I’m going to test the Fedora 43 Linux distribution in its “immutable” “atomic” shape, Silverblue.
Fedora Silverblue is Fedora’s atomic, GNOME-based desktop built around an image-based, mostly read-only system rather than a traditional mutable Linux install.
- As an atomic desktop: the base OS is image-based, updates are applied as a new deployment, and you switch to it on reboot. That gives you an easy rollback if an update goes wrong.
- It is designed to separate apps from the host OS: GUI apps are primarily installed as Flatpaks, command-line/dev tooling is commonly run in Toolbx containers, and traditional RPMs can still be added through the rpm-ostree layering when needed.
- The main upside is stability and reproducibility: Fedora says Atomic Desktops are intended to be more stable, easier to test, and well-suited to containerized apps and development.
Thus, it is rather different from other standard “mutable” Linux distros, especially when it comes to installing software.
I’m starting a series of blog posts on Fedora Silverblue.
At the moment, I’m NOT considering using it as my daily driver (which, for now, is Arch, specifically EndeavourOS).
The installation process
The installation procedure is the typical Fedora one:
It detected my language (though I then switched to English):
Then, I switched to the Italian keyboard layout:
I checked the time, and it was already correct; I also checked the Internet time synchronization:
Time to deal with disk partitioning (“Installation Destination”).
Since I’m testing this on a virtual machine, I’ll stick with the automatic partitioning.
And we can now start with the installation:
The “Writing objects” text stays there for a long time.
Then, the rest of the installation steps are performed, including the installation of apps:
Then, the progress bar basically goes directly to the end. The installation completed in a few minutes:
First boot
During the first boot, you configure a few things (most of them, taken from the installation process, but to be confirmed):
I’ll skip the GNOME tour.
The installed system
Concerning installed applications, it’s rather minimal:
You have a terminal (not the Gnome terminal, but “ptyxis) and Firefox:
Let’s see the layout of the partitions:
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bettini@fedora:~$ sudo lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom zram0 251:0 0 7.7G 0 disk [SWAP] vda 253:0 0 80G 0 disk ├─vda1 253:1 0 600M 0 part /boot/efi ├─vda2 253:2 0 2G 0 part /boot └─vda3 253:3 0 77.4G 0 part /var/home /var /sysroot/ostree/deploy/fedora/var /sysroot /etc |
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bettini@fedora:~$ cat /etc/fstab # # /etc/fstab # Created by anaconda on Wed Apr 8 16:52:13 2026 # # Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk/'. # See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info. # # After editing this file, run 'systemctl daemon-reload' to update systemd # units generated from this file. # # Updated by bootc-fstab-edit.service UUID=3d5737a8-db7a-4d19-b0e2-d8165357a722 / btrfs subvol=root,compress=zstd:1,ro 0 0 UUID=1d015c13-3114-4e98-a5bd-8b021caeaefc /boot ext4 defaults 1 2 UUID=6019-04F7 /boot/efi vfat umask=0077,shortname=winnt 0 2 UUID=3d5737a8-db7a-4d19-b0e2-d8165357a722 /home btrfs subvol=home,compress=zstd:1 0 0 UUID=3d5737a8-db7a-4d19-b0e2-d8165357a722 /var btrfs subvol=var,compress=zstd:1 0 0 |
So the main partitions are BTRFS.
Note the symlinks (especially for home):
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bettini@fedora:~$ ls -l / total 56 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 7 Jan 1 1970 bin -> usr/bin drwxr-xr-x. 7 root root 4096 Apr 8 18:52 boot drwxr-xr-x. 20 root root 4020 Apr 8 18:55 dev drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 4228 Apr 8 18:57 etc lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 8 Jan 1 1970 home -> var/home lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 7 Jan 1 1970 lib -> usr/lib lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 9 Jan 1 1970 lib64 -> usr/lib64 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 9 Jan 1 1970 media -> run/media lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 7 Jan 1 1970 mnt -> var/mnt lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 7 Jan 1 1970 opt -> var/opt lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 14 Jan 1 1970 ostree -> sysroot/ostree dr-xr-xr-x. 354 root root 0 Apr 8 18:55 proc lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 12 Jan 1 1970 root -> var/roothome drwxr-xr-x. 55 root root 1420 Apr 8 19:20 run lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 8 Jan 1 1970 sbin -> usr/sbin lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 7 Jan 1 1970 srv -> var/srv dr-xr-xr-x. 13 root root 0 Apr 8 18:55 sys drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 74 Apr 8 18:44 sysroot drwxrwxrwt. 23 root root 540 Apr 8 19:34 tmp drwxr-xr-x. 11 root root 224 Jan 1 1970 usr drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 228 Apr 8 18:55 var |
Here’s the Gnome software center:
Of course, since Silverblue is immutable (you can’t modify the root system), applications are installable through flatpaks from the software center:
Concerning the installed apps:
They are also flatpaks.
However, concerning the “System Apps”:
I seem to understand they are “layered” on the base image:
There are already some updates:
We’ll deal with upgrades in a future blog post.
That’s all for the moment, but I’ll keep exploring and experimenting with this distro.