Literally my neighbour
Last Week in Fediverse – ep 98
Last Week in Fediverse – ep 98
Welcome back to Fediverse Report! I’ve had a great holiday break spending time with family and friends, and that has given me some more time to think about why I care about the fediverse, the open social web and why I spend all this time writing Fediverse Report. Explaining to family members what I do was helpful to make this clear: telling an uncle that I write about decentralised technology mainly leads to confusion. But even extremely offline family members easily understand and agree with the idea that having all of our big social platforms being owned by billionaires leads to significant social problems.As such, it has helped for me to make it more explicit that I care about decentralisation insofar it is a tool to get somewhere else: I care about better forms of governance and ownership of the social web. I want a social web where people are in control, not a few billionaires (nor nationstate governments, for that matter). Building social networks with decentralised technology is a way to get there.
The idea that the value of alternative social networks is in governance is far from new. I’ve regularly posted hot takes on my Mastodon to the same effect as well. But for 2025 I want to bring this more into focus for this newsletter. Writing a newsletter that is a weekly update tends to amplify shiny new software that has recently been released. In contrast, explaining how governance works on the fediverse does not align well with ‘this happened in the last 7 days’, as it involves more structural and slower moving forces. I’m experimenting with ways to bring coverage of governance in the fediverse better into focus. Expect more like this newsletter, where I zoom in on an offhanded comment by Misskey developer Syuilo as an illustration of the issues that come with interoperability between different places on the open social web.
The News
Mastodon has belatedly published their Annual Report for 2023. The organisation acknowledges the delay, and says that the Annual Report for 2024 is planned to be released in Q1 of this year. Mastodon had a total of 545k euro in donations in 2023, with 476k in costs. The large majority of costs go to personnel expenses, in total 343k was spend on salaries, 72% of the total budget. The popularity of Mastodon’s own servers also come with significant costs, in 2023 they spend 75k on servers and hosting. With a rough estimate of averaging around 250k active users on mastodon.social, this means mastodon.social costs roughly 30 cents per active user per year. The Annual Report also looks at the updates Mastodon has made to the site and apps. Mastodon also shares more about their hiring process, and in a great move for transparency, also published all the salaries of everyone in the organisation.Back in the present, Mastodon is hiring again, this time for a senior front-end developer. The organisation also held a crowd-funding campaign in late last year to fund and hire a Trust and Safety lead. The community seemed to have had little appetite for funding such an endeavour, with funding barely pushing past the 12k after a month. It is an indication of the difficult spot the organisation is in; the community has been asking for more safety features in Mastodon, but is not funding a Trust and Safety Lead. The organisation could clearly use someone who writes clear policy and design goals for the direction the software should go in. Currently, not even a Mastodon employee can explain why a safety feature for Mastodon that is fully developed and waiting to be approved has been waiting for approval for over 2.5 years. It turns out that writing the code is often the easy part of making changes in the fediverse, and navigating the social structures to get the code used by people is much harder, and a dedicated Trust and Safety Lead could have certainly helped here. Instead, even after large community outcry we still do not know why Mastodon has not merged this safety feature developed by their own employee.
Surf is a new app by Flipboard for the open social web. It is a beautifully designed app that allows people to build their own custom feeds. The power of Surf is in that it supports many networks, and you can combine posts from Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, YouTube and Flipboard all into a single custom feed. How Flipboard markets Surf is interesting, describing it as a ‘browser for the social web’. The way Flipboard CEO Mike McCue sees it, Surf pulls in content from the social web, and gives you the possibility to display that content in custom feeds of your choice. Surf also allows you to filter a custom feed by content: for example, you can scroll through an entire feed, or switch over to a different tab that shows only videos in that feed, for example.
For more info on Surf, WeDistribute has a closer look at all the features, and The Verge has more context and comments by McCue. Custom feeds on Bluesky have mainly gone in the direction of the power user and community builder: tools like Graze offer an huge potential in programmability and flexibility. This is especially useful for those who want to build custom feeds that other people will also use. Surf takes a different approach, by instead prompting people to build their own feeds as much as possible. It’ll be interesting to see which approach will gain traction, and if there is space for both ways of building custom feeds.
Misskey developer Syuilo made some comments contemplating breaking federation with Mastodon. Misskey is mainly used in Japan, and has a wide feature set that differs notably from Mastodon. The main reason that Syuilo gave is that she feels Misskey development is constrained by having to meet the needs and requirements of maintaining federation with other (types) of software. That Misskey is considering letting federation between Mastodon and Misskey break is an indication of one of the downsides of how ActivityPub is designed: You can send out anything you want with ActivityPub, but it is exceedingly difficult to know how other software will actually receive and display the things you send out with ActivityPub. There is a significant freedom for fediverse software in how they implement and support even more basic functions. For example, see this comparison table for how the different platforms support hashtags, and how many variations there are.
Personally, I think it would be healthy for the fediverse as a whole if more fediverse software would start publishing what they deem as necessary for other software to federate with them. The fediverse mainly currently works on the assumption that any form of federation between projects is fine, even if that means that another federated platform will stripping out all markup and images of a post. It might be healthy for a platform to state minimum functional requirements, such as ‘we only want to federate with software that also shows the emoji reactions as we view this to be an integral part of a message’. For now, Syuilo’s post mainly seems to be to vent some frustrations, so it remains to be seen where any of this will actually go.
The Links
- A guide for small websites regarding the UK’s Online Safety Act, with some extra clarification for fediverse sites.
- TheIndieBeat.fm is a new radio station for showcasing indie music from the fediverse, that picks up where radiofreefedi left, and will use upcoming fediverse audio platform Bandwagon.
- The first 12 plugins of Castopod.
- FediMeteo – Weather in the Fediverse.
- “Event Bridge For ActivityPub” plugin released on WordPress.org.
- rdf-pub – generic Activity-Pub Server that focuses on using C2S.
