Prototyping desktop images with bootc

[castrojo]

Hey ya'll!

I work on Universal Blue, which has been making desktop images via rpm-ostree built on Fedora. Over the past few years we've been building images on rpm-ostree. Bazzite is our most successful image. We basically FROM fedora and build a custom image for gaming handhelds. Here's more videos but the basic idea is, if you can shove it in a containerfile, you can make what you want. 😄

We've been transitioning to bootc and I wanted to share some of our experiences with the group. There's 3+ years of history here so let me start by showing some of our prototypes. Our latest one is built on CentOS Stream10:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFPqsK9lNPc

I've got a few years of backstory there but I'd also like to point out HeliumOS as well. Between both of our orgs we've got some decent experience so just thought I'd mention that if you're looking for help.

There's so many things for us to discuss! I suspect this audience would be more interested in ucore, which is our custom server image. bootc makes it pretty easy to just "make your own golden image" so we just made one. Looking forward to the discussions!

[imbev]

Hello, HeliumOS developer here!

I would like to echo the sentiment, bootc holds great potential for the Linux desktop.

bootc makes it pretty easy to just "make your own golden image"

This is the experience that I've had. bootc makes semi-declarative system configuration accessible to anyone familiar with OCI tooling.

Also open to asking and answering questions :)

[vrothberg]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFPqsK9lNPc

I love it. Great work and thanks for sharing, @castrojo!

I am also toying with a bootc-based desktop in https://github.com/vrothberg/fedora-bootc-workstation. I love the experience, especially the automated updates via Renovate bot (e.g., https://github.com/vrothberg/fedora-bootc-workstation/pull/33/files).