WARNING: This page is a work-in-progress, and is very - incomplete. Read at your own risk.
-blendOS is self-described as "Arch Linux, made declarative,
immutable and atomic." And yeah, that's a pretty good
description of what it is. But you can never really
@@ -26,27 +22,42 @@
documentation, not even man pages, so I gave up on
it very quickly. But with v4, hopefully it's improved since
then.
Installation itself was simple: it's got a basic installer, + which notably allows for manual partitioning, but does + not allow for selecting which track to use (which we'll + get to later), though to be fair, that's very simple to + change post-installation.
+
Upon first boot, blendOS drops you into a pretty standard
- GNOME session, on account of the /system.yaml file
- by default:
Here's the default /system.yaml file
+ provided:
impl: http://github.com/blend-os/tracks/raw/main
repo: https://pkg-repo.blendos.co
track: default-gnomeAt first I wasn't sure what impl is doing, but it seems to be
- combined with the track to get the URL for the raw
- yaml file1.
This is actually a really interesting bit which isn't - documented, as it means you can just, say, host your own - track(s) for all your computers in a Git repo, and they can each - inherit from other configs2 or be overridden - locally; this actually seems like a very interesting and viable - way to centrally manage many computers running Linux, and given - I'm constantly switching between several computers; I can just - put my config(s) in one repo, and pull from that.
+At first I wasn't sure what impl is doing, but according to
+ the system.yaml
+ docs seems to be combined with the track to get the URL for
+ the raw yaml file.1
This is actually a really interesting bit, as it means you + can just, say, host your own track(s) for all your computers in + a Git repo, and they can each inherit from other configs2 or be overridden locally; + this actually seems like a very interesting and viable way to + centrally manage many computers running Linux, and given I'm + constantly switching between several computers; I can just put + my config(s) in one repo, and pull from that.
+(details on this at system.yaml
+ docs -> Creating a track repo/webserver)
blendOS's configuration is really simple:
commands: 'echo hiiiiiii > /home/user/helloooooo'
It's quite basic, but blendOS actually works very well for
- me; I already have a Git repo of (from system.yaml
+ docs)
It's quite basic, but blendOS's design actually works very
+ well for me; I already have a Git repo of all my
configs, which are intended to be run from a clean
installation automatically, so for blendOS I just have to put
those scripts into the yaml file and adapt it so the packages
are listed in the YAML rather than being installed with
- pacman or yay.
pacman, paru or the like (at least,
+ not directly, via akshara instead)
Biggest of all blendOS's problems is how slow it is to
- rebuild. It doesn't save "layers" of packages like rpm-ostree
- (as used by Fedora atomic)
By far, the biggest of all blendOS's problems is how
+ slow it is to rebuild. It doesn't save "layers" like rpm-ostree
+ (as used by Fedora atomic); instead, it just completely rebuilds
+ the system every single time. Because of this, it takes a long
+ time to run the updater/rebuilder, even to just install one more
+ package.3
Besides that, my only complaints are:
+akshara's (the update/rebuild tool) major
+ issue with reinheritance (see system.yaml
+ docs -> Inheritance).akshara is hosted.) However,
+ given you must be pretty competent with Linux to be using
+ blendOS in the first place, and how small the dev team and
+ community is, this isn't much of an issue.I've encountered more bugs and missing features since then, + but I'll talk about that in my next post, as they'll fit better + there.
This is some other stuff I want, not necessarily problems, + but things I'd like added
Sources are linked as they're used throughout, and also + listed separately here.
+ +system.yaml
+ docsrpm-ostree
+ docsNote: As I write this, the docs, particularly the blendOS reference, are + being constantly revised. During the process of writing this, an + entire new section has been added, though this post doesn't + touch on that and said section is unused here - it'll come into + play in the next post.