- Manyfold got a new round of NLNet funding, and published a roadmap of what they’ll be working on.
- PieFed development update for December 2024.
- Fediverse tech roadmap reflection on developments in the past year, by Mitra developer Silverpill.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading!fediversereport.com/last-week-…
Lebanese football star wakes from coma caused by Israeli airstrike
Lebanese football star wakes from coma caused by Israeli airstrike
Lebanese football talent Celine Haidar has awakened from a coma nearly two months after suffering a head injury during an Israeli airstrike.Karim Zidan (Sports Politika)
I guess sports doesn’t occur in a lab or recording studio so her achievements don’t matter? Le sportsball bad amirite fellow rediters?!1
Focusing on individuals helps turn statistics into digestible information. There’s nothing wrong with that. If they decide to start bombing deep into the country again and I get hit, wouldn’t it be worse if I was just a number that makes someone think “huh that sucks” instead of being remembered for who I am?
No, more like why does this person deserve an article to themselves over everyone else?
They're not special for playing soccer.
Why do they publish about boring shit like sports and war and not cool things that celebrate human achievements like business and AI?
/s ^just ^^in ^^^case
If you are Lebanese its pretty weird a foreign country blew up your sports star and put her in a coma. Like wooooaaaah. Weird shit. Haha. My country is being attacked and even soccer isn't safe.
Get out of your own head.
A Roma arriva la prima vendita "alla cieca" di pacchi smarriti
A Roma arriva la prima vendita "alla cieca" di pacchi smarriti
Dal 14 al 19 gennaio, King Colis sceglie il centro commerciale RomaEst per allestire un pop-up store. Si tratta del primo evento...Redazione (RomaToday)
Here are the propaganda leaflets Israel is currently dropping over Gaza
Here are the propaganda leaflets Israel is currently dropping over Gaza
The messages consist of crude warnings, threats and appeals to turn against Hamas and collaborate with Israel.Drop Site News
Dessalines likes this.
New DC Think Tank Staffed Entirely By Robots (Seriously)
The fake operation has a curious tendency to defend the Pakistan military
In October, a new foreign policy think tank calling itself the Beltway Grid Policy Centre quietly entered D.C.'s diplomatic fray. While there was no launch party and is no K Street office we could find, the think tank nevertheless began producing its intellectual product at a startling pace, issuing reports, press releases, and pitching journalists on news coverage—much of it focused on South Asia, and, in particular, the ongoing political crisis in Pakistan.
The unusual nature of Beltway Grid's staffing leaves open several possibilities. The organization may be so hard at work defending the policies of the Pakistan military and criticizing former Prime Minister Imran Khan, the team simply hasn't had time to lead previous lives or respond to requests for comment. They may be early alien settlers, dropped off by drones on the coast of New Jersey, who are fans of Jane Austen and have come to study "the modern dynamics of lobbying." Or, more likely, somebody with a small budget asked ChatGPT to set up a fake think tank. Using AI to make a think tank adds a deeper layer of irony, since AI proponents regularly admonish the public not to conflate the operations of an AI program with “thinking.”
Beltway Grid's work product has left a few other clues as the motivations of its creator. One recent report, "Democracy Under Siege: Economic Fallout and Diplomatic Implications of Protests in Pakistan," argues that the November 2024 protests, which lasted just a few days and were led by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party under former Prime Minister Imran Khan, resulted in higher inflation, a currency collapse, a loss of 0.8% of GDP, a cumulative cost of 3 trillion rupees. The numbers are eerily similar to a report distributed internally by the army and obtained by Drop Site News. Independent analysts have suggested the economic malaise may be more closely linked to the overall policies of the military government, but according to the author of the report Beltway Grid's "Chief Strategic Analyst, Political Influence," Alexandra Caldwell, the problems all belong at the foot of Khan. Caldwell could not be reached for further comment, but her report was convincing enough for Pakistani news to turn it into a broadcast. And its report on Imran Khan's bid for Oxford Chancellor—Beltway Grid took a dim view, believe it or not—can be found reported on PR wire services and even republished on Yahoo News.
AIK-huliganer dömda för misshandel. Sju misstänkta fortbollshulignaer som är medlemmar i AIK youth squad åtalades för misshandel av en man utan några som helst huligankopplingar. Fyra friades. Tre dömdes.
Scribus 1.6.3 released
General
- Preferences for guide and baseline colors not read.
- Various GUI issues, including non-responsive fields in menus.
- Updated non-HTTPS URLs to current versions.
- Crash on opening PDF and selecting the option to import text as text.
- A case of corrupt PDF generation was fixed.
User Interface (UI) Improvements
- Resolved shortcut issues.
- Fixed increased width in Color Management menu after multiple uses.
- Addressed problems with item attributes and spin box functions.
Graphics/Image Frame Bugs
- File manager issues with external drive detection.
- “Update Image” functionality fixed.
- Improvements to CMYK image import
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Ungdomar gripna utanför Attunda tingsrätt dömda. Två tonåringar greps utanför Attunda tingsrätt med ett osäkrat skjutvapen. Ungdomarna som i dag är 16 respektive 18 år har nu dömts för förberedelse till mord och grovt vapenbrott.
So what the boink is Bazzite "cloud native" blah?
Look, I'm a Debian user for 15 years, I've worked in F/OSS for a long time, can take care of myself.
But I'm always on a lookout for distros that might be good fit for other people in my non-tech vicinity, like siblings, nieces, nephews... I'm imagining some distro which is easy for gaming but can also be used for normal school, work, etc. related stuff. And yeah, also not too painful to maintain.
(Well, less painful than Windows which honestly is not a high bar nowadays... but don't listen to me, all tried in past years was to install Minecraft from the MS store... The wound is still healing.)
I have Steam Deck and I like how it works: gaming first, desktop easily accessible. But I only really use it for gaming.
