current lay of the land:
gts (default)
stable or stable-daily
latest
Fedora Version:
42
43
43
GNOME Version:
48
49
49
Target User:
Most users
Enthusiasts
Advanced users and testers
System Updates:
Weekly
Weekly or Daily
Daily
Application Updates:
Twice a Day
Twice a Day
Twice a Day
Kernel:
Gated
Gated
Ungated
NOTE: The stable and stable-daily branches will move to F43 in two weeks.
Bluefin is an active predator and is constantly hungry. You can help keep Bluefin healthy by becoming a contributor! We are an open source project and accept contributions:
Let's take a look at our contributor health, and celebrate the amazing folks who have come together to bring you Bluefin! We use LFX Insights to measure our project health. First note that my results here are skewed, since I am either usually just merging or telling a bot it's ok to do something. This also does not include the rest of Universal Blue. Yes, Aurora people basically maintain both, haha.
This next one surprised me, I was expecting 20 or 30ish at best. Nice work ya'll!
Haha yep, I can't hide from the data though, free me from this!
Feel free to browse around and learn cool things about Bluefin's creators.
After KubeCon we head into the holidays, where things will slow down significantly. We've been in the lab with mad doctor Timothée Ravier and have been cooking up something. We expect that this will change the course of Bluefin for the better, forever. We can't wait to show you, until then, enjoy!
Today we're happy to announce that Bluefin was one of the 71 projects selected for Github's Secure Open Source Fund. We applied for and were selected earlier this year, with tulilirockz representing the team and working with GitHub -- getting some awesome training and some funding to work on improving our security posture. Also awesome to see CNCF Projects like bootc and fluxcd. We're in excellent company. 😄
This has led to us publishing our SBOMs and in general giving everything a once over. p5 also dove in to ensure we're rocking and rolling to secure our supply chain. Though we still depend on many third party sources for our software, we've severely cut that down, bringing things inhouse when necessary or removing a dependency alltogether. Thanks to p5's automation work the project is constantly rebuilding when there's a new base image, ensuring that you're getting those timely security updates!
This was also a good time for us to work with Alan Pope and the rest of the crew at Anchore. The team deployed Syft across our important repos and got to work.
This work is of course, always ongoing. I am still green in this field myself, if you're looking to learn more start here with the OpenSSF
This month Jacob Schnurr takes us back to the Cretaceous. A herd of Dreadnoughtus schrani lumber on their way to their nesting grounds as three Nyctosaurus gracilis lazily fly overhead.
You will receive these in your next update over the weekend.
You may have noticed the new changelogs, which publish weekly when the new images are released.
We're still working on it so there's some improvements to be made, as well as some DNS work to finish it off, but we're pretty happy with it.
Bluefin LTS and GDX are nearing the home stretch, with the GNOME48 backport completed and the kernel policy set. It will ship with the stock CentOS kernel, 6.12.0, which will receive updates and backports throughout its lifecycle.
The hwe stream will be opt in with a ujust rebase-helper, which will bring in a new kernel. This stream is intended for people who need fresh kernels for new hardware. We will not be producing ISOs for these, but will likely do so in the future.
The default filesystem across the board will be XFS.
Hoping to add ZFS over the weekend.
ask.projectbluefin.io is working well with Dosu, we're still tweaking it but it's at least better than most web searches and almost any reddit post, so we're going to keep that around for people who want to use it. It's always linked from the docs, look for "Ask Bluefin" on the top left of this site.
Bazaar continues to improve, things are mostly settled. We fixed the MIME types for flatpakref files so that should be good to go. We're mostly waiting on this to come to Flathub so we can add it to Bluefin LTS, the team is helping out with that process.
Alright, this tool just added linux support like three weeks ago, so when I saw it I had to call dibs. the / search is awesome, and you can do full package management. You have just leveled up your TUI game. 😈
This is landing in Bluefin this week, if you want it now:
A little over four years ago some of my fellow ex-Ubuntu friends helped me complete the first prototype for Bluefin. It was our pocket vision of a "what if we could start over and make exactly what we want?". For you archaeologists, here's the first version.
Technically a day early but we intend to make this a weekend long celebration. Eighteen months later we would form a community ... Universal Blue, with the goal to provide modern Linux operating systems for the next generation of open source users and contributors.
Now we have Bazzite, Aurora, and Cayo. Finally, the tools to make our own fate. 😈 I don't have anything especially insightful to say other than thanks! Let's take a quick look at where we stand:
We're sitting at about ~25,000 weekly checkins of Universal Blue systems, and now that we have sort of functional installers, who knows how fast we can grow!
As Kyle mentioned in the Bazzite update our communities continute to grow as well! We're now well over 30 million pulls of our images (we kind of stopped counting that). Here's the contributor stats:
Here's our rolling totals:
Core contributions: 61 individuals
Contributors: 1098 individuals
Participants: 3069 individuals
Visitors: 13469
And as we can see, the amount of contributions since Bazzite started to gain traction has really improved. I'm particularly proud of our contributor distribution here - it proves that non-code contributions around support can help keep our project healthy:
(This chart is measuring the partial month of July, ignore that drop off we're not collapsing. 😃 )
You have my thanks, you've made my operating system invisible, it has been a pleasure destroying the Linux desktop with you. 💙
Today is also Bluefin's fourth birthday. I suppose as the first product she was the one who would push the hardest, and will always strive for the pure bootc experience. The dinosaurs remind us that we need to force change in order to achieve the best possible desktop we can. Here's a peek at something special:
I was unfortunately unable to find out the lifespan of a Deinonychus, so we'll have to just roll with it.
Things are pretty calm right now, Bazaar is in and once that gets put into Flathub we can chill more. There's plenty of folks on what we call "chillops": they rotate out and relax while the automation hums along for a while.
But also now is the time when the new folks start to step up, so it's encouraging to see people come in and drive for a while. Bluefin LTS is looking pretty good, probably on track for fall GA but we're not in a rush. Next major effort will be adding F43 as beta channels and cycling back into release mode. The game has not started. The clue is: Winnower
This month we return to our pleasant July savannah, our first ever dinosaur wallpaper! There will be a brand new one for August, so enjoy the serene pastures while you can. Today is all about ISOs:
This is also the first time that Bazaar is shipping on our installation media, we hope that exposing application donation pages and download metrics will help encourage folks to donate to the apps they love!
We have a working Flatpak and hope to submit to Flathub soon so everyone can enjoy! This thing is so fast I am never giving this app up, it's become a necessary part of my kit!
This is the latest weekly snapshot, hope you enjoy! Note to you Bluefin GTS users that you're still stuck with the old installer and old software store, but at least you'll get it all when it's mostly finished. 😃
Now Bazaar has enough feature parity with gnome-software so we’ve gone ahead and made the switch in bluefin:latest. Most of you will get this update next weekend - in the meantime feel free to dive in and give feedback! bluefin:stable-daily will start to get this tomorrow.
Issues: Check these first as we’ve been logging people’s requests here: GitHub · Where software is built - note that the curated page with the dinosaurs and app tiles isn’t Bazaar, that’s our custom config, we’re still working on it. (The horizontal experience needs work still!)
There’s still some session integration work to happen over the next few days, notably the background service doesn’t start until you launch the app or you hit the super key. This means there’s a loading screen at first. We’re working to make that just be part of login, the end state will be instant launch.
I prefer to use with the Super-space shortcut - this is nice because if you’re in chat or on the web and you see an app you like it’s an quick way to try an app:
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It’s also integrated into the GNOME Search screen, which is probably my 2nd most used way of installing apps:
