Achillobator giganticus

After nine months of development Bluefin LTS and Bluefin GDX are now Generally Available(GA). The reign of Achillobator has begun. Find the download links on the website, or snag them below.

Bluefin LTS is a workstation designed for people who prefer Long Term Support but desire a modern desktop. This species of raptor is for users who prefer a slower release cadence, about a three-to-five year lifespan on a single release. Like other Bluefins it features first-class support for Flathub via Bazaar, Homebrew, ZFS, and all the other goodies.

Bluefin LTS is composed of:

• Mostly the same packages of Bluefin and Bluefin GTS, but built with CentOS Stream 10 and EPEL for extra packages.
  • The same features since they share the same source RPMs, just built on CentOS
• A backported GNOME 48 desktop
• ARM (aarch64) based images

Bluefin LTS also offers a hardware enablement branch (bluefin:lts-hwe) with:

• Updated Linux kernel, currently 6.15.9.
• Toggle between branches with ujust rebase-helper.
• Dedicated HWE ISOs for newer kit

Rationale​

Bluefin LTS ships with Linux 6.12.0, which is the kernel for the lifetime of release. An optional hwe branch with new kernels is available, offering the same modern kernel you'll find in Bluefin and Bluefin GTS. Both vanilla and HWE ISOs are available, and you can always choose to switch back and forth after installation.

I have been dogfooding Bluefin LTS for most of this year. This is the most "work focused" image and is suitable for "set it and forget it" style desktops. We are proud of this one!

Here's how I pitched the idea earlier this year:

A modern GNOME Desktop​

Bluefin LTS provides a backported GNOME desktop so that you are not left behind. This is an important thing for us. James has been diligenlty working on GNOME backports with the upstream CentOS community, and we feel bringing modern GNOME desktops to an LTS makes sense. I may be old but I'm not dead!

A very special thanks to Jordan Petridis from GNOME for technical advice and review.

New Installation Experience​

Installation is via a live session with the new Anaconda webui. This installer is miles better than the ones we used to ship, thanks to the Anaconda team.

Secure boot and all those goodies are available:

Update Cadence​

Updates will come as often as we need them for now and will settle into weekly releases on Tuesdays. Follow updates on changelogs.projectbluefin.io.

Errata​

There are a few lingering issues that will take more time:

• hwe doesn't have secure boot - we hope to revisit later this fall
• Bazaar curated config is missing - the curated section isn't available yet
• gnome-user-share is missing - we recommend using rclone mount instead

What is Bluefin GDX?

Bluefin GDX is designed to be an AI Workstation by providng Nvidia drivers and CUDA in one image. It combines Bluefin LTS with the Bluefin Developer Experience. There's no cool expansion of GDX: GPU Developer Experience I guess. Maybe someday we'll call it Bluefin CUDA Edition. (Jensen call me!)

The reason we brand it differently is that it is designed for AI and Machine Learning professionals. Instead of a multitude of Nvidia images like Bluefin we will concentrate on this one image to focus on one thing: this is our platform for open source AI. Improvements made in GDX will make it's way into Bluefin's developer mode. GDX gives us a place to rev fast with some new friends:

This will be the lab that will keep Bluefin on the leading edge of open source AI. Here's Mo Duffy on Destination Linux to give you an idea of what we're thinking about.

Features​

• Nvidia CUDA and VSCode integrations and full secureboot support out of the box. There are many parts of the CUDA ecosystem that need to be included, but the raw core is there and ready to be expanded upon.
• Ramalama for local management and serving of AI models
• uv for Python package management
• ... and more! Check the AI and Machine Learning section for more!
• We are looking for AI/ML enthusiasts with strong opinions who want to be involved! Inquire within!

You can find Bluefin GDX on the conference circuit!

What this all means

Bluefin LTS will end up being way more sustainable than Bluefin and Bluefin GTS from a developer perspective. It's more of an initial setup and then we don't touch it as often. We have had periods in beta development where we didn't need to touch it for weeks. If you look changelogs.projectbluefin.io you'll soon notice the pattern, mostly minor version bumps. Nice.