So I learned about Bazzite, but from their description on their main site I'm not very wise:
The next generation of Linux gaming
[Powered by Fedora and Universal Blue]
Bazzite is a cloud native image built upon Fedora Atomic Desktops that brings the best of Linux gaming to all of your devices - including your favorite handheld.
Filtering out the buzzwords, "cloud native image" stands out to me, but that's weird, doesn't it mean that I'll be running my system on someone else's computer?
Funnily enough, I scrolled a bit and there's a news section with a perfectly titled article: "WTF is Cloud Native and what is all this".
But that just leads to some announcements of someone (apparently important in the community) talking about some superb community milestone and being funny about his dog. To be fair, despite the title, the announcement is not directed towards people like me, it's more towards the community, who obviously already knows.
Amongst the cruft, the most "relevant" part seems to be this:
This is the simplest definition of cloud native: One common way to linux, based around container technology. Server on any cloud provider, bare metal, a desktop, an HTPC, a handheld, and your gaming rig. It’s all the same thing, Linux.
But wait, all I want to run is a "normal" PC with a Linux distro. I don't necessarily need it to be a "traditional" distro but what I don't want is to have it running, or heavily integrated in some proprietary-ish cloud.
So how does this work? Am I missing something?
(Or are my red flags real: that all of this is just to make a lot of promises and get some VC-funding?)
like this
Auster likes this.
Hi I'm the guy who posted the report. Your quote is exactly what it is, we use cloud native server tech to make Bazzite. Things like bootc, podman, OCI containers, etc.
all I want to run is a “normal” PC with a Linux distro.
That's exactly what's happening!
I don’t want is to have it running, or heavily integrated in some proprietary-ish cloud.
It does, just not ours, Valve runs that part. 😼 I'm happy to answer specific questions if you have any!
As someone who builds and deploys software in the cloud all day, seeing the term "cloud native" used for a desktop OS just reads as jibberish to me, no offense. Nobody can seem to explain clearly in simple terms what is actually meant by it.
Does it just mean all of the compilation of binaries and subsequent packaging have all been designed and set up to run in a uniform build pipeline that can be executed in the cloud? Or is bazzite just basically RancherOS (RIP) but for the desktop? I am seeing people in this thread talking along the lines of both of these things, but they are not the same.
Can you explain what the term "cloud native" means as it relates to bazzite in a way that someone who can build Linux from scratch, understands CI/CD, and uses docker/kubernetes/whatever to deploy services in the cloud, could grok the term in short order?
Yes, it's a container like an app container you would deploy on docker or kubernetes.
It starts with a dockerfile with a FROM fedora, the difference is there's an entire OS in there, with a kernel and everything. Then an action runs podman build on that container every day, which is then shoved into an OCI registry (in this case ghcr.io).
Then instead of each client doing package updates via a package manager it effectively does the equivalent of a podman pull on your laptop, and then stages the update for deployment on the device. Everything is running on the bare metal on the device, the cloud native part is the build process, pipeline, and delivery. Then rinse and repeat for updates.
It's a bit like rancherOS except using podman.
Dude, thank you for this. IMO reducing that down to simply "cloud native" is doing a disservice to how absolutely cool that methodology is.
I loved RancherOS in the server space, and always wished there could be a desktop version of it, but I realize that the isolation of docker on docker would be very difficult to deal with for desktop applications. From your description, I feel like Bazzite has done the next best thing.
If I may frame things in RancherOS terms and perspective briefly, given your description of what's going on with Bazzite, the System Docker container image is being built in the cloud every day, and you could pull it down, reboot, and have the latest version of the OS running. The difference, I am gathering from context, is that while RancherOS "boots" the system image in docker, Bazzite simply abandons RancherOS's hypervisor-esq system docker layer, and does something like simply mount the image layers at boot time (seeing as how the kernel is contained within the image), and boots the kernel and surrounding OS from that volume. The image is simultaneously a container volume and a bare metal volume. In the cloud, it's a container volume for purposes of builds and updates, which greatly simplifies a bunch of things. Locally, the image is a bootable volume that is mounted and executed on bare metal. Delivery of updates is literally the equivalent of "docker pull" and a boot loader that can understand the local image registry, mount the image layer volumes appropriately, and then boot the kernel from there.
Do I have this roughly correct?
Dude, thank you for this. IMO reducing that down to simply “cloud native” is doing a disservice to how absolutely cool that methodology is.
The methodology IS cloud native, we didn't invent this. 😼 People will update their terminology, we're not doing anything new, Linux in infrastructure went through this a decade ago. It's an update in vocabulary because it's a shift away from the traditional distro model and has more in common with the rest of industry (k8s, docker, etc) than a desktop. The desktop is just the payload.
We know some people will complain but whatever, it's our job to help people understand the tech and there are proper definitions for this stuff - The whole "immutables" or whatever slang people are making up doesn't really make sense but we can't control what people think, we can just do our thing and keep pushing out updates.
RancherOS doesn't exist anymore, but a difference here is everything on the machine runs on the metal except whatever workload you have. Here's people who do a way better job explaining it:
Our systems share the same tooling as Fedora CoreOS so this is probably a better example. You can make custom server images -- we build on top of that too, similar to Bazzite but for server nerds: github.com/ublue-os/ucore - basically if you can script it, you can make an OS image out of it. Here's bootc upstream where people are hanging out: github.com/containers/bootc/di…
Hope this helps!
The container optimized OS
A minimal OS with automatic updates. Scalable and secure.fedoraproject.org
That's great, thanks! I really appreciate the detailed response and the links.
The methodology IS cloud native
Ok great. Is it also fair to say that cloud native is the methodology? Or is cloud native a higher order concept that the methodology can fall into? I.e. rock is music, but music is not rock.
I would say it is the methodology. To distill it a bit more in the context of bazzite and universal blue:
- Focus on automation (we do this via gitops) - everything is driven by git
- Declarative definitions: all the components of the base images (the kernel, base packages, etc. are all defined up front), and then the custom images (bazzite) do the same thing on top of that. That makes it easier for someone else to start with a small thing and "make my own bazzite" either from scratch, off of a base image, or if you want to just
FROM bazziteyou can start from there. - Iterate fast: basically be able to change anything in the OS and rebuild on the spot locally as fast as possible.
