Skip to main content

Bluefin LTS (Alpha)

Achillobator giganticus

achillosmall

Larger, more lethal Bluefin. bluefin:lts is built on CentOS 10.

Purpose

Bluefin LTS is a workstation designed for people who prefer Long Term Support. This species of raptor is for users who prefer a slower release cadence, about a three-to-five year lifespan on a single release. It is also for users that depend on updated user space applications via Flathub and Homebrew, but may prefer the slower enterprise cadence for their host operating system. We expect less churn and maintenance over the course of its lifecycle.

This image is built differently from Bluefin and Bluefin GTS, and is documented here seperately.

"Sometimes there's that special Thinkpad, where everything is working perfectly. May this kernel and this laptop be as one, forever."

-- Tired Sysadmin

Bluefin LTS is composed of:

  • Mostly the same packages of Bluefin and Bluefin GTS, but built with CentOS Stream 10 and EPEL
  • The same features since they share the same source RPMs, just built on CentOS
  • Seperate lts-hwe image with an updated Linux kernel

In the future we will investigate bringing newer versions of the GNOME desktop to Bluefin LTS as appropriate.

Pasted image

warning

While our payload is less churny than Fedora, note that this is still a new image, this project is still in alpha.

Status

Blockers

  • bootc-image-builder flatpak support
  • Secure Boot

Next Up

  • ZFS support

Out of Scope

Diverse akmod support unless someone signs up for it.

Images

The following images and tags are available:

  • bluefin:lts - stock kernel, 6.12.0 for the life of the release, same as CentOS
  • bluefin-hwe:lts - kernel provided by the CentOS Hyperscale SIG (Not many people testing this right now, beware)
  • bluefin-gdx:lts - includes Nvidia drivers and associated CUDA tooling. See Bluefin GDX

All images offer Bluefin's Developer Mode.

Hibernation Enabled by Default

Hibernation is on by default in a suspend-then-hibernate configuration. Here is the exact config. The device will suspend then go into hibernation after two hours. See the systemd-sleep.conf documentation.

Note that secureboot and hibernation are mutually exclusive. We do not yet offer secureboot enabled images of Bluefin LTS, if you need that functionality now we recommend the normal Bluefin and Bluefin GTS images.

Other features

  • Rebasing: We will explicitly not support rebasing from the Fedora based images and ensure the rebase helper keeps users protected.
  • Releases: Builds publish weekly on Tuesdays, the images will update as often as the team is developing and will settle down into weeklies as the project matures
  • Filesystem: We will keep the filesystems the default

Schedule

This is very aspirational and totally not up to us, but we'll be able to at least gather data at these events:

Installation and Caveats

danger

Do NOT rebase to this image from an existing Bluefin, Aurora, Bazzite, or Fedora system. This warning is in red for a reason.

1. Snag the ISO

2. On first boot, install flatpaks: ujust install-system-flatpaks

This is a working around until Flatpaks can be put on the ISO: Incoming anaconda PR for the flatpaks, also:

  • Do not rebase to this from an existing Fedora image, ain't no one testing that. Also the filesystems are going to be different, etc. We recommend a VM for now
  • Some packages are missing until they get added to the EPEL10 repos.
    • Developer tools are included, -dx split will come later
    • No nvidia builds until Nvidia publishes EL10 drivers
  • No akmods or other hwe has been added

ARM Support

Using it with your Apple Silicon Mac

UTM can boot these images if suitably configured:

  • File → New, then select Virtualize
  • Select Linux, then enable "Use Apple Virtualization" (The QEMU virtualization backend can also work, but this works better on Apple Silicon.)
  • Browse for the Bluefin LTS ISO.
  • It should default to 4GB of RAM; this is a good minimum value.
  • On the Summary screen, it is not necessary to check the "Open VM Settings" box; while you may wish to adjust the configuration of the VM before first boot, the defaults are sensible.
MacOS setups wanted

If there are other ways to set this up on MacOS please considering sending a pull request!

Differences/Errata

  • Pixi package manager is used instead
    • Homebrew doesn't have ARM Linux builds
  • Chromium as the browser
    • Firefox doesn't have ARM Linux builds

Building Locally

To build locally and then spit out a VM:

git clone https://github.com/ublue-os/bluefin-lts
cd bluefin-lts
just build
just build-iso ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:lts

qcow2 file is written to the output/ directory. Username and password are centos/centos

Supporting Bluefin LTS

The team appreciates your support!