Vanilla OS - Ubuntu, Fedora AND Arch in one Linux distro!

[@TechHut]

In regards to the issues I had: APX was updated before recording, chaging the order of flags thus breaking some of the buttons in the GUI. Should be fixed soon. Everything still works fine using the APX like this: 'apx install --dnf gimp'. Also, check out the SwitchedtoLinux for a little more detail: kzbin.info/www/bejne/inm4oqp8nadjY80

[@jasonhawkins4528]

I'm a new subscriber and love your videos. Can you make a video on Which Linux you think that is good as a bone shell and build your own linux distros please as that would be interesting. Thanks👍

[@myfavouritecolorisgreen]

@@jasonhawkins4528 arch

[@danmar007]

There is no such thing as "I've ran" in the English language as used here on Earth. It's either "I've run" or "I ran".

[@courtneymertz4596]

You know for an OS that has Vanilla in the title, it feels more of like a rainbow mix ice cream, and that is a sign of a fun, wacky and overall cool distro!

[@courtneymertz4596]

It’s like “Let’s Get Ubuntu, wear Fedoras and while we are at it, climb an Arch Too!”

[@sharonlima8913]

Hey man, I am entirely new to the Linux kernel. I am running an Ubuntu 22.04 LTS right now. How do I switch to a more fantastic version which maybe looks like Vanilla or Mac, without losing my files or even bearing the burden of shifting them from one OS to the other (I am talking about the massive files in my /home directory) Please let me know if there is any help. I really appreciate any help you can provide.

[@courtneymertz4596]

I don’t really know how to save the files when doing a new Linux install, but maybe someone else might know the answer!

[@robinkrause2217]

@@sharonlima8913 do you have a separate partition for /home or not? If not, you need a second hard drive and backup your files. At least there is no other way I know.

[@Rylanjones1212d]

@@sharonlima8913 so a desktop environment? well you can install gnome without issues as it uses GDM like ubuntu and vanilla OS uses gnome. Mac is a bit hard and I dont know how to do that.

[@neck-o]

I think this should be the future of Linux OS. We should be able to get apps from multiple repos.

[@AdroSlice]

Multiple repos is the standard already. What you mean is multiple package formats, which is cool for the end user, but does nothing to encourage standardization

[@Bixmy]

@@AdroSlice i feel like standardization is pretty hard in the open source world where if you don't like some standard u just make a new one.

[@TheLonelyMoon]

flatpak and distrobox exists, I wonder how vanillaos/blendos will hold in the long run

[@moribundmurdoch]

This idea is proper innovation for linux. It just needs to be easier and easier for normal people to use this distro so people besides linux nerds could enjoy it too.

[@colbyboucher6391]

What seems hard about it? Part of what's nice is that since it's largely flatpacks in the app store, the average person should never have to touch the terminal at all. And if you need to, you're far less likely to really break anything.

[@Bruces-Eclectic-World]

Awesome Brandon... I did watch Switched To Linux's video and you both did a most excellent job. I do think there are a few bugs still running around in there but hopefully they will squish them soon. It is interesting OS and the concept is cool and the container aspect is the coolest part. Thanks! LLAP 🖖

[@sharonlima8913]

Hey man I am completely new to the Linux kernel. I am running an Ubuntu 22.04 LTS right now. How do I switch to a cooler version which maybe looks like Vanilla or Mac without losing my files or even bearing the burden of shifting them from one OS to the other (I am talking about the huge files in my /home directory) Please let me know if there is any help. Thanks in advance.

[@Bruces-Eclectic-World]

@@sharonlima8913 Not knowing how Ubuntu was installed I can't help. I suggest you check out Brandon's Videos on how to do installs. Also watch other YT Linux videos on installs to get a better idea. For you "/home" folder stuff, copy it all to a external drive before doing anything. Sorry that is the best I can do... LLAP 🖖

[@MaxUgly]