- Everything is an OCI artifact
Hello Jorge, you rock man! Thanks for all your Ublue contributions. I saw your YouTube video and article in the docs and now I'm planning on installing Bluefin on a thumb drive to use on my work laptop. On my desktop I've been running Bazzite for a year, it's been rock solid. Except for that one time when you did an oopsie with the keys 🤣, at first I felt inconvenienced, but then when you took full responsibility, I immediately thought you made a mistake like any human would, but you fixed it like a real hero. I want to use a distro made by people like you.
Thank you so much for everything you do.
it's really bad marketing, i had to look it up to make sure there wasn't any weird cloud shit in the distro
bazzite is now my daily driver 3 machines
Just wanted to confirm that we have no interest in VC funding. It says it's cloud native because it's cloud native, not because we're marketing to people with too much money and a lack of sense.
Hey there, I'm the founder of Bazzite.
Hey man, so great you are here! What an opportunity that you came here to provide clarity. Thanks for being here!
Just wanted to confirm that we have no interest in VC funding.
we're [not] marketing to people with too much money and a lack of sense
That's super great to hear. Refreshing in fact.
Putting a whole distro together is a monumental task. Why have you gone to all the effort to do so? What does Bazzite bring to the table that can't be found by using any other distribution? For everyone who is currently using, say, fedora, why should they all switch to Bazzite today? (I am currently running fedora and I am thinking about a change, can you give me a reason to jump?)
I did a couple interviews on this just recently, you can see them here:
If you have any further questions after these, let me know and I'll be happy to expand on it further!
- YouTube
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.www.youtube.com
Oh man, I freaking love you. Thank you so much for Bazzite! I've been rocking it for a year and I haven't had a single issue with it. I absolutely love it.
The one thing I think you guys could improve is the Waydroid parts. BlendOS and others have a more streamlined process which is very fool proof. Click yes, next, next, next... done. Usable Android apps. It would be awesome if you could add something like that.
It used to say "container-native". They recently changed the wording, but there was no technical change.
It's a Linux distro that runs locally, like any other. It has no particular tie-in with any cloud services. If Flatpak, Docker/Podman, Distrobox, Homebrew, etc. are "cloud" just because they involve downloading packages hosted on the internet, then I don't know why you wouldn't call "traditional" package managers like apt, dnf, zypper, etc. "cloud" as well. 🤷 So yeah, I feel your confusion.
The big difference compared to something like Debian or vanilla Fedora is that Bazzite is an "immutable" distro. What this means is that the OS image is monolithic and you don't make changes directly to the system. Instead, you install apps and utilities via containers, or as a last resort you can apply a layer on top of the OS using rpm-ostree.
The only thing cloud-related about any of this is that atomic OS images and containers are more common in the server space than the desktop space.
Founder here, the more I see this whining the more I want to keep it on the website.
It's the accurate definition.
No it just means that the goal of the founder (or someone who's posing as founder here) is to stick it up to us "luddites".
Probably a wounded ego or something.
Founder here, the more I see this whining the more I want to keep it on the website.
OK, so now we know how the founder is treating their potential users.
Thanks, I think I've already heard about this architecture, although I don't think there was any standard term for that. Maybe it's time to try one of these out one day...
It's still weird that hey would sprinkle "cloud native" all over the place just to confuse people like me. (But then again, maybe I've been living under a rock...)
This same Bazzite discussion came up last week. I claimed I hadn't heard so much marketing bullshit since when everything was called Object Orientated.
There's nothing cloud about it. It's a bad marketing term.
There’s nothing cloud about it. It’s a bad marketing term.
...you mean, what if ... what if the cool Linux/FOSS hackers are somehow also very bad at marketing?
I recall Jorge talking on one of the podcasts, and heard a line like (paraphrased) "You can just run your own, integrated into your own CI/CD system that you're running"
Even though I've been running Linux for a long time, I feel like suddenly got a glimpse of what normal people might feel when we try to get them to use Linux at all.
Yeah, we've replaced "you can build your own kernel and install own grub" with "it's cloud native".
Not sure it's better...
"Cloud native" means in this context, that the images are being built centrally by "the cloud" (in this case, it's GitHub actions, but could be replaced by something else) and then the identical copies of the OS are distributed downstream.
Contrary to traditional package manager based distros, this is more efficient and reliable.
At least that's the mission from what I know, but I also might be wrong. Then please correct me :)
That's pretty much the gist of it. They even have instructions for doing it yourself, using whatever upstream OCI image you want (including one of the uBlue projects).
BlueBuild is a spinoff project based on the same build concepts that was originally part of UniversalBlue, but they diverged completely due to eventually having a completely different scope.
They even have instructions for doing it yourself, using whatever upstream OCI image you want (including one of the uBlue projects).
Do you have a link for these instructions? Really interested in making a hybrid of Aurora-DX & Bazzite.
Do you have a link for these instructions?
In addition to the template linked by dustyData, there's also BlueBuild if you prefer YAML over containerfiles.
The buzz word is not aimed at the regular gaming nerd. It is aimed at gaming nerds who are also developers. Universal blue, the project behind Bazzite, Bluefin, and Aurora, aims to market to , on the basis of the tech backend. So then they make the cool FOSS things that the nerd public can use. Cloud native just means that something is engineered and made to make use of the container based devops pipeline.