It's also much more advantageous for us to derive off of a base image that ends up being a commercial product -- there is no doubt that CentOS and Red Hat have their weight behind these base images, whereas we are unable to get that level of commitment from Fedora. And as Steven Rosenberg pointed out, Fedora isn't really improving in this area, and with bootc's composefs work coming along nicely we now have multiple base images to choose from. It will be an interesting year!

What does this mean for Bluefin GTS?​

As it turns out, Bluefin LTS HWE is in the exact same ecological niche as GTS. They will end up being competitors. There's no death knell or anything like that, once development moves on it doesn't cost us much to keep it running. And we do love our pets. Check out the awesome brand new image by Delphic Melody and ahmedadan:

As you can see, it's getting a bit crowded. We'll see how people react to LTS, and I expect we'd hide the GTS option from the website but continue to offer it.

With bootc we can deliver a desktop experience with the latest GNOME, and a new kernel -- but on a solid base with less regressions. The previous generation of thinking kept CentOS in a very locked set of use cases. The old boring ones. Now with bootc + containers + flathub + homebrew, we feel that this less churny base makes for a compelling desktop. We'll see how they compete!

Less bitey Bluefin and Bluefin GTS​

Since Bluefin LTS is "bootc natural" and not a transplant, it comes with less compromises out of the box. Bluefin LTS doesn't support local layering at all and AppImages don't work either. (Told ya'll those things were not gonna make it lol.) Bluefin LTS also does not support older machines with v2 CPU instructions.

This also lets us be less strict in Bluefin. We've decided to leave local layering enabled by default in Bluefin and Bluefin GTS. There are users who use that ecosystem, so no worries there. Savages. The Fedora based images will continue to serve these use cases. James also has his own tunaOS, which offers a wide variety of Bluefin-derived variants, including an AlmaLinux based sister to Bluefin LTS. That covers just about everybody - The bootc community around CentOS is quite diverse, and offers a variety of options.

The downloads page is looking pretty good these days but I am very interested to see what you decide since we do measure everything, so feel free to peruse that list. 😄

Merch

Now let's get on to the good stuff. store.projectbluefin.io will take you to the new Bluefin store, which has a ton of awesome items!

We celebrate this release with this T-shirt, the "Reign of Achillobator", signifying Bluefin LTS's role in this ecosystem as a top predator, along with some other goodies:

And of course we've got stuff for the kids, and some other weird things! Currently this store is US only for now.

Proceeds from the store items will go towards paying for more paleoartwork. I think this is a fair deal, Bluefin would have never gotten this far without the work of these fine artists. Having a way for the community to sponsor the artwork in return for the awesome comfort of an Achillobator giganticus hoodie? Peak Linux.

Special Thanks

Bluefin is brought to you by Tulip Blossom and James Reilly. The team grew this cycle with some fantastic new folks helping out to finish Bluefin LTS:

Yulian Kuncheff (Daegalus) hopped in to help with the GitHub actions and the lts-hwe branch. Ahmed Adan and M. Gopal (Delphic Melody) round out the new team with fantastic work on the artwork, website, documentation, and testing. And don't forget to check out the new coloring book!

Special thanks to Carl George, Laura Santamaria, Shaun McCance, and the entire bootc team for their (continuing) support of this project! The game has started. The clue is: Gardener

The Road Ahead

And lastly, there is some missing functionality compared to the Fedora build as there are some creature comforts that are missing. We call these parity bugs, so if find them, file them. There are some things that won't be coming with; CentOS Stream's focus is on long term support, so we may choose to drop a feature if it's not straightforward to bring to Bluefin LTS.

Imagine choosing between LTS, GTS, and stable with just a slider on an update page in a control panel. They should feel and act the same as each other. I'm pretty much there with my personal machines, sometimes I have to check which machine is which because it doesn't really matter. I feel the pain on the infrastructure side instead. 😄

Shred to Achillobator​

Two new soundtracks accompany this release, enjoy!

• Bluefin and Achillobator
• Bluefin and The Children of Jensen

Downloads

Download Bluefin LTS​

The long term support experience.

📖 Read the documentation to learn about features and differences.