@@sharonlima8913This post is long because I have been on a long journey of learning things the hard way and I try to give back to anyone new to Linux. That said, it is a lot easier in general to get help and everything just works better than 15 years ago when I started playing with it. I have not used gnome in a long time but I know it has come a long way. I know there are tons of extensions that you can get to shape the appearance and functionality. Just be careful and don't start using third party repo's and pasting stuff into the terminal until you get a good understanding of what you are actually doing. Trust me, I have done it and it can be WAAAYYY more of a burden than moving a bunch of that stuff in your home folder. Like Bruce said before me, you should have that stuff backed up regardless. If you have the time to tinker save yourself the headache and time and back that data up. Just be sure to separate your personal files from the stuff the OS put's in /home. If you say, backup any of those hidden files (anything that has a . in front of it, that is how Linux handles hidden files) and restore them on another install it could just break things all over again. If you decide to install another OS or want to check any in a live environment, Ventoy is an incredible tool. It will set up a flash drive for you with a folder you can just drop .iso's in. Boot to it and it automatically generates a menu of all the images to choose to boot to. Even for one or two iso's it is way more convenient and reliable than flashing the drive every time. I am downloading Vanilla OS right now so I can test it out with Ventoy and in a VM. Welcome to the Linux world btw! There are many things I had to learn the hard way and people often forget we were all noobs at one point in time and can be rude. Don't let it get to you, there is so much info and so many good people out there to help you. I went back and forth between Ubuntu based distros and Windows for years. Thanks to Steam/Wine/Proton I don't have to dual boot if I feel like playing a game anymore. If you were willing to re-install, KDE is a lot more customizable than Gnome. KDE Neon or Kubuntu (recommend this for newcomer) come with it stock. I am KDE fanboy so totally biased. At one point I had one monitor to my left that was set up like windows taskbar. The one in front of me had a Mac style launcher that had the cool animations and on my right I had a ton of plasmoids that had everything from every fan speed/temp, memory/disk/processor/gpu usage, internal and external IP addresses, a streaming radio, news ticker, weather forecaster/radar to a button to "find my phone", etc... That said, Gnome is a great DE too so stick with it unless you are going to start with a clean system. It is possible to have both installed but it can break things. Sorry for the book... Let me know how it goes and if you have any questions, have fun man!

[@sharonlima8913]

@@MaxUgly Thank you very much for your detailed reply. I will let you know soon

[@Flipbug_The_Whimsical]

Installed it today and was very impressed both by the app availability and visual consistency. It's a nice OS and and so far it just works

[@paulmarolop]

are you using the new beta one or the stable one ?

[@Flipbug_The_Whimsical]

@@paulmarolop Stable. Trialed the Beta a few weeks ago and was impressed, but it wasn't ready for daily driving and a few of the new features weren't working for me

[@paulmarolop]

@@Flipbug_The_Whimsical are you dual boot it or no ? i heard it's not dualboot able

[@iibrahimov]

I hope 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👍🏼

[@alphonsealexander]

The distro is fast and doesn't seem to consume a lot of memory considering that it uses gnome

[@WMan37]

I just want a KDE Plasma version.

[@JoeLinux2000]

It definitely needs a more user friendly desktop.

[@paulhorbenko9560]

@@JoeLinux2000 friendlier than GNOME?

[@pengamatkonoha45]

@@WMan37 Better not to use KDE Plasma which is very messy. GNOME is the best.

[@pttransamdriver1999]

Looking forward to hearing about your experience with vanillaOS on hardware

[@owieOne]

The whole title confused me… but Imma watch the whole video

[@kbdk]

Finally, Wow was waiting for this video since your appeared in the server.

[@Skullysism]

Now I know what distro I go with on my laptop Thanks! 🙂

[@BadenPowellTux]

I'm pretty happy with Fedora but after watching this I think I would like to try it. Hope it is as stable as Fedora.

[@Sahil-cb6im]

fedora stable? for me ubuntu normal is stable than fedora workstation

[@BadenPowellTux]

@@Sahil-cb6imSahil well, we are talking about Linux so that means the experience will be always different for everyone. It all depends on what hardware you are using and what kind of workflow you are in. In my personal experience Fedora worked better than Ubuntu but again since we are on Linux the experience will always be different for everyone.

[@OM-bs7of]

If you don't use Virtualbox you should be fine (for the most part). Virtualbox wouldn't work for me on VanillaOS and I ended up having to go back to Fedora

[@Ryan-ct3rv]

It's not stable yet in my experience. I'm sure it will eventually become stable but at the moment it's still under heavy development. I wouldn't make it your sole install on a computer you rely on.