For example, an atomic immutable OS that is meant to be developed and distributed via the container infrastructure (this is what Universal Blue is). So, instead of working on making an OS the regular way, collecting packages and manually connecting and tidying up absolutely every puzzle piece so it fits together, then pushing it through the installer packaging wizard, etc. This OSs are made by taking an already existing distribution, in this case Fedora atomic distros (but this is by no means mandatory), then customizing some things. Like installing libraries, applications, firmware, kernels and drivers. Then putting it all into a container image, like you would do with a docker or a podman server image. This way, on the user side, they don't need to install the OS, instead they already have the minimal atomic system handling framework and just copy and boot into that OS image. This automates a lot of the efforts required for bundling and distributing an OS, and it makes new spins on existing distros really fast and efficient to make. It also means that users don't need to be tech savvy about stuff like directory hierarchies or package management, and updates, installs, upgrades can all be automated to the point of the user barely even noticing them.
On a similar note, these distros, as development workstations, are usually pre-configured to make use of a container based dev pipeline. Everything is flatpacks and development is handled all via docker, pods, etc. Keeping the system clean from the usual development clutter that sediments over time on a traditional development cycle. As a happy coincidence, this makes the dreaded “works on my machine” issue less prevalent, making support of software a tad easier.
Because the Linux Foundation says so. I would guess it's because most of the relevant tech started as cloud products or services and got generalised, such as Kubernetes (the big one in CNCF).
The naming wasn't up to Bazzite or uBlue to decide, that's for sure, and the term "cloud native" has won the mindshare of developers.
The irony hits hard when you're logging into an on-prem Kubernetes cluster in your company's wholly owned data centre. At that point, "cloud" isn't even someone else's computer (as the FSF would say).
The buzz word is not aimed at the regular gaming nerd. It is aimed at gaming nerds who are also developers.
I'm a gaming nerd and a developer and I did not get it.
Lot of explanations in this thread seem to be: "we just use cloud spec for testing and deployment". That's absolutely fine.
But context matters a lot. If I open a main page of the project, I don't have my developer's hat on. I will assume that the main page is intended to describe the core value of the project. What the heck does "cloud native" mean? To a gamer? Pretty much nothing. (At best they will think you want to run their games like Google Sheets, I guess). To a SW engineer with 8 years of experience in distro QE? Pretty much nothing. It's the kind of lingo you hear on meeting with C-suites. (Before you go back to your office, sit down with your PO and tech lead and try to decrypt/guess what they want us to do.) I mean, seriously, who talks like that? I'm pretty sure it's neither SW engineers nor gamers.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your explanation, it's really well written. Given what I've learned from this thread, Bazzite seems like worth trying out.
Just the marketing seems weird. I mean, the whole reason I even found the page is because I'm someone who cares about whose SW I'm using and how it's ran and maintained. And I do understand tech. Tossing around meaningless terms at me is not going to make me feel a lot of trust...
I'm sorry, but it is a software engineering term. Maybe not from the area you are familiar with, but cloud native was the raging buzzword…about 10 years ago on the server side. Now it's just a standard way to develop software and it's part of the common parlance. It is the philosophical background, if you will, of snaps, flatpaks, kubernetes, docker, pods. I mean, the entire business model of AWS and dozens of cloud providers, data centers, mass hosting solutions, saas, etc. is based on the cloud native idea. You use the term and everyone in the room knows exactly which principles and development pipeline you'll use.
Just like all language, it is just a shortcut to convey a complex meaning. Like, I don't know what distro QE stands for. But that's not my area of expertise. I bet there's a good reason it is abbreviated and that you use it on your résumé. It might convey something to a recruiter or not, about what your general expertise and skills could be. Same here, it's just a term that describes the important and distinctive part of the project. Because for everything else there's nothing out of the ordinary on bazzite, not even the gaming stuff. The makers don't even like to call it a distro because they use other people's distros. What's unique is the delivery pipeline and the config, and that sounds even worse, marketing wise. I'll share you some interviews later.
This is an interview with Jorge, who was around here on the thread earlier answering questions.
And here's an interview on the fedora podcast with bazzite makers.
Thank you for the post, especially the interview links; I'll check them out.
I’m sorry, but it is a software engineering term. Maybe not from the area you are familiar with, but cloud native was the raging buzzword…about 10 years ago
I guess my point would be the same, but conclusion is the opposite. Yes, I've heard "cloud native" tons of times, but that is the problem with buzzwords: because they are overused (and often used a lot by people who don't really know what they are talking about), for many people like me, they lose meaning in that period. It's like "AI" nowadays, or "NFT" few years ago. The term loses its specificity (if it ever had one), and collects all the "bad smell" from people overusing -- not just the term but sometimes also the methodology behind.
Honestly, for me rpm-ostree and Flatpak would be excellent terms to convey the architecture of Bazzite. I did have to go to here and to Wikipedia to learn that.
Yeah, that's absolutely valid. But you run into the same problems again, what the hell is an ostree? Would ask the average gamer. Even some newer changes to bootc will make rpm-ostree unnecessary in the future. Flatpaks are not mandatory even. You could run bluefin or bazzite entirely on appimages.
At least the term cloud native is standardized by the cloud native computing foundation, it has a long story, it's already known or familiar to a lot of people. And the most important, I think, it is technology agnostic. Even if docker dies and another tech takes its role, or if kubernets are replaced with something else, or even is rpm-ostren is no longer used, cloud native still means the same thing. As for bad smells, that's just language, words can mean many things at once, we just live with it.
Everyone else seems to have addressed the cloud part, which I was a little skeptical about too. I understood it is a development aspect, not an end user aspect, so I decided to use it. I've been using it as my daily driver for about 6 months and have had no problems.
The atomic part was the biggest hurdle for me, since I wasn't familiar with rpm-ostree, but I'm getting the hang of it. It's had the added benefit of keeping me from breaking things through stupid mistakes since I can just roll back my changes.
I've heard Bazzite mentioned repeatedly as a popular distro for Linux gaming (and I plan to test drive it on my old laptop soneday when I get around to it). My understanding is that it's a standalone distro you can run locally, same as Debian/Arch/Ubuntu/etc. I suspect the "cloud native" marketing term in this context just means you can run the same image file in a vm, vps, bare metal, whatever.
