The Fedora Project announced today a new family of Fedora Linux spins called Fedora Atomic Desktops, which serves as an umbrella for all the current and future Fedora Linux spins that offer an immutable file system, based on rpm-ostree.
Announced nearly ten years ago, Project Atomic consists of a set of packages from an OS that have been pulled together with rpm-ostree to create a file system tree that can be deployed and updated as an atomic unit.
The Project Atomic has already seen a few spins since its creation, including Fedora Silverblue (formerly Fedora Atomic Workstation), Fedora Kinoite, Fedora Sericea, and last but not least Fedora Onyx, which features the Budgie desktop environment.
The Fedora Atomic Desktops brand was born from the need to simplify how future atomic spins are named, to make it easier for users to use these immutable Fedora Linux spins based on rpm-ostree, and to accommodate even more atomic spins featuring different desktop environments.
Joseph Gayoso has expressed that the lack of a common language when discussing atomic spins creates confusion. For instance, someone seeking information about Kinoite may overlook helpful articles about Silverblue, not realizing that the latter also pertains to their issue.
As of the time of writing, the Fedora Atomic Desktops brand incorporates four atomic spins. These are Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, Fedora Sway Atomic (previously known as Fedora Sericea), and Fedora Budgie Atomic (formerly Fedora Onyx).
“The nature of the OS is better described by atomicity than immutability.”
Fedora Project expects more Fedora Linux spins to join the Fedora Atomic Desktops family. These may feature desktop environments like Xfce (Fedora Vauxite Atomic), as well as elementary OS’s Pantheon or System76’s upcoming COSMIC desktop written in Rust.
Last but not least, the Fedora Atomic Desktops brand was also created from the need for a more accurate way of talking about how rpm-ostree works, noting the fact that Fedora Atomic spins are not actually immutable as there are ways to get around the read-only aspects of immutability on a Fedora Atomic spin.
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