The distribution looks very fun. Something quite new to play with for distro-hoppers and to learn more about some techs.

Last time I tried fedora-silverblue I didn't like it. My packages were scattered in 2 or 3 distrobox containers. It's not that much, but they can be different distributions, and then we add flatpak to the mix, and apps installed in the base OS with rpm-ostree... It felt like a frankenstein distro. Upgrades were time consuming, and not smooth at all. Not only did I have to learn how to manage a fedora-silverblue, but I also had to maintain a debian container, upgrade another fedora (a regular one, not silverblue), learn the quirks of flatpak, and... that was too much work. It doesn't really matter that I can confidently upgrade the empty base OS, if I still need to manually upgrade my fedora container and it can break the package I need from that container.

The approach here with Apx is worth a closer look. It abstracts away the different package managers of the main distro (`apx search` PACKAGE will translate to `apt-cache search` in debian container, `pacman -Ss` in arch container, `zypper search` in opensuse...). The concept of "exporting" the packages, and the UI around it, makes me think they aim at making the management of these distrobox containers easier.

[0] https://usebottles.com/

Especially Project Bluefin: https://projectbluefin.io/

Of course, it's great to have a Debian based alternative!

The screenshot doesn't seem to show a toggle to turn on/off the automatic updates, not sure if that's because you can't, or the screenshot is just a mock up?

I'm probably not alone in that I stop updating my OS and related software while working on things with deadlines, as the risk of breakage tends to be non-zero, and surely a new OS today has to at least allow people the choice for automatic updates?

> [...] through Apx, a wrapper around Distrobox. The latter, in turn, is a wrapper around Podman, Docker, or the simple container manager lilipod

I filed a bug report to add a function to copy error messages from the installer - would be really helpful to file meaningful bugs reports

(loads article page)

"...Whooops!"

I'm also curious if there is really no way to install things on the host - is there a way to install NVIDIA drivers or the like?

But the website makes no effort to relate to enterprise-level administration. Strange.

Has anyone put OS2 in Docker yet?

sudo apt install overlayroot

#edit the setup script vars

sudo nano /etc/overlayroot.conf

overlayroot="tmpfs:swap=1,recurse=0"

#set different role contexts for grub

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true

GRUB_DEFAULT=saved

GRUB_TIMEOUT=3

GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT=$GRUB_TIMEOUT

GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu

GRUB_TERMINAL=console

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_READONLY="quiet splash i915.tuxedo_disable_psr2=1 i915.enable_psr=0 "

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash i915.tuxedo_disable_psr2=1 i915.enable_psr=0 overlayroot=disabled fsck.mode=force fsck.repair=yes "

#etc...

#then insert an auto menu item for the read only OS boot up

sudo nano /etc/grub.d/10_linux

  if [ "x$is_top_level" = xtrue ] && [ "x${GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU}" != xtrue ]; 

    linux_entry "${OS}" "${version}" simple \
    "${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX} ${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT}"

    linux_entry "${OS} READ ONLY OS" "${version}" simple \
    "${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX} ${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_READONLY}"

#and finally enable the role selection with your current kernel

sudo update-grub

sudo update-initramfs -u

For systems that have enough ram and cheap SSD it ensures the flash memory will last longer. Additionally, running /home on F2FS for workstations can improve long-term hardware health, as Desktop users do not require the OS to be writable in many use-cases.

It is not a perfect approach, as silly things done as root can always bork the backing partition.

Best of luck =3