[@mirkob1]

Thanks for the detailed video! I laughed out loud when he said the desktop environment is... "vanilla" :D

[@NijahPlays]

It's the man himself

[@voidmind]

I wish Manjaro would containerize AUR packages like this. I assume this would resolve the compatibility issue it has due to having different dependencies installed

[@emmanuelezeagwula7436]

Yup the only thing now is who will develop it

[@voidmind]

@@emmanuelezeagwula7436 Couldn't they just reuse Vanilla's tech? They already support pacman, Flatpak and Snap.. what's another package manager to them?

[@bragefuglseth3505]

Isn’t that basically just what Flatpak does, though?

[@voidmind]

@@bragefuglseth3505 Flatpak packages have to be created and uploaded to Flathub. What this new installer does is pull the code directly from the AUR with no manual packaging step involved (if I understood what was being said in the video correctly)

[@MaxUgly]

@@bragefuglseth3505 I'm not smart enough to know but am curious too. I think Flatpaks are more sandboxed. Like I said somewhere else in these comments I would love to see benchmarks and functionality of the subsystem vs the flatpaks, snaps, and appimages.

[@Zakaros1000]

Looks nice, probably I will switch to it the next time I wiped everything in my pc

[@averageengineeer]

Almost all Linux distros can use overlayfs(unionfs) to implement immutability. Its trivial to setup but well worth it.

[@aimpizza6823]

Well that is from an enthusiast standpoint but I take it into consideration to not break my school laptop all the time

[@dchappell]

I’ve been thinking about switching to Vanilla from Pop! OS, but have some reservations about day to day use, you should do a long term use case review.

[@MaxUgly]

That is a great idea. I could see that video boosting this channel. I think another cool video would be an in depth benchmark/functionality comparison of subsystems vs containers vs native repo's. It would be time consuming but very valuable info. Flatpaks are growing on me but the subsystem thing could mos def have some advantages. Vanilla OS, if done right might just be the be all, end all daily driver for most people. I just fell in love with openSUSE tumbleweed after using mostly *buntu's for my entire Linux life. I already managed to break it and the combo of BTRFS and YaST rolled me back to exactly the moment before I f'd it all up. I hope that Vanilla gets to the point where it has a good KDE flavor and tight BTRFS/rollback integration like YaST.

[@planetwally]

same boat - been happy with PopOS, but love the concept of containerized apps and immutable root fs... the ability to install packages from diff distros is the cherry topping

[@robgrune3284]

@@planetwally me too !

[@scottr.7077]

This looks interesting. I'll keep an eye on it. Thanks for the post.

[@xperience-evolution]

blendOS does the same in a different way based on Arch. Pretty interesting.

[@gabood]

This is awesome. I havent actually tried an immutable file system before, apart from the steamdeck. This is going on my laptop for sure.

[@khaledmahmoud4812]

They will have flavours and the first one will be kde version this year.

[@louist3923]

Let's goooo!🔥🔥🔥

[@NijahPlays]

My mom is using vanilla and it's great for my mom

[@jasonhawkins4528]

I'm a new subscriber and love your videos. Can you make a video on Which Linux you think that is good as a bone shell and build your own linux distros please as that would be interesting. Thanks👍

[@robgrune3284]

cool stuff. question... during install, can users choose to have the home directory on a different drive from that of the o/s and apps?

[@davew882]

I feel that this container apps like flatpak will really increase the space used for each application. I use Linux Mint and I only install updated apps though flatpak and not many of them.

[@Rolatnor]

I was curious about this one

[@faisal_nisar]

Want to try it out but manual disk partitioning not available, can't format my entire disk

[@skynetisreal]

Isn't this exactly what mocaccinoOS is doing with their package-manager Luet? Difference would be it is based on Gentoo.

[@kungfumachinist]

I'm trying to understand the difference between Vanilla OS and Blend OS. It appears that each app you install with dnf (in Vanilla) gets its own container instance, is that right? It appears with Blend OS I can make multiple containers of Fedora, for example, one with Python 10 and VS Code, the other with Python 11 and PyCharm, thus I can craft isolated development environments (not 4 independent containers total). Is that an accurate assessment?

[@wyktron]

please do a video about 10 things to set up after installing this os

[@speedytruck]

So they made a whole distribution just to showcase yet another frontend podman/docker? Also, their ABRoot is so far behind OSTree and rpm-ostree. It can only store two images, and it takes much more storage. Meanwhile, rpm-ostree stores and indefinite number of images if the user chooses, and it takes way fewer storage because OSTree does deduplication so only the new packages actually take storage.

