Vanilla OS Is Not Your Ordinary Linux Distro
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
- Vanilla OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distro that has its own package manager (apx) that installs packages as containers. It can install packages from the repos of Ubuntu, Arch Linux and Fedora. It also has support for flatpak and appimage...
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► vanillaos.org/
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Waiting for ChocolateOS.
Get outta here
Sjw version that uses kde?
I want a strawberryOS
It's late, like usual.
I'm waiting for a new thing with a serious sounding name.
Nix, Silverblue, and Vanilla really are "next generation" distributions. The novel packaging formats designed to give stability and security to users, and maximise availability of software across distributions is truly something to get excited for as a Linux user. SteamOS may have been controversial initially for saying its filesystem would be "immutable" and using flatpaks exclusively, it's likely to be the future of the Linux desktop experience. Awesome stuff!
The problem with the immutable desktops is you ever wanted to make changes in your root directory, you can’t. In Vanilla OS, you can turn immutability off, make the changes you want and when you’re done, you can turn it back to immutable. For power users, its the best of both worlds.
@@NormanF62 and that is just plain stupid to do so. Because if you turn it off an on you remove ALL the benefits of immutability
@Yakut58 Nothing new for SteamOS or others that use it sure, but immutability of the root filesystem is very novel across mainstream Linux :)
@@NormanF62 Similar to SteamOS then. Ideally, cases where even a power user should be modifying the root dir should be flagged and modified so users don't need to modify it at all (at least without protections such as atomic transactions).
I think that's what ABRoot might be trying to accomplish, as well as the packaging system in general - By running containers you can safely modify root directories on a per-app basis, rather than at the OS level.
For SteamOS, the main reason users have been disabling immutability is to run apps that aren't available in flatpak/appimage formats. This approach would solve most reasons to disable the feature.
As older package formats fall out of popular use, and this container approach matures, we should hopefully find ways around the pitfalls of immutability and build a much more stable desktop/general purpose OS for everyone!
@@NormanF62 That's where `nix` shines IMHO: it's immutable but making your change in your configuration.nix (which should typically be in a VCS) is so trivial and quick that you haven't just applied your change but also tracked it, which should actually be the standard of configuration management in pretty much all (serious) environments. While arguably containers and nix are different in terms of runtime-resource separation, for most other intents and purposes they're very similar, but nix doesn't suffer from any of the integration issues that were plagueing Derek in this video ;)
As a new Linux user, I find your distro reviews very helpful. Thank you!
VanillaOS seemed like a perfect choice for me and I followed it's development process since the begging. Ubuntu's as a base gives me hardware support that my PC needs (I run into many hardware issues on other distro bases). I appreciate vanilla gnome as a clean slate that I can work on. On-demand immutable system, apx, flatpak and appimage support, modern good installer, latest technologies used. I love everything on paper. Of course the initial release is not even close to perfect, and unfortunately I can't distrohop to it just now. But we really need development in this direction.
The reason, why you were not able to remove vim flatpak is because you installed it to current user' location (without sudo), rather than system' location (with sudo). So you should have uninstalling it also as user (without sudo)
I really like the idea behind the apx package manager. Being able to install more packages and ones that come from different release cycles seems useful to me (stability or bleeding edge for instance).
It also gives distro maintainers a reason to start moving away from "legacy" packaging formats like apt/deb etc. as moving to flatpak/appimage/snap won't come with the downside of losing older software.
It's the same concept that has allowed gamers to adopt Linux over Windows (WINE/Proton) and allowed Apple to migrate to ARM from x86 (Rosetta).
Users don't care about what technology is better, but prefer stability. Devs don't care about stability (in the short term) if it means migrating to better technology: This is the ultimate compromise!
APX is basically nix(OS)
Finally a distro that is bringing true innovation
I agree 👍
Using Vanilla OS seems rather annoying due to it all using containerized apps. The fact it doesn't try creating aliases for newly installed apps in the terminal sounds rather annoying I would think most people would perfer to just run an app by typing its name in rather then having to do "flatpak run name" or "apx run name" for example. it also makes it so you have to edit shellscripts to use those run commands instead of just using the path to a binary.
