Meh. I haven't seriously considered GTK ecosystems since 3 got released. Between the increased usage of screen real estate, feature minimalism as a philosophy, becoming infested with ever more JavaScript that hampers performance, the continuous API instability that strangles extension development, and "my way or the highway" approach to workflows... I just don't get why people like it.

After about 5 years away from desktop Linux, I have now been using Bluefin/Bazzite for the past few months as a Windows/MacOS replacement on my personal desktop and laptop.

I knew that Bazzite was supposedly good for gaming but never looked into it any more than that. When I eventually learned about Bluefin, I was surprised to find that it, Bazzite, and all the other Universal Blue “distros” are built with the same container-native tech that I use every day at work. Needless to say I was immediately sold.

I have been very impressed so far. I don’t find the immutable OS limiting in my day-to-day work at all. I guess I’m all about that “defaults lifestyle” now.

I absolutely love what the universalblue team has been doing. They are one of the few organizations that are truly dedicated to providing a first-class, enjoyable, batteries included linux experience on the desktop.

I truly believe that updates are seamless not just because of all the buzzwords about the underlying technology but because its made for people who actually use the system daily. They gate the fedora kernel and track breaking changes so you don't get them, and generally care about the user experience. If you want sensible gnome defaults and extensions they are there (or there to be disabled at the click of a button). If you want remote desktop streaming (sunshine/moonlight) its there. On the flip side, their distribution model also means no more need to keep track of out of tree kernel modules on upgrades (zfs, nvidia, waydroid even on Bazzite).

Now onto the post specifically: LTS from a CentOS Stream base seems interesting. Fedora is nice, and the universalblue team tames it 99%, but its edge can be a bit too bleeding sometimes. My only reticence with CentOS Stream though is that it is veering dangerously close to Red Hat proper which I am unsure how to feel about. I am eagerly awaiting when non-rpms distros will be able to use the same underlying technology Bluefin uses, and see how the space evolves. A debian base especially seems interesting in theory. There has recently been some progress on that front: https://github.com/bootc-dev/bootc/issues/865 https://github.com/bootcrew/debian-bootc

A backported Gnome with a recent kernel definitively needs a current MESA backport.