Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself “maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point”, but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn’t make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it’s what I’m used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it’s good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don’t have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don’t think it would make a difference at all.
How do you install packages on silver blue? Are you stuck with flatpak only or can you get system packages as well?
Flatpaks are the preferred option followed by the Fedora toolbox container. Then you can make a distrobox container if what you want can’t be satisfied by the first two. You can also layer packages with rpm-ostree but this should only be as a last resort.
There is a bit of a learning curve with regards to how you should approach package installs, but once you learn it and get comfortable with the container options it’s pretty smooth sailing.
Can you explain layering packages in the ostree? Say if I know that im always going to want something like vencord installed then can I add it to the ostree and it functions as if I used dnf?
It’s basically a drop in replacement for dnf.
As simple as sudo rpm-ostree install vencord. Then you reboot and it’s there. That’s assuming it’s already in the repos. If not, I’d recommend you look into distrobox. It allows you to install apps from any other distro in Silverblue. You can add them to your menu and have them behave as native apps.
a drop in replacement for dnf is exactly what I was hoping for. Having to restart kinda sucks but shouldnt matter since im going to setup the box once and then it be done.