[0] https://usebottles.com/

Especially Project Bluefin: https://projectbluefin.io/

Of course, it's great to have a Debian based alternative!

The distribution looks very fun. Something quite new to play with for distro-hoppers and to learn more about some techs.

Last time I tried fedora-silverblue I didn't like it. My packages were scattered in 2 or 3 distrobox containers. It's not that much, but they can be different distributions, and then we add flatpak to the mix, and apps installed in the base OS with rpm-ostree... It felt like a frankenstein distro. Upgrades were time consuming, and not smooth at all. Not only did I have to learn how to manage a fedora-silverblue, but I also had to maintain a debian container, upgrade another fedora (a regular one, not silverblue), learn the quirks of flatpak, and... that was too much work. It doesn't really matter that I can confidently upgrade the empty base OS, if I still need to manually upgrade my fedora container and it can break the package I need from that container.

The approach here with Apx is worth a closer look. It abstracts away the different package managers of the main distro (`apx search` PACKAGE will translate to `apt-cache search` in debian container, `pacman -Ss` in arch container, `zypper search` in opensuse...). The concept of "exporting" the packages, and the UI around it, makes me think they aim at making the management of these distrobox containers easier.

Has anyone put OS2 in Docker yet?

> [...] through Apx, a wrapper around Distrobox. The latter, in turn, is a wrapper around Podman, Docker, or the simple container manager lilipod

I filed a bug report to add a function to copy error messages from the installer - would be really helpful to file meaningful bugs reports

I'm also curious if there is really no way to install things on the host - is there a way to install NVIDIA drivers or the like?

But the website makes no effort to relate to enterprise-level administration. Strange.

sudo apt install overlayroot

#edit the setup script vars

sudo nano /etc/overlayroot.conf

overlayroot="tmpfs:swap=1,recurse=0"

#set different role contexts for grub

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true

GRUB_DEFAULT=saved

GRUB_TIMEOUT=3

GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT=$GRUB_TIMEOUT

GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu

GRUB_TERMINAL=console

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_READONLY="quiet splash i915.tuxedo_disable_psr2=1 i915.enable_psr=0 "

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash i915.tuxedo_disable_psr2=1 i915.enable_psr=0 overlayroot=disabled fsck.mode=force fsck.repair=yes "

#etc...

#then insert an auto menu item for the read only OS boot up

sudo nano /etc/grub.d/10_linux

  if [ "x$is_top_level" = xtrue ] && [ "x${GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU}" != xtrue ]; 

    linux_entry "${OS}" "${version}" simple \
    "${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX} ${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT}"

    linux_entry "${OS} READ ONLY OS" "${version}" simple \
    "${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX} ${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_READONLY}"

#and finally enable the role selection with your current kernel

sudo update-grub

sudo update-initramfs -u

For systems that have enough ram and cheap SSD it ensures the flash memory will last longer. Additionally, running /home on F2FS for workstations can improve long-term hardware health, as Desktop users do not require the OS to be writable in many use-cases.

It is not a perfect approach, as silly things done as root can always bork the backing partition.

Best of luck =3