The concept is that nothing interacts with anything else so if you have incompatible software, it can’t bring down the entire system along with and any malware can only run in a container. When you delete it, those things are removed, too.
I agree. I think it's really cool and unique, especially the way the package manager works, but they should really change the way you run the containerized apps from a terminal/run prompt because it will become annoying really fast. Perhaps they can utilize something like snap which lets you just type the name of the app to run it?
Actually the developers said that it's a planned feature, so you probably will be able to launch app just by typing htop or whatever in the future
Definitely a pain point. It's an immature implementation for sure. I'd like to see Vanilla implement the same approach as Proton/Rosetta: making sure the user doesn't have to change their behaviour, while engineering a solution that fundamentally changes how applications and underlying software is run.
Normal apt install works also so there is more ways to install
This video is well-produced and provide valuable information about this fantastic Ubuntu-based Linux distribution. Keep up the excellent work!
Your profile image is AI generated. Are you a bot?
@@notuxnobux That comment is for the sentiment analysis algorithm to help UA-camrs I like.
@@esra_erimez Wow! And to think how great YT would be if people just stayed on topic and just discussed the video content - rather than trying to f*ck with algorithms.
@@terrydaktyllus1320 Indeed. However, I believe the video is merit worthy and therefore should be bumped up for the benefit of others.
You're definitely a bot
IMO it's making something simple a lot harder
I'm sure it was pointed out by many people, but in case it wasn't - stuff like command line utilities, many libraries etc. are not visible in Gnome Software, it is purely for graphical apps with some exceptions.
Also apx didn't expose a package it api
If you want to run packages by just typing a name, you can actually install a package on the host system (not container) with "sudo abroot exec apt install vim" and then after reboot you can open a terminal and just type "vim" and it will works..
MENTAL NOTE: If you want to get a spectacular review from Derek, put 99% of your distro work into having some awesome wallpaper.
Lmao. He's definitely right though - How many times I've otherwise been put off a distro from distrowatch because the maintainer has replaced the GNOME/KDE wallpapers with something fundamentally ugly af.
If you choose your Linux distro based on wallpaper, you really shouldn't be using Linux.
@@terrydaktyllus1320 i use arch because of its neofetch ascii art
@@terrydaktyllus1320 Tell it to DT :)
@@emptybottle1200 Weirdo.
Thank you for these insights, Derek. Actually all those troubles with running apps from the terminal were really helpful and educational. Great review and the troubleshooting parts of the video are quite interesting. Take care
Well here's how it works. sudo abroot shell. And then install packages using apt. Exit from the shell and reboot. Then you can use it directly run it from the terminal.
damn, I didn't know about this. thank you
Thanks for the review. I gave it a try today, the installer UI looks polished, however backend could use some work, for example I don't understand why it defaults to those unusual keyboard layout and timezone or why it enforces a minimum of 50G of space without option to do any partition customizations. Also there could be some logic when it comes to packages for example, ask for VM tools for hyper-v if it runs in hyper-v vs generic openvm tools.
It forces such requirements to be as user-proof as possible.
They should have called it hemorrhoid because it's a pain in the ass
I would love to see gaming centric, Fedora based distro like Nobara Linux, but with unified package manager, that can handle packages from Arch, Ubuntu/Debian and Fedora at the same time, but also not being Gnome centric and allowing me to use some other DE, like KDE or Cinnamon.
Maybe in the next 10 years we'll get one like this
I'm sure you know this, but nobara *does* have support for kde in an iso, however it is a lot less stable than using the default version of the os.
This man knows what he wants
And I want something that is as stable, but also not as annoying to use, as slackware.
But I won't get that, will I?
@@Skelterbane69 Sounds like you just need some Debian lol
Great video DT!
I think Vanilla is a unique distro and I really love what it is trying to achieve (being theoretically unbreakable) - but I really dislike how it is containerizing every single thing you install. The way it allows you to install software from various distros, on top of flatpaks and appimages, can add an additional layer of unneeded complexity in my opinion.
