Changes/Fedora Onyx

Fedora Onyx

Summary

Creation of an official Fedora immutable variant with a Budgie Desktop environment, complementing Fedora Budgie Spin and expanding the immutable offerings of Fedora.

Owner

• Name: Joshua Strobl
• Primary Contact Person: Joshua Strobl
• Email: joshstrobl@fedoraproject.org
• SIG: Budgie

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 39
• Last updated: 2023-05-25
• devel thread
• FESCo issue: #2996
• Tracker bug: #2210021
• Release notes tracker: #991
• fedora-release / fedora-release-onyx: #261
• workstation-ostree-config: #381
• pungi-fedora: #1170

Detailed Description

Fedora Onyx is an immutable desktop operating system, featuring the Budgie Desktop environment. Fedora Onyx leverages the same foundational technologies as other Fedora immutable variants such as Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, and Fedora Sericea (flatpak, rpm-ostree, podman, toolbx). Fedora Onyx is built for people that are attracted to / find value in the Fedora computing platform and Budgie Desktop environment, but need the robust immutability and atomic capabilities that rpm-ostree provides, which are not be offered through traditional Fedora spins (e.g. Fedora Budgie Spin).

Original change proposal for Fedora Budgie Spin: Changes/FedoraBudgie

Feedback

No specific feedback received so far.

Benefit to Fedora

Fedora Onyx will expand Fedora’s existing attractive offerings of immutable operating systems, providing an on-ramp for potential users to the Fedora platform, as well as a desired experience among current Fedora Budgie Spin users that wish to experiment with rpm-ostree or dive into tooling that pairs well with the immutable experience. By actively building on and leveraging technologies adopted by similar immutable variants from Fedora (Kinoite, Sericea, and Silverblue), Fedora Onyx may help to strengthen those variants by putting more contributors behind building and maturing our shared technologies.

Scope

• Proposal owners:
  • The Budgie SIG will submit Pungi changes needed to add this new variant to the compose.
  • The Budgie SIG will submit the changes to add a new sub-package to fedora-release.
  • The Budgie SIG will maintain the Onyx specific rpm-ostree config in the workstation-ostree-config repo.
• Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Release engineering: #11411
• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)
• Trademark approval: Submitted as #451
• Alignment with Community Initiatives: N/A

Upgrade/compatibility impact

N/A. Not a System Wide Change. ostree installations will be able to seamlessly rebase to onyx in the same way they would any other variant.

How To Test

TBA. Instructions will be posted on Fedora Discussion upon landing of the required components such as rpm-ostree config. These instructions will follow similar steps as rebasing for any other rpm-ostree variant.

User Experience

N/A. No changes for existing Fedora users, including those using Fedora Budgie Spin. Users of Fedora Onyx will receive a similar user experience to Fedora Budgie Spin, with a smaller package set to encourage users to more heavily leverage flatpak to curate their own desired experience.

Dependencies

N/A. Not a System Wide Change.

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), No

Documentation

There may be known issues with other Fedora immutable variants which may be addressed by existing documentation such as the Fedora Silverblue Troubleshooting document.

Release Notes

Fedora Onyx has been introduced as a new immutable variant of Fedora Linux / Fedora Budgie Spin, featuring the Budgie Desktop environment and the same robust technologies as our other variants such as Kinoite, Sericia, and Silverblue (flatpak, rpm-ostree, podman, toolbx).