83 lines
4.7 KiB
HTML
83 lines
4.7 KiB
HTML
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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<html lang="en">
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<head>
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<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" charset="utf-8" />
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<link rel="icon" href="/assets/askiiart.gif" type="image/icon">
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<title>Checking out blendOS</title>
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<link href="/style.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" />
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<link href="/prism.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" />
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</head>
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<body class="line-numbers">
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<h1 id="checking-out-blendos">Checking out blendOS</h1>
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<p>blendOS is self-described as "Arch Linux, made declarative,
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immutable and atomic." And yeah, that's a pretty good
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description of what it is. But you can never <em>really</em>
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tell what a distro is like without trying it, so...</p>
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<h2 id="installation">Installation</h2>
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<p>I decided to just run blendOS in a virtual machine; I had a
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bunch of data I hadn't backed up yet and was actively working
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on, and didn't feeling like switching yet given I had no
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experience with blendOS v4[^1] - I've actually tried blendOS v3
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before, back when v4 was in alpha, but it had practically zero
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documentation, not even <code>man</code> pages, so I gave up on
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it very quickly. But with v4, hopefully it's improved since
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then.</p>
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<h2 id="first-use">First use</h2>
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<p>Upon first boot, blendOS drops you into a pretty standard
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GNOME session, on account of the <code>/system.yaml</code> file
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by default:</p>
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<div class="sourceCode" id="cb1"><pre
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class="language-yaml"><code class="language-yaml"><span id="cb1-1"><a href="#cb1-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">impl</span><span class="kw">:</span><span class="at"> http://github.com/blend-os/tracks/raw/main</span></span>
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<span id="cb1-2"><a href="#cb1-2" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">repo</span><span class="kw">:</span><span class="at"> https://pkg-repo.blendos.co</span></span>
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<span id="cb1-3"><a href="#cb1-3" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">track</span><span class="kw">:</span><span class="at"> default-gnome</span></span></code></pre></div>
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<p>At first I wasn't sure what impl is doing, but it seems to be
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combined with the track to get the URL for the raw
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<code>yaml</code> file[^1].</p>
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<p>This is actually a really interesting bit <em>which isn't
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documented</em>, as it means you can just, say, host your own
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track(s) for all your computers in a Git repo, and they can each
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inherit from other configs[^2] or be overridden locally; this
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actually seems like a very interesting and viable way to
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centrally manage many computers running Linux, and given I'm
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constantly switching between several computers; I can just put
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my config(s) in one repo, and pull from that.</p>
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<h2 id="configuration">Configuration</h2>
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<p>It's quite basic, but blendOS actually works very well for
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me; I already have a Git repo of <a
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href="https://git.askiiart.net/askiiart/configs">all my
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configs</a>, which are intended to be run from a clean
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installation automatically, so for blendOS I just have to put
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those scripts into the yaml file and adapt it so the packages
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are listed in the YAML rather than being installed with
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<code>pacman</code> or <code>yay</code>.</p>
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<h2 id="problems">Problems</h2>
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<p>Biggest of all blendOS's problems is how slow it is to
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rebuild. It doesn't save "layers" of packages like <a
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href="https://github.com/coreos/rpm-ostree"><code>rpm-ostree</code></a>
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(as used by Fedora atomic)</p>
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<h2 id="wishlist">Wishlist</h2>
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<h2 id="sources">Sources</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>[1] <a href="https://blendos.co/">blendOS homepage</a></li>
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<li>[2] <a
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href="https://blendos.co/install/post-install/intro/">blendOS
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post-install intro</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h2 id="footnotes">Footnotes</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>[^1] That is,
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<code>http://github.com/blend-os/tracks/raw/main</code> +
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<code>/</code> + <code>default-gnome</code> +
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<code>.yaml</code></li>
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<li>[^2] In the provided <code>blend-os/tracks</code> repo,
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<code>default-gnome</code> actually inherits from the
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<code>gnome</code> track.</li>
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</ul>
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