On top of this, it could really use an automated way to alias the names of containerized packages (apx or flatpak), so you can type just their name to run them from the terminal - because this can get really tedious otherwise.
I'm interested to see where the creator is going with this! It is definitely a unique project!
I would love there to be a day where the packaging format of an app just doesn’t matter, and Vanilla OS seems to be an innovative first step towards that! I recently gave my thoughts in a video of my own.
This is, indeed, an interesting project. Not for me, the average GNU / Linux user; I'll stay with Pop OS.
You probably realised it by now, but at then end of `apx install` it said to wait a few seconds before running the program, because your review might sound a bit too negative on that part for a new user. Other than that, VanillaOS seems like an interesting OS, I will probably give a try sometime in the future!
Regarding flatpak as well. When he tries to remove it, he uses "sudo", but he installed user wide, so it cannot uninstall in root
To remove vim he should use only:
$ flatpak remove org.vim.Vim
The main drawback I can see of this is that it will be a *huge* storage hog. How much does that actually apply here? The 50GB install minimum doesn't bode well.
It will probably share libs if they are the same versionhash so just like flatpak
Compared to most linux distros I've tried, this actually seems functionally like a major PITA.
Been running this for 24h now on my secondary laptop. Seems to be running mostly smoothly and I like the ability to install from aur and and apt at the same time seamlessly. There's still growing pains with this like containers randomly crashing but seeing their discord and github repo I feel confident that these get solved relatively quickly.
im new to linux and i just installed vanilla os and so far its cool
5:55am eyes still opening
Coffee...it helps. ;)
11:00 here... Let me guess... France, Spain?
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 Is your name from the mayans tv show ?
@@driden1987 When did mayans meet wolves or wolves inhabit Yucatan? (by the way, yucatan literally means "I don't understand you" XD).
the main reason i abandoned KDE Neon was that just installing a single program could wreck the entire system beyond repair. That was the case of KDENlive, just installing it made some changes to the system and you could not boot or repair it. So, this android-like paradigm sound great to me.
I was looking at the website and I saw something that says that in order to run apt you need to use abroot so "abroot exec apt install htop".
I like the invisible taskbar, awesome feature!
Dual booting isn't available, but so on their discord server a contributor said that manual partitioning should enabled with next release which should happen really soon. manual partitioning should support dual booting.
I was even able to get Arch's Firefox running alongside flatpak Firefox from VanillaOS.
Fun fact: If you do "apx install --aur and the package is not on the aur but arch repos, it will summon pacman to install it.
One thing to keep in my mind, especially as a user like you. Many modern distros and desktop linux technologies are targeted solely on GUI interaction. GNOME, their software manager, all their apps together with gnome circle apps, flatpaks, immutable systems, all of those are not very friendly for terminal based user interaction experience.
nice presesntation sir. I just downloaded Vanilla os and i'm enjoying it so far.
It's kind of similar to fedora silverblue in that case? Yes, silverblue natively only supports toolbox / fedora packages but if you pair it with something like Distrobox you can basically achieve the same thing. I'm running PipeWire natively and the Ardour ubuntu package from a Ubuntu 22.04 container well on a fedora silverblue 37 installation.
Oh wow I saw the title of this video and thought oh great another distro, but this one is actually really neat. Could be revolutionary even! I do wish they would just add the installed packages bin folder to PATH somehow but it seems like they have some ways to go in general before I would actually install this in my system but I'll definitely be keeping a close eye on this project now.
I do wish they would've used plasma. I just switched to KDE neon on my work laptop (coming from popos) and I really like it. I wish more of these ubuntu based distros would go the QT route. I just prefer the look.
Thanks for updating us on this promising distro!
Does Vanilla OS come as a bootable thumb drive version where you have the option to TRY or just RUN it - WITHOUT installation?
DT, Great video as always ... but you made me really laugh with "let me move my head out of the way" :) :)...
50 gigs to install an OS?