Version	GPU	Download	Checksum
Bluefin LTS	AMD/Intel	📥 bluefin-lts-x86_64.iso	🔐 Verify
Bluefin LTS	ARM (aarch64)	📥 bluefin-lts-aarch64.iso	🔐 Verify
Bluefin LTS HWE	AMD/Intel	📥 bluefin-lts-hwe-x86_64.iso	🔐 Verify
Bluefin LTS HWE	ARM (aarch64)	📥 bluefin-lts-hwe-aarch64.iso	🔐 Verify

Download Bluefin GDX​

The AI workstation with Nvidia and CUDA.

📖 Read the documentation to learn about features and differences.

Version	GPU	Download	Checksum
Bluefin GDX	AMD/Intel + Nvidia	📥 bluefin-gdx-x86_64.iso	🔐 Verify
Bluefin GDX	ARM (aarch64) + Nvidia	📥 bluefin-gdx-lts-aarch64.iso	🔐 Verify

Discussion​

Guardians, today Bluefin switched its base from Fedora 41 to Fedora 42. The gathering of raptors is over, Bluefin GTS remains with F41 while Bluefin stretches her legs with the latest Fedora goodies.

KubeCon EU 2025 Project Report​

As a bootc derived project we tend to align with the cadence of the rest of cloud native. That means we do status reports like this depending on where we are in the world at the time, and to ensure transparency. Previous status update: KubeCon US 2024 Project Report

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First things first, here’s the Bluefin Spring 2025 playlist – like previous playlists, each song was picked for a certain reason, the interpretation is up to you. Rock out while you read this update and refresh yourself up on the docs!

You’ll receive this update during your next update window, or you can run an update manually by clicking on this icon:

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Here’s the major Fedora release information:

• Fedora Magazine: What’s new in Fedora Workstation 42
• GNOME 48 release notes
• Bluefin changelog - and here are all the package updates
• If you’re looking for Fedora 41, check out Bluefin GTS, which released a few weeks ago.

This time Jacob Schnurr takes us to the Triassic:

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Note that composefs is now enabled via upstream Fedora!

What is Bluefin?​

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 (aka bluefin:stable) is our leading edge desktop, designed to bring you the newest version of Fedora and GNOME. It follows the CoreOS release schedule and comes ~2-3 weeks after Fedora has done it’s major upgrade. This is a great buffer without being overly tardy. This one came a bit later but it’s ready now!

Here’s a bit of a rundown with Alan Pope! Special thanks to Anchore, makers of Syft and Grype - which we use as our security scanners when making our builds and their advice has been invaluable to our project this cycle!

Universal Blue revolutionizes the Linux desktop experience

We fiercely invest in automation and distributed work, which is one of the many reasons why Linux and Open Source have devoured the industry. We strive to bring these cloud native features to the desktop.

If you’re brand new you can use the website to pick the right image or use one of the direct DL links:

• AMD/Intel: https://download.projectbluefin.io/bluefin-stable-x86_64.iso
• Nvidia: https://download.projectbluefin.io/bluefin-nvidia-open-stable-x86_64.iso

Major Changes​

There are a few major changes from a Bluefin perspective that we’ve been looking forward to, let’s roll!

Installation Experience​

Let’s get this out of the way … our installation experience continues to be the bane of our existence. Most of this project is automated, but the installation experience takes a disproportionate amount of time, most of the last two months have been us scrambling to make ISOs work. As of today there are no bootc installers that are production ready for end users, this has been a problem for years so we’re exploring multiple options. I’m kinda done with snakes.

This cycle we will be producing two sets of ISOs for installation. One is the the older Anaconda installer, and one is Fyra Labs’ new readymade installer. Both sets are listed on this download page. Production of both ISOs is automated so we can kick the tyres on both and take a closer look in October for the next set of releases. The website will default to the Anaconda installers.

• Refreshed Anaconda ISOs - Thanks to a herculean effort by Jason Naggin and Noel Miller we have refreshed ISOs on the website, based on the Fedora Anaconda installer.

  • These are offline ISOs so they include all the flatpaks and everything you need to get up and running in one download.
  • Don’t overthink it these are basically fine.

