Deinonychus antirrhopus

Welcome to docs.projectbluefin.io#

Features#

Bluefin features a GNOME (Donate) desktop configured by our community. It is designed to be hands-off and stay out of your way so you can focus on your applications.

System updates are image-based and automatic. Applications are logically separated from the system by using Flatpaks for graphical applications and brew for command-line applications.

• Ubuntu-like GNOME layout.
  • Integrates the following GNOME Extensions by default:
    • Dash to Dock - for a more Unity-like dock
    • Appindicator - for tray-like icons in the top right corner
    • GSConnect - Integrate your mobile device with your desktop
    • Blur my Shell (Donate) - for that bling
    • Search Light - provides search functionality and a macOS Spotlight-like workflow. Bound to Super-Space by default.
• Developer Mode - Dedicated developer mode that transforms Bluefin into a powerful cloud-native developer workstation
• Ptyxis terminal for container-focused workflows
  • Distroshelf (Donate) for container management
• Tailscale - included for VPN along with wireguard-tools
  • Use systemctl disable --now tailscaled.service to turn it off if you don't plan on using it.
  • Tailscale systray support included
• GNOME Extensions Manager (Donate) included
• Bazaar Application Store featuring Flathub:
  • Use a familiar software center UI to install graphical software
  • Abandoned applications are unlisted. Applications that depend on out-of-date flatpak runtimes are excluded from the app store.
  • Warehouse (Donate) included for Flatpak management
• Quality of Life Features
  • Starship terminal prompt enabled by default
  • Solaar - included for managing Logitech mice
    along with libratbagd
  • rclone (Donate) - mount nearly any remote storage service onto your local machine, great for multi-machine setups
  • restic (Donate) - A modern backup program for your files
  • zsh and fish included (Instructions) as optional shells
  • Switcheroo support for laptops with multiple GPUs
• Built on top of the Universal Blue main image - enabling straightforward sharing of benefits:
  • Extra udev rules for game controllers and other devices included out of the box
  • All multimedia codecs included
  • System designed for automatic staging of updates
    • If you've never used an image-based Linux before, use your computer normally
    • Don't overthink it—just shut your computer off when you're not using it

Distroless Focus#

Bluefin specifically ships upstream tools in lieu of custom applications. The idea of a "distribution app store" has proven to be unsustainable for desktop application authors, so Bluefin ships tools like Bazaar and Homebrew instead. Additionally the team purposely ensures that the workflows used in Bluefin remain not only distribution agnostic, but operating system agnostic. For example, podman, docker, and flatpak instead of distribution specific tooling, etc.