Just a hard nd fast requirement, not that it'll take as a whole
@@sunnyheheheh9401 back in my day an OS would fit on a single CD
you havent seen windows then
@@sempiternal_futility I just googled Windows 11 install and it takes almost 25 gigs. What do they have in there? It better come with a collection of HD movies.
@@hamobu place for software to be installed.
These immutable architecture / containerized distros are a pain in the ass. There are some benefits but for day to day use they just get in the way. IMHO.
I think what you did wrong there when you tried to remove vim flatpak, is you should have used the flatpak canonical name, so: "flatpak remove Vim" (capitalized)
Different as you say but could confuse newer users. Good review DT
Would love a deeper dive into this distribution.
As @DT, I am impressive about the capabilities of this distribution.
Fedora silverblue adopted the same idea. Makes it more stable and if an update brakes something you just can rollback to the previous version.
apx package manager is in the AUR now!
I'm not a flatpak user but the most sane solution I could think of is to run a service which triggers after every flatpak install and create aliases for those programs. Maybe there's something like this out there already. Of course the easiest way would be to just add the flatpak run as an alias for vim, dunno why that wasn't said on the video.
Containerizing packages is great for developers and maintainers, the user is left to deal with the overhead and general nuisance
You are not left to deal with anything - you can choose to use containers or you can use a roll your own distro (as I do with Gentoo Linux) and build each application to specification. Linux is about choice, you can do it how you want.
It's great for users like me too who are obsessed with not having lots of files in their home dir, or for there to be files they don't know what they do, or which app they came from. In my Fedora install I have almost everything flatpaked, including some of GNOME's pre-built apps (reinstalled them). I want absolute simplicty, knowledge and control.
@@ent2220 as seen at 18:41, the containerised packages seem to have been installed in his home directory. My interpretation of this is that you end up with _less_ control over your home dir. Maybe this can be prevented by system-wide installations, but from the video alone we have to assume that apx will pollute your home dir with an ungodly amount of files related to those containers. He had to use sudo to even run the htop binary at its actual location. So it may even be worse and your user isn’t even the owner of those files
in my eyes really a desktop thing. It's simply an overload if you know what you want and use like myself the lowest amount of tools to get done what you want. But for sure a good way to learn more about the Linux Desktop Apps.
Since flatpak I try more GUI Apps the ever before, just because installing them does not mess up the whole system.
That installer is actually through official Gnome Installer
You could make another video going a bit in depth with what it's actually doing ... like where it's storing the containers, do other users need to install apps from scratch, can you have system-wide containers etc. Understanding the file structure with containerized stuff is the most important thing.
was hoping to see you throw on xmonad from aur and then try to apply your dot files from git into the container :)
His tone when he said "Of course it's gonna be Gnome Software" was very funny to me for some reason.
As always writing a comment to support the channel
don't use sudo on flatpak, that's why it was having problems uninstalling vim
Great OS. Not as mature as Fedora Silverblues as i see but still a cool and very prominent project
Why not base os directly on Debian why chaining it like that
Didn't know that one, nice distro!
Hi DT, been testing out Vanilla OS as a possible dedicated production system for everything I need for my OBS set up for streaming. I'm very intrigued by it.
The fact that this NEEDS 50Gb of space is surely a turn-off for a lot of potential users.
manual partitioning is not available yet because of abroot
flatpak list is user-bound. Root has its own flatpaks, other users have their own flatpaks. Adding `sudo` will run flatpaks owned by root.
Not knowing anything about it, I'd be interested to see if antiquated windows apps would run well in bottles.
Probably need to exit terminal and go back in for htop to be added to path. Nevermind. Guess the "run" option is needed. Sounds like a lot of aliases needed.
This looks great. Going to take it for a spin.
“aesthetics do matter” tell that to any corporate windows user
this feels like an attempt at a standalone version of bedrock linux that just runs every app in a separate container instead of the separate distros themselves. speaking of which, id love to see you check bedrock linux out.
Are you still not able to run vim and htop even after sourcing the .bashrc file? I usually have to do that or logout of the gnome session in order for those commands to be recognized if I recall correctly.
