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Achillobator giganticus

Larger, more lethal Bluefin. bluefin:lts is built on CentOS Stream 10.

Purpose#

Bluefin LTS is a workstation designed for people who prefer Long Term Support but desire a modern desktop.
This species of raptor is for users who prefer a slower release cadence, about a three-to-five year lifespan on a single release.

Bluefin LTS is composed of:

• The same packages of Bluefin, but built with CentOS Stream 10 and EPEL
  • The same features since they share the same source RPMs, just built on CentOS
• ARM (aarch64) based images
• The Nvidia version of Bluefin LTS is branded as Bluefin GDX and designed for AI and other GPU heavy workflows and includes CUDA

Bluefin LTS also offers a HWE (Hardware Enablement) branch with:

• Updated, but gated Linux kernel from Fedora with secure boot enabled
• Dedicated Bluefin LTS HWE ISOs for installation on newer hardware
• ujust rebase-helper command allows for users to easily switch back and forth between an LTS kernel and a newer kernel for better hardware support

Rationale#

Bluefin LTS ships with Linux 6.12.0, which is the kernel for the lifetime of release. It is for change-averse users. Bluefin LTS provides a backported GNOME desktop so that you are not left behind. And an optional hwe branch with new kernels.

Differences from Bluefin#

• There may be instances when something from Bluefin is not implemented in Bluefin LTS. Please file an issue and tag it with parity and the team will investigate. They'll never match exactly but we can get the important ones done
• Appimages are hard unsupported (those fuse packages aren't even in CentOS)
• Local Layering is not supported

Installation#

Download#

• The only Bluefin LTS available with Nvidia drivers is Bluefin GDX. If you select Nvidia on the website it will download this ISO. Read this documentation first since it applies to Bluefin GDX.

Do not rebase to this from an existing Fedora image, ain't no one testing that.

Images#

• Repository

The following images and tags are available:

• bluefin:lts - base LTS experience, kernel 6.12.0 with long term maintenance from CentOS with backported GNOME releases.
• bluefin-gdx:lts - includes Nvidia drivers and associated CUDA tooling. This is the only image with Nvidia drivers. See Bluefin GDX
• bluefin:lts-hwe - Fresher but gated Linux kernels matching other Bluefins, including btrfs support.

Using the HWE branch#

• Use the ujust rebase-helper command to switch your image to the HWE branch if you require newer kernels. All images offer Bluefin's Developer Mode.

Errata#

There are a few lingering issues that will take more time to complete, these are documented here:

• Bluefin LTS Errata

ARM Support#

Using it in a VM on an Apple Silicon Mac#

UTM can boot these images if suitably configured:

• File → New, then select Virtualize
• Select Linux, then enable "Use Apple Virtualization" (The QEMU virtualization backend can also work, but this works better on Apple Silicon.)
• Browse for the Bluefin LTS ISO.
• It should default to 4GB of RAM; this is a good minimum value.
• On the Summary screen, it is not necessary to check the "Open VM Settings" box; while you may wish to adjust the configuration of the VM before first boot, the defaults are sensible.

Other features#

• Releases: Builds publish weekly on Tuesdays, the images will update as often as the team is developing and will settle down into weeklies as the project matures

Building Locally#

To build locally and then spit out a VM:

git clone https://github.com/projectbluefin/bluefin-lts
cd bluefin-lts
just build
just build-qcow2 ghcr.io/projectbluefin/bluefin:lts # if you want to build an ISO just change qcow2 to iso instead

The qcow2 file will be written to the output/ directory. Default username and password are centos/centos

Hibernation Enabled by Default#

Hibernation is on by default in a suspend-then-hibernate configuration. Here is the exact config. The device will suspend then go into hibernation after two hours. See the systemd-sleep.conf documentation.

Note that secureboot and hibernation are mutually exclusive. We do not yet offer secureboot enabled images of Bluefin LTS, if you need that functionality now we recommend the normal Bluefin images.

Supporting Bluefin LTS#

The team appreciates your support!