[@spaceguybob]

Yooo I met you on the server!

[@gljames24]

I was going to try this, but I am going to wait until you can install on a disk partition.

[@robgrune3284]

update: Did not work for me, nor could I make it work. It installed, but the first start routine will not run. Message is no wifi, but wifi does work and the 'web' app can connect to the net. The 1st run is required to install flatpak, appimage, etc. I can find no support to install manually via the cli. So, Vanilla is a dud.

[@yethuraj4873]

I am planning to use this. Does this support fingerprint.

[@OUO140]

If its all os'es in os. It means that its got all the functionalities, but also the bugs.

[@abhaysingh.632]

I was on fedora but few hours a go i switched to vanill and guess who recommended this video

[@zweiwing4435]

I got problem that how i can install Snap Store in Blend OS?

[@xperience-evolution]

It says on the Website you can install with apx from every maijor package manager including openSUSE but the it also says only the flags -aur and -dnf work and no other flags are mentioned. Has anyone some insights on this?

[@pietrodc0]

thanks for the feedback! We're going to update the text/docs to list all the added flags (we started with -aur and -dnf only when published the release)

[@xperience-evolution]

@@pietrodc0 Glad I could help and thanks for the answer. Great Distro and I hope it is going to be long term.

[@ACMMROX]

Does this distro have issue with hybrid graphics ?

[@marufbepary100]

Very cool, but why would I use this over Atoms?

[@nero496]

How would it be to install "termius" via command?

[@iamwatchingthisvid.7682]

honestly 40gb on install is fine... the other guy with four squares takes up much more than that and with bloat

[@JrKinabalu]

can VanillaOS be install on old laptop and old PC?

[@GaetanoEsse]

In fairness, launching mailspring always take me two try even on PopOS with flatpak, I don't know why AHAHHAAH

[@pantarei.]

Vanilla does not offer lvm disk encryption and that really sucks.

[@menzokruizinga]

I like the os I tried vanilla os and love it But I get how it works some things I don't get

[@mariuspy]

Looks heavy

[@carnealse]

Vanilla ran painfully slow on my modern system, and was so bad for me that youtube would not even play any videos. Has anyone had that issue? Is there something I should have done to correct this issue?

[@JTM75]

It follows similar path than fedora silverblue.

[@colbyboucher6391]

I think I'm gonna start suggesting VanillaOS to my friends when they start telling me they want to use Linux. It's wonderfully idiot-proof.

[@thomaslechner1622]

So flatpacks are containerized too, aren't they?

[@Sqwert-g6h]

Yeah by default, the same as other distros

[@adonyz666]

I wanna know how does this compare in gaming compare to popos

[@userK29m89aa]

Спасибо! I like Vanilla OS! Но что делать с этим: "bash: apx: command not found"?

[@PaulMetalhero]

Skip Timeshift? Huge mistake

[@denizkendirci]

how is the experience of using a rare window manager with a lot of ricing on a distro like this? that's what i'm curious about.

[@jesse7631]

I would imagine that it would be difficult to use WM like i3 because of the way it needs to directly interact with the system. But I might be wrong.

[@denizkendirci]

@@jesse7631 i thought so, too. and i3 isn't even rare. so it must be a horrible experience for a ratpoison user like me.

[@occultsupport]

@@denizkendirci now that's a cool wm name

[@denizkendirci]

@@occultsupport it's a very old one. it's "less is more" kinda wm. simple and minimalist, yet effective.

[@media.magika5010]

And how about BlendOS?

[@quitheturk]

Does snap come installed on vanilla OS?

[@khaledmahmoud4812]

No, you can chosse to install it with/or choose flatpak and appimage.

[@quitheturk]

@@khaledmahmoud4812 Ok, thanks

[@NijahPlays]

@@quitheturk It's planned to be added

[@quitheturk]

@@NijahPlays noooo :D

[@marasion0862]

@@quitheturk Just like flatpaks and Appimages, it will be an optional toggle, so no need to panic

[@kulamshmenim]

Can you review PikaOS? it's basically Nobara based on Ubuntu but with APX package manager

[@MotownBatman]

Great Video... Man; If I could package Linux Mint Tools as a 1 step install...I might make a jump and give it a fair shot

[@ChristianClark]

I have heard and watched that Vanilla OS is a Closed system........Vanilla may be a Very Nice Linux OS ....but .....it is ... kind of ..... Closed Linux OS .... soft of MacOS ...and ...I'm like, what's the point ? ha ha

[@YannMetalhead]

Good vdieo.

