engl-2311-blog/blog/blendos.html
2024-08-26 09:12:54 -05:00

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<h1 id="checking-out-blendos">Checking out blendOS</h1>
<hr />
<p>WARNING: This page is a work-in-progress, and is very
incomplete. Read at your own risk.</p>
<hr />
<p>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 <em>really</em>
tell what a distro is like without trying it, so...</p>
<h2 id="installation">Installation</h2>
<p>I decided to just run blendOS in a virtual machine; I had a
bunch of data I hadn't backed up yet and was actively working
on, and didn't feeling like switching yet given I had no
experience with blendOS v4 - I've actually tried blendOS v3
before, back when v4 was in alpha, but it had practically zero
documentation, not even <code>man</code> pages, so I gave up on
it very quickly. But with v4, hopefully it's improved since
then.</p>
<h2 id="first-use">First use</h2>
<p>Upon first boot, blendOS drops you into a pretty standard
GNOME session, on account of the <code>/system.yaml</code> file
by default:</p>
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb1"><pre
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>
<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>
<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>
<p>At 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
<code>yaml</code> file<a href="#fn1" class="footnote-ref"
id="fnref1" role="doc-noteref"><sup>1</sup></a>.</p>
<p>This is actually a really interesting bit <em>which isn't
documented</em>, 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 configs<a href="#fn2" class="footnote-ref"
id="fnref2" role="doc-noteref"><sup>2</sup></a> 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.</p>
<h2 id="configuration">Configuration</h2>
<p>blendOS's configuration is really simple:</p>
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb2"><pre
class="language-yaml"><code class="language-yaml"><span id="cb2-1"><a href="#cb2-1" 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>
<span id="cb2-2"><a href="#cb2-2" 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>
<span id="cb2-3"><a href="#cb2-3" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">track</span><span class="kw">:</span><span class="at"> default-gnome</span></span>
<span id="cb2-4"><a href="#cb2-4" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a></span>
<span id="cb2-5"><a href="#cb2-5" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">arch-repo</span><span class="kw">:</span><span class="at"> </span><span class="st">&#39;https://repo-goes-here.example&#39;</span></span>
<span id="cb2-6"><a href="#cb2-6" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a></span>
<span id="cb2-7"><a href="#cb2-7" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">packages</span><span class="kw">:</span></span>
<span id="cb2-8"><a href="#cb2-8" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="at"> </span><span class="kw">-</span><span class="at"> </span><span class="st">&#39;fish&#39;</span></span>
<span id="cb2-9"><a href="#cb2-9" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a></span>
<span id="cb2-10"><a href="#cb2-10" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">aur-packages</span><span class="kw">:</span></span>
<span id="cb2-11"><a href="#cb2-11" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="at"> </span><span class="kw">-</span><span class="at"> </span><span class="st">&#39;EVEN-MORE-FISH&#39;</span></span>
<span id="cb2-12"><a href="#cb2-12" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a></span>
<span id="cb2-13"><a href="#cb2-13" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">services</span><span class="kw">:</span></span>
<span id="cb2-14"><a href="#cb2-14" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="at"> </span><span class="kw">-</span><span class="at"> </span><span class="st">&#39;service-goes-here&#39;</span></span>
<span id="cb2-15"><a href="#cb2-15" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a></span>
<span id="cb2-16"><a href="#cb2-16" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">user-services</span><span class="kw">:</span></span>
<span id="cb2-17"><a href="#cb2-17" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="at"> </span><span class="kw">-</span><span class="at"> </span><span class="st">&#39;user-service-goes-here&#39;</span></span>
<span id="cb2-18"><a href="#cb2-18" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a></span>
<span id="cb2-19"><a href="#cb2-19" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">package-repos</span><span class="kw">:</span></span>
<span id="cb2-20"><a href="#cb2-20" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="at"> </span><span class="kw">-</span><span class="at"> </span><span class="fu">name</span><span class="kw">:</span><span class="at"> </span><span class="st">&#39;repo name&#39;</span></span>
<span id="cb2-21"><a href="#cb2-21" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="at"> </span><span class="fu">repo-url</span><span class="kw">:</span><span class="at"> </span><span class="st">&#39;https://repo.url&#39;</span></span>
<span id="cb2-22"><a href="#cb2-22" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a></span>
<span id="cb2-23"><a href="#cb2-23" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">commands</span><span class="kw">:</span></span>
<span id="cb2-24"><a href="#cb2-24" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="at"> </span><span class="st">&#39;echo hiiiiiii &gt; /home/user/helloooooo&#39;</span></span></code></pre></div>
<p>It's quite basic, but blendOS actually works very well for
me; I already have a Git repo of <a
href="https://git.askiiart.net/askiiart/configs">all my
configs</a>, 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
<code>pacman</code> or <code>yay</code>.</p>
<h2 id="problems">Problems</h2>
<p>Biggest of all blendOS's problems is how slow it is to
rebuild. It doesn't save "layers" of packages like <a
href="https://github.com/coreos/rpm-ostree"><code>rpm-ostree</code></a>
(as used by Fedora atomic)</p>
<h2 id="wishlist">Wishlist</h2>
<h2 id="sources">Sources</h2>
<ul>
<li>[1] <a href="https://blendos.co/">blendOS homepage</a></li>
<li>[2] <a
href="https://blendos.co/install/post-install/intro/">blendOS
post-install intro</a></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="footnotes">Footnotes</h2>
<aside id="footnotes"
class="footnotes footnotes-end-of-document" role="doc-endnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1"><p>That is,
<code>http://github.com/blend-os/tracks/raw/main</code> +
<code>/</code> + <code>default-gnome</code> +
<code>.yaml</code><a href="#fnref1" class="footnote-back"
role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p></li>
<li id="fn2"><p>In the provided <code>blend-os/tracks</code>
repo, <code>default-gnome</code> actually inherits from the
<code>gnome</code> track.<a href="#fnref2" class="footnote-back"
role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p></li>
</ol>
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