If I'm dead wrong, hopefully my reply will be sufficiently inflammatory to trigger a correction, lol.
I suspect the “cloud native” marketing term in this context just means you can run the same image file in a vm, vps, bare metal, whatever.
...yeah that's what makes it suspicious. Alone it can be a good thing but why rush to mention it for a fricking gaming/home distro? As if running gaming/home distro anywhere else than as close to the hardware as possible was somehow inherently normal or even good.
(The idea of cleanly separating "user user space" does sound inherently good, if achievable...)
Again, who are they marketing to?
Hopefully you've had time to read some ify the replies from the folks behind Bazzite.
I would argue that it's not bad marketing because no one is marketing it. Universal Blue, and by extension Bazzite, is a purely FOSS, community run endeavor.
Just because cloud became an over used buzzword by tech vulture capitalists, doesn't mean it doesn't apply to what they're doing, and it doesn't mean that it's suspicious.
Universal Blue is built by good folks making good shit.
The suspicious part is that the "good folks making good shit" are defending it, and even doubling down because it makes people question the whole identity and of the project. (But I guess out that turned out after your post.)
(I recognize that it's by no means all of the Bazzite's good folks.)
I got to buzzword and then I gave up reading. I'm going to go ahead and continue to double down on it until I don't see comments like this.
Multiple definitions have been provided, there is an entire cloud native computing foundation of which members of it are part of Universal Blue, and it's an incredibly common thing in any professional paid Linux job. I understand a small subset of users (Most of which are going to be Windows Gamers) might think cloud native means it's running in the cloud, but the website quite literally links to something that says that's not the case, and I'm okay suffering a few people not getting it.
Generally the industry shifted in a direction where it heavily relies on containers for running cloud applications. This solves many problems with traditional server systems where you'd be sticking to certain distro, so certain dependencies are in fixed versions, which brings some limitations. Container is an environment to run process in an isolated way so that it had its own root filesystem, its own view on what resources are available, sort of like it was separate machine, but it’s still running on the same machine natively using the same kernel as the host. You can then have multiple of such containers, all serving its narrow purpose and they all come with the complete fs and whatever distro release they are tested with. Nowadays cloud computing is all about containers and they come from images that are built in OCI format using Dockerfile syntax. After building an image, it is typically pushed into registry where it can be pulled from over network to be utilized across different nodes, which makes it pretty easy to scale and propagate changes in cloud environments.
Now what that means to Bazzite/Universal Blue is that it uses similar tech to deploy the system, though the target here is your local machine. Of course some of the characteristics aren’t relevant in this scenario, but it solves some of the same problem - build predictable and reproducible environment that can be thoroughly tested before publishing. The general idea is similar to how devops build cloud apps: there is CI pipeline that runs the build using giant Dockerfile (or Containerfile, same thing) inside of which they include everything that the system needs (running traditional package manager and act as it was normal Linux distro during the build), which then results as image that’s being pushed to registry. Bazzite users then install updates by pulling new version of the image and 'rebasing' to it. It is called rebasing here, because rpm-ostree lets users add additional layers with more packages on top of that.
EDIT: here’s the Containerfile I've been talking about: github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/bl…
Might give you some idea on how this works.
bazzite/Containerfile at main · ublue-os/bazzite
Bazzite is a cloud native image built upon Fedora Atomic Desktops that brings the best of Linux gaming to all of your devices - including your favorite handheld. - ublue-os/bazziteGitHub
How would you even measure how many are turning away?
How would you recommend anyone measure this? So far the answer has been things like nvidia drivers and "anti-cheat doesn't work", which are things out of our control.
unwilling to cater to those who aren’t
If you don't understand what something is, it may be that you are not the target audience!
Your description as it is now targets tech experts, rather than laypeople
Laypeople don't install operating systems.
You feel justified in being technically correct, while I place more value on accessible descriptions for less technical (prospective) users.
Less technical users don't care and go download the ISO, they don't need to care about any of this.
Ok so...
I have bazzite on a steam deck.
It works extremely well!
But... say I want to set up... Unity, or Godot, or Bevy, or something that doesn't have a flatpak or appimage.
If I am understanding this right...
The actual base OS is basically a custom version of an immutable/atomic Fedora 41 variant, and I should not fuck with that.
The system update terminal?
I should only run ~~ublue~~ ujust commands in it, not yum, not dnf, not rpm-ostree.
When I want to install something not flatpak or app imagified, things like all the requirements for compiling code ...
For that, I should be using the 'fedora' container... as the current fedora container is actually what allows for that level of tinkering with... or if something only actually lists its sources and dependencies in debian based os's, just set it up in a debian distrobox container... right?
Wrong?
I appreciate the input. You and I had the same opinion which is actually why I went with container native in the first place. I was trying to avoid the word cloud because I felt that some gamers would misconstrue it.
The reason I've changed it back and made it accurate is that I feel we have reached the point of saturation where some benefit of the doubt is present, and the word cloud may lead people to look twice rather than just run away.
I did make sure to watch our numbers before and after that change and I saw no discernible difference in bounce rate or ISO download growth rate. In fact in a previous comment in this thread I said we had 400TB/no in ISOs - That is now 460TB not even a couple days later.
One other way to look at it to is it benefits us twofold, in one sense we're getting cloud nerds like you and me interested in a fun new toy that is directly in our wheelhouse (and we want those, cloud nerds are quality engineers and contributors), and in another, we're showing both windows users and existing Linux users an ironically lesser known part of Linux among desktop users -- cloud native -- despite it being probably the biggest money maker in Linux. People can contribute to Bazzite who might have never done anything in the Linux space before and accidentally find themselves on the path to a real paying Linux job.
I got to buzzword and then I gave up reading.
No and I stated it clearly in the OP.
I even looked up "cloud native".
Cloud native computing is an approach in software development that utilizes cloud computing
to its fullest due to its use of an open source software stack to deploy applications as microservices.