First thing to do once installed is to trim those 20-50GiB down to 4-6GiB for each root partition, or less. It's nonsense wasting so much disk space only in the desktop environment because of the legacy to keep hoarding additional languages or 90's era hardware. How come I even found the whole set of core Gnome apps, when I'm supposed to use the new ones provided by VanillaOS???
open-vm-tools is essentially just VMWare Tools for Linux guests.
Kinda disappointed that you didn't test installing something from the AUR. That would have been an interesting experiment.
by the way to uninstall a flatpak app, "flatpak remove {application ID name}"
wow this looks really cool, I might actually consider it when I need to install Linux on some machine not in dual boot (when dual booting Indon’t really care about the stability of my district much)
Why does it seem so hard to use the terminal in these "immutable" distros? Nothing works as you'd expect. Is this by design or are these distros still too green?
This is all great for consumers, not for tinker's
Is it a replacement for manjaro?
Thanks for the vid. Good job. No thanks for the Vanilla OS.
wow really impressed!
obviously you can alias vim to the flatpak command, not a huge deal
But when you have a lot of programs and have to alias all of them it does turn into a lot of unnecessary work.
after listening to the description of apx I think this is a no no. They are just straight abusing containers now.
How?
It is the distro that crashed my PC even before starting the install. An UEFI mmx64 error and fatal crash.
Good explanation! Thanks!
Is vanilla lagging and unable to load various websites for anyoe else? Everything is up to date, tried multiple browsers, several reinstalls and internet is through cable.
Seems like the basic idea of Qubes in containerization, if not taken to quite the same level.
The concept seems really great. But I guess it still needs more work. Gonna keep an eye on this.
Not sure how this is any better than layering Nixpkgs unstable on top of Debian stable
Never used Nix, but some people seem to think the VanillaOS method is simpler or more intuitive for people who are already used to non-Nix distros.
My evaluation passwords are 3 letters on my testing laptop. I watched one review that had a password that looked like ***************** why?
I wish the developer of VanillaOS add another light DEs ISOs like (Enlightenment DE), LXQt or XFCE to this distro or choose it in the installer step👍🏼
so how would installing different DE work on an immutable system like this?
what is the difference of Gnome OS and Vanilla OS ? it is the same Desktop Manager
Good stuff, thanks
At some point, could you do some sort of overview regarding apx versus docker versus VM? They seem so similar in purpose (separating processes from the underlying system for stability and security), but their implementations are very different.
Which should be used for some generalized situations?
I might be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure apx uses distrobox which runs using podman (or docker) so they might not be that different.
Wayland and Nvidia still don't mix? Any tips on installing a more up to date python install on linux?
This looks interesting, I may have to give it a try on a computer. Probably running apx as root to install htop and vim might put them on the system directories. I'll have to play around with Vanilla OS. I especially like the AUR feature. I'm gonna have to play with it, however I'm not sure if it's ready to me my daily driver yet.
You can make an alias to run vim from the Flatpak with just "vim".
oh
probably wont be using this since i cant run installed stuff in terminal easily
I was able to get fedora, alpine and Arch subsystems working side to side. Yoi have to use vanilla control panel to enable it. Then you can use eg, arch inside VanillaOS as if you were on arch. I was able to install yay, paru and more. This enables users to have a stable Debian base but access to bleeding edge software, same with fedora container.
To install software to the base system, use abroot command. sudo abroot she'll with make you chroot into the base system. It will let you use apt and manage VanillaOS. With this you can install packages to the base system, like I did to get vim, pavucontrol, neofetch, btop and so on. I even. Used it to install kernel headers for vbox.
You were trying to run flatpak with sudo, maybe you caught that later, but flatpak commands are meant to be run as the user instead of root.
seems very similar to NIX OS or am i missing anything?
To uninstall a flatpak you can't use sudo
Ooh I need to try that. I especially like the sound of ABRoot. Reminds me of NixOS, but hopefully easier
4:51 It needs 50 GB of disk space ? That's seems rather bloated for a distro called 'vanilla' ;-)