[@vanodon2257]

Funny video, very unique meme distro. Good video 👍

[@angelplayz5783]

Aww, yes, Frankenstein OS I’ve played with this monstrosity before and it almost broke my brain I’m sure it might be more efficient in the near future but until it is, I wouldn’t recommend it to new users… 😬

[@arkvsi8142]

I will make my grandfather use it despite him beraly be able to read

[@colbyboucher6391]

What were you trying to do that you found confusing?

[@happyfootballgroup]

I think this distro just like Zorin OS.

[@mmil]

From a security perspective I can see some merits, but all this immutability drive, package managers that create a container for each application etc. is a total waste of time for me. I have a computer it is running an OS and the OS is running my programs. if I need to isolate everything I can use a VM, If I need to run a service that is complex to setup for development purposes on my desktop I will use a container. I see zero value in running a desktop UI type application in containers. If the application is incompatible with my system I will simply use another application, I do not care about providing a container for it. Enough with the 100s layers of abstraction, all these are useful tools for a server environment. For the desktop they are silly experiments, if it is so "dangerous" to install an application directly to the OS, fix the OS, do just add silly layers of packaging.

[@pietrodc0]

Allow me to answer in two point: 1) it's not a container per app but a container per "type" (apt, dnf, aur...) 2) you're a poweruser based on the answer. Can you imagine the common user, maybe quite new to Linux or that doesn't know the difference between the distros, make the same choices and management you would do? One of the purposes of Vanilla is to provide a safest environment to those who are "just copy pasting random stuff in the terminal"

[@mmil]

@@pietrodc0 (1) I was generalising a bit, but... (2) Yes, I agree... now that you gave me a usage scenario that does make a lot of sense, it helps me understand the need for such a design.

[@Edip2]

prays for turkey please #turkeyEarthquake #deprem

[@abdelrahmanrad]

Vanilla is supposed to be the opposite right lol

[@aman9das]

Please look another time

[@chaoticsoap]

dang that's complicated, no likey

[@mrb180]

tnx n no tnx

[@jamescarrico1233]

You can't just run a hypervisor as a desktop OS Vanilla OS-...

[@stephenkamenar]

computer hardware is ridiculously fast and precise. computer software is ridiculously slow and broken. why

[@teflon252]

its not that unique.....BlendOS is the same 🤦🏽‍♂

[@Grant_S_M]

I call Vanilla the Ukraine victory distribution. The devs are super dedicated in making this one the next great one!

[@Maxtraxv3]

they put all the worst thing about linux in one spot? oh boy count me out.

[@milohoffman274]

These are nothing but wrappers around distrobox. Just learn how to use distrobox.

[@mirkob1]

The developer of distrobox is one of the founders of the Vanilla OS project. Why should we rewrite all container management by having its work and know-how available? Why not make things easier for the end user instead of telling them “use distrobox”?

[@mkerimi]

@@mirkob1 👍

[@milohoffman274]

@@mirkob1 because you don't want to be locked into one distro. Learn how to use distrobox and you can use it on any Linux system regardless of distro.

[@mirkob1]

@@milohoffman274 this message does not makes sense at all

[@colbyboucher6391]

@@milohoffman274 For a power user, this makes sense. If you ever want the "year of the Linux desktop" to occur, distro developers need to start brute-forcing simplicity and day-to-day usability regardless of Linux nerds kicking and screaming.

[@BeesCantSwim]

So it's a broken, useless, so called distro...

[@TechHut]

Capt. Negative

[@roberttranceedm]

@@TechHut Isn't wrong though.

[@bb_poison]

seems like a patently worse but much more comfy distro version of NixOS, which is on the precipce to being THE linux distro to use. Nothing really beats provisioning my whole machine with with a flake and all my developer environments..

[@colbyboucher6391]

Well, yeah, comfy is the goal. Less for power users, more for less technical users who just want an OS that they aren't gonna break somehow.

[@davidwayne9982]

I looked at this-- but they F.. it up by making it GNOME!!! (can't STAND gnome.)..

[@anothernumber6679]

You have a right to bad taste.

[@Sahil-cb6im]

plasma 🔥