Typically, cloud native applications are built as a set of microservices that run in Docker containers,
orchestrated in Kubernetes and managed and deployed using DevOps and Git Ops workflows.
That term is extremely vague at best.
And guess what: If I just looked up the definition and ran with it, I would just shrug and toss the whole thing out. "Do I want to run my games as microservices in Kubernetes? I guess some niche group of people want..."
The whole reason we have this thread -- and where I've learned what Bazzite is about (mostly from its users) -- is because i did not fully trust the buzzword, and I already knew something about Bazzite in the first place.
That's how "accurate" it is.
I'm not sure how you've decided the term is vague but it doesn't matter, it's a decade old term with an entire foundation built around it that's part of the Linux Foundation.
You should tell them it's vague. The truth is users with your opinion are not a growth target, I've dealt with maybe three of you in over 9 million downloads.
Don't take it the wrong way, It's not a strong opinion at all.
The inclusion of the word "cloud" meant that I wanted to know precisely how other people's computers are involved. My thinking was, since it got to the first paragraph on the site, (which I assumed was intended for the users), I thought it must be more than just the obvious, well, someone has to provide the hardware.
All I did was Google it, and the definition I found was not telling me much.
In fact, I'm already learning more; eg. I listened to some of the podcast with j0rge that someone linked here.. So no need to fire this user yet.
Ireland Joins South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/24585544
By Megan Specia
Reporting from London
Jan. 7, 2025[Bias alert - #NYT usually favors Israel]
Ireland Joins South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel
Ireland had said it would intervene in the case at the International Court of Justice, arguing that Israel’s actions in Gaza amounted to collective punishment.Megan Specia (The New York Times)
Mastodon CEO calls Meta's moderation changes 'deeply troubling,' warns users cross-posting from Threads
11:39 AM PST · January 8, 2025
Mastodon CEO calls Meta's moderation changes 'deeply troubling,' warns users cross-posting from Threads | TechCrunch
Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko has spoken out about the significant moderation changes announced by Meta on Tuesday, which will see the social networking giantSarah Perez (TechCrunch)
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No it's not. It's a gGmbH. Notice the leading "g". It's a nonprofit company.
de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemein…
Unfortunately there is no English translation of that page on Wikipedia.
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Back in my day we were perfectly capable of checking our own facts. A rare skill these days.
I have an idea. Make it so every time you create a social media account, you have to check "agree" to a giant banner that says "if you take anything you see on here seriously, you are an idiot.". That's how we used to automatically treat things on the Internet at first glance.
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Bullshit. Where would you get these facts? From sources curated by government censors and Cold War propagandists.
I watched a damn Doris Day movie last month that had imperialist propaganda shoved in it. No living person predates propaganda, and your overconfidence that you were able to sort it out with even less information sources available is ridiculous.
That's the idea, overwhelm people with massive amounts of information and misinformation, and people start tuning out and not caring anymore. One thing I did learn from those "propaganda" sources of days past was that the Holocaust was real, a fuckton of minorities were brutally murdered, and Nazis are fucksticks who need to be stamped out at every opportunity.
That is something I've actually seen actively changing in the past 20 years. When I was a kid/teen, we never fucking questioned it. Now the Internet is full of Holocaust deniers. Just spreading that shit from person to person like a virus.
We didn't blindly trust other sources either. Filtering and research is a skill you learn to use on any source of info you're given. Public schools used to teach us how to do this. Do they not anymore?
You’re looking at it with rose colored glasses. There have been Holocaust deniers ever since the Holocaust.
And now we have an ongoing genocide being live-streamed by the very people committing it, and they’re still denying genocide.
No, you’re either misremembering or intentionally misstating to advocate for censorship. Holocaust denial has been prevalent in media and among the powerful as well.
The entire reason it was allowed to happen was because of denial by the media and the powerful. Not some working class assholes with a printing press. And we see it playing out exactly the same way now with the genocide in Palestine.
the longest street name in Germany is "Bischöflich-Geistlicher-Rat-Josef-Zinnbauer-Straße", which I don't think is that different from something like "St Martin-in-the-Fields Church Path" in the UK.
(I'm purposefully ignoring Wales, because they're just fucking with us at this point)
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It's possible that we'll hit a point of critical mass where Fediverse becomes the dominant social media platform, but I don't think explosive growth is necessary either. Growth for the sake of growth holds little inherent value. Unlike commercial platforms reliant on VC funding to survive, Fediverse thrives on sustainability. What really matters is that there are enough developers to maintain the platforms, people to host the servers, and users to create content. With these elements in place, platforms like Lemmy and Mastodon can continue indefinitely without the need to attract users at a rapid pace.
In fact, rapid growth could do more harm than good. A sudden influx of users often brings toxic behaviors. When new users trickle in slowly, they adapt to the existing norms and culture of the community. But when a horde arrives, they risk overwhelming and reshaping the community in ways that trample over its core values. A steady stream of users allows for organic integration, preserving the essence of what makes sites like Lemmy pleasant.
Unlike commercial platforms, open-source projects don’t rely on profit motives to survive. They’re driven by people who directly benefit from their work and are passionate about their vision. When disagreements arise, projects can be forked, allowing different groups to take them in new directions. Even if a project is abandoned, it can be revived by a new team as long as there’s a dedicated community. This flexibility and resilience make open source inherently more sustainable than commercial platforms, which can vanish overnight if funding dries up.
The Fediverse, and Lemmy within it, only needs a large enough user base to remain self-sustaining. I’d argue that it’s already well past that threshold. There’s no rush to grow rapidly. Steady progress ensures the community retains its identity and values, while the open-source nature of the platform guarantees its longevity. Lemmy isn’t just another platform; it’s a sustainable, adaptable ecosystem built to endure. I’m willing to bet that Lemmy will still be around long after sites like Reddit crumble to dust.
I'm convinced its a combination of media silence on the fediverse (so most people don't know about it as an alternative), and younger audiences who don't know the history.