• New Readymade Installation Media - thanks to our friends at Fyra we have a new installer that we’re making available.

  • The major new feature is being able to try Bluefin via a “Live CD”, which was never possible before. This is especially useful for testing wireless drivers, Nvidia support, etc.
  • This is also an offline installer and includes all the flatpaks, the major difference is that these offer a LiveCD experience.
  • Note that this installer is still very young, but we’re hoping to keep revving fast on it. The more feedback and fixes you submit, the faster it goes.

And for some color (if it’s not obvious), there’s no future for legacy installers in the new world. We plan to aggressively pursue aligning our installation methods with the rest of the cloud native ecosystem so we don’t have to deal with this. I’d like to take a moment to shout out the intergration work @tulilirockz has been doing to deliver this. Without her there would be no ISOs, or Bluefin. Much love.

We are not out of the woods yet, but we’re making significant progress so this might take a few weeks still.

Other Major Changes​

• ComposeFS information for F42 upgrades - this is the biggest heads up, if you move to stable there’s no going back to GTS. James has added guards and warnings to ujust rebase-helper to remind you. This is a one time migration, it sucks that it’s a one way trip. On the plus side someday in the future your base OS, containers, and flatpaks will all be consuming composefs for some great efficiency wins. More to follow on this as we learn more from upstream.

• As usual most of the changes are the work we do in GitHub to deliver Bluefin and not so much in the image itself. This took up the bulk of the work this cycle. Here’s a huge changelog of the package updates. You can also check out the release notes or use ujust changelogs to keep track of what’s going on.

• We really, really made some efficiency gains across Universal Blue this cycle, we were able to grow the team while getting faster.

  • We’ve centralized a ton of things from the individual images to the packages repo - the team slayed here, with Tulip and Zeglius leading the work. This has led to more sharing and reviewing across the board. This is also a great place to get started contributing!
  • This centralization led to use removing tons of old founder code that hasn’t been touched, though it did cause tiny but annoying issues. But it’s going to lead to less bugs over time.
  • Bluefin now shares more code with Aurora and Bazzite, so the repo has been shedding weight, we’re always trying to delete as much of Bluefin as we can. 😄

• Some packages have moved to flatpaks: Upcoming changes to Bluefin packages for the F42 release

• This cycle has also been all about being more up front about our project metrics:

  • Just how many of us are making this thing?
  • Just how many of us are there?

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Documentation Improvements​

We really spent a ton of time on the docs this cycle. I consider them mostly feature complete now. docs.project.bluefin is always linked from your terminal motd too. 😄

Thanks to the magic of princexml we’re able to generate a pretty amazing offline PDF of the Bluefin docs:

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Note that we will replace the Yelp help application with a link to this doc, which will open in the Papers PDF reader automatically. Yelp’s had some problems, so it’s time to say goodbye.

We will also replace the Documentation shortcut in the logo menu with this instead so that documentation will always be browsable when offline. The blue u shortcut to the online docs will remain in the menu unchanged. We hope to finish this up soon.

ARM Image​

We are currently not producing an ARM build of Bluefin or Bluefin GTS. However we do have an ARM image of Bluefin LTS, which is in Beta, you can select it from the this list.

It’s very good and on track to GA sometime this summer, so help there is appreciated. We’re still working on ARM builds for Bluefin and Bluefin GTS.

Deprecation Notices​

Extinction is a natural part of life. These will take effect when we migrate to Fedora 43 this fall so we’re giving you a full release cycle heads up.

Nvidia Closed Images​

Due to Nvidia’s software support changes we can no longer support the older closed modules for Nvidia cards.

• We will continue to make the Nvidia closed driver images for the remainder of this cycle. If your Nvidia card is OLDER than Turing+ / GTX 16XX+ this is the last release of Bluefin that will run on your card with these drivers.
  • In some cases these older cards may run better with NVK on a vanilla image.
  • Due to these changes being out of our control we cannot guarantee that older cards will work on the subsequent GTS release either. Sorry. 😦
• We will not be generating ISOs for the closed driver images.
• We will migrate you to the new nvidia-open images automatically during an upgrade if your hardware supports it. So any GTX 16XX+ and RTX Series cards will be migrated over with no action needed from you.
• Pour one out for that GTX 1080Ti, the thing rocked for an absurdly long time, rest in peace friend.