Because I can't imagine why grown adults who know the history of these companies, would do the goofy I'll fkn do it again meme, ten times in a row.
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I think ignorance (in the non pejorative sense) plays a big part. I can't really blame my non technical friends for not fully understanding that ditching Facebook for Instagram doesn't help. Even if they know it's the same company, it's still a totally different product, right? There's also a certain apathy or need to just get something done.
I'm sure I've purchased things at Home Depot that would make a plumber cringe, but I know nothing about that sort of thing and I just need to get my sink working.
Still, I think those of us who do know should continue to lead by example. My friends know my stance on these things and some of them are coming around.
Most nonprofits do NOT have a CEO. That's why this is alarming.
The head of a nonprofit is usually the Executive Director.
No. A CEOs job is to make as much money as possible.
An Executive Director is to make decisions that align with the mission statement, which must serve the public good as much as possible.
CEO...sound sexier
Only CEOs think that. Everyone else thinks CEO means "cheif asshole" and is certain that if they got a 3D-printed gun to fire a bullet into the back of their head, the world would be a safer place.
Wow that's fucked-up. I've donated to those two. They do good work, but they gotta get rid of their CEO title or they're gonna get guillotined
rollingstone.com/music/music-n…
Ethel Cain Says #KillMoreCEOs in Instagram Post: 'Make Them Fear'
Ethel Cain shared the hashtag '#KillMoreCEOs,' and backed up her post by saying we should 'make them fear for their lives' to cause change.Tomás Mier (Rolling Stone)
Is the first g the "for public benefit" part? Because isn't GmbH an evil company?
Also, isn't the norm that if you're doing good, you don't name the leader a CEO but a Director or something?
yes, gemeinnützig = serving the public benefit (literally approximately: gemein = common, nützig = useful, i.e. useful to the common good)
GmbH is just the (almost literal) translation of LLC.
Meta moderation was a dumpster fire before this, I can only imagine how bad it's going to get.
Currently they have blatant misinformation everywhere posted as real news, people read the stuff and believe it fully. It should be illegal - people are just too stupid to know Facebook is just a modern tabloid magazine.
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Let big corpo tell you whats true and whats not goyim
Alright uncle Cletus, it's time for your nap. Don't forget your antipsychotic cyanide pills 🥰
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you joke but, a little-known fact is that gargron named the mastodon software after that band as it is his favorite
edit: related loudersound.com/news/mastodon-…
We asked Mastodon, the band, about Mastodon, the social media network, and they’re just as confused as the rest of us
Prog metal band? Social media network? Furry ice age elephant? Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor attempts to clear up the confusion over his group’s nameMetal Hammer (Louder)
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Daylight shows extent of devastation from the Palisades Fire
- YouTube
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.www.youtube.com
Amazon extracts profit from the suffering of its workers
Amazon extracts profit from the suffering of its workers : Peoples Dispatch
Workers are ready take on the most profitable logistics corporation after staging the largest strike against Amazon in US historyPeoples Dispatch
The Air Force's 6th Generation NGAD Fighter Is Stuck in Purgatory
The Air Force's 6th Generation NGAD Fighter Is Stuck in Purgatory - 19FortyFive
The U.S. Air Force’s Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter program faces an uncertain future due to its high cost—estimated at $300 million per unit—and design challenges.Brent M. Eastwood (19FortyFive: Military, Defense, Politics, Economics and More)
Trump’s Threat About Hostages Frustrates Gazans: ‘It Is Already Hell’
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/24584782
from #NewYorkTimes #NYT
[Bias alert - #NYT usually favors Israel]By Hiba Yazbek, Abu Bakr Bashir, and Lara Jakes
Jan. 8, 2025 Updated 1:19 p.m. ET
Gazans React to Trump’s Comments About Hostages
President-elect Donald J. Trump said “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if hostages captured in the Hamas-led attacks were not freed before he takes office.Hiba Yazbek (The New York Times)
Show a wallpaper as a background for every window? (W11 Mica / Acrylic equivalent)
That used to be how translucent terminals did it "back in the day" because it's a lot cheaper to calculate..
It would be the terminal that does this, not a generic solution. I didn't know if any specifically that does this though.
Normal Sway can do translucent windows as well.
Per workspace wallpaper I do with multibg-sway. It uses the workspace title to set the wallpaper. So that means you can set the title dynamically it means I can change wallpaper dynamically per workspace as well.
‘Gift from heaven’: China astronauts develop super niobium alloy for aerospace
China makes first industrial-grade niobium alloy for hypersonic flight
An experiment conducted in space has helped Chinese scientists do the impossible – and it could revolutionise aerospace technology.Stephen Chen (South China Morning Post)
FireRetardant
in reply to scentedsounds • • •Michael
in reply to FireRetardant • • •Not going to get into a huge debate, but I disagree that it's a good thing or even remotely ideal. I don't there should be such huge separations in society to the point where you can point somebody out as "rich" and "poor" - especially pegging an entire neighborhood as poor or mostly poor.
We can do better to provide quality housing and the ingredients of dignity to everyone.
gubblebumbum
in reply to FireRetardant • • •BudgetBandit
in reply to gubblebumbum • • •boonhet
in reply to gubblebumbum • • •The fuck is wrong with your country that property taxes are so bad?
Where I live they're based on the size of the property and if it's the owners primary residence, there's no tax. You'd have to have a huge mansion for the amount to be significant anyway.
tburkhol
in reply to boonhet • • •boonhet
in reply to tburkhol • • •I'll be on ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.com
in reply to scentedsounds • • •Lmfao, no, you can, you just like the taste of boot, and the benefits he gives you (that he only has because he exploits people like you) too much to.
Also, those last two points in the meme, as well as this being your only post on a new account strongly suggest that this is a troll, or at the very least, a really sad LARP, rather than observations made by someone who has ever spent any time at all with any actual rich people.
scentedsounds
in reply to I'll be on ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.com • • •