Bluefin HWE Images​

If you are using one of the old hwe images for Surface/Asus, this is the last cycle that we will be generating them. We haven’t linked to their ISOs in a long time but there’s a handful of you still rocking these. If you’re using one of these images you’ll see hwe in your bootc status or fastfetch output.

• Use ujust rebase-helper and select the latest stream.
• If you own one of these devices we recommend trying this sooner rather than later to see where your device stands today.
• If anyone is interested in maintaining images for Asus and Surface devices let us know and we’d be happy to link to your images.

More Information​

Bluefin is a deinonychus, and may snap at you occasionally. Three 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.

• Bluefin Documentation
• Universal Blue

We also accept donations to sponsor the infrastructure and artwork. If there’s a piece of software in Bluefin that makes you happy, consider donating to the upstream organization and/or authors. Thanks to the present (and past!) supporters for helping out.

Check the docs for all the available version options:

• Upgrades and throttle settings

Is that it?​

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, 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:	41	42	42
GNOME Version:	47	48	48
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

Other Universal Blue News​

M2 has moved ublue-os/main to use one justfile for builds. This means that you can just now git clone and build images on the spot. This also makes it straightforward to build our images on any infrastructure (Gitlab, etc.). Bluefin is already set up this way, so go nuts!

Desktop DevOps folks wanted!​

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:

• Help Wanted issues
• Contributing Guide

As a cloud native project we are always looking for contributors with skills in Podman, Docker, CI/CD, GitHub Actions, and good ole bash.

What’s Next?​

• Bluefin LTS and Bluefin GDX are looking solid, mostly it’s just waiting for secureboot support.

Community Health Metrics​

And lastly let’s take a look at how we’re doing. This year started off nice and boring but soon our community experienced some amazing growth. Let’s start off with our conversations on Discord, Discourse, GitHub, and Reddit. This is a measure of just how active our community is in helping each other out.

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Lots of growth here, we’re proud to announce that we just crossed 16,000 folks on the Discord. Contributions have experienced the same level of growth.

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And here are where people are submitting pull requests in GitHub. 123 individual people have contributed a pull request to Universal Blue in the last six months. As you can see we have a nice even spread of contributions across the board, this is a good thing!

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Usage​

Keep those great numbers in mind because we have a correction to make to one of our most important metrics. Timothee Ravier at Fedora was preparing his talk for Flock and noticed a problem with the countme metrics. Fedora and Universal Blue have been counting devices twice, doh! Here is the corrected chart.

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The chart is the same, all the numbers are cut in half though. If we look at the number of machines checking in with Fedora every week:

• Bazitte has crossed 30,000 15,000 devices
• Bluefin is flirting with 4,000 2,000 devices, depending on the week
• Aurora is at about 2,200 1,100 devices
• Bluefin LTS and Aurora LTS make up 400 200 total - they are still beta and hard to find so no surprises here.

It’s fine, I mean sure, it sucks to know your userbase is half of what you thought it was, but let’s look at what the team principal at Williams F1 has to say:

So error corrected, and the big takeaway from this is to remember, the contribution metrics are the key to our success. The Atomic universe is half the size we thought it was, but at least we’re consistent with each other and understanding that measuring this stuff is the key to long term success, despite the occasional bummer. We’ve always been about the slow burn, and you probably know how much we thrive under the radar anyway.

We are of course, inevitable.

Let’s look at image pulls. Note that image pulls aren’t indicative of users, instead we use it as a gauge of how many successful upgrades we’ve had. Here are all the images with more than 1 million pulls:

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And lastly, let’s take a look at the last 90 days of homebrew analytics

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All of our images are represented well here considering how small we are. 😄

Stay Safe​

• Always read the documentation before venturing out into the wild.

If you haven’t read the docs in a while, check them out, we put a ton of effort in them this cycle.​

We’ll see everyone this summer to talk about Bluefin LTS — meanwhile enjoy the release!

Feel free to ask questions!

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