Archive:Aeon/Documentation

openSUSE Aeon is still in a Release Candidate stage, please keep that in mind!

openSUSE Aeon is a Desktop operating system you don't have to worry about.

Focused: Designed to be provide a clean, clear desktop experience, without needing lots of configuration and setup to get started or maintain
Fast: Doesn't ship with baggage that slows it down
Always up-to-date: Updates install automatically, without impacting the running system. They take effect on next reboot, which you decide when that occurs.
Resilient: In case of trouble the system automatically rolls back to last working state

Who is openSUSE Aeon for?

It is NOT for everyone. Your highly customizable Tumbleweed & Leap Desktops are safe and will remain the best choice for those who want to tinker with their Desktop.

It should be perfect for lazy developers, who no longer want to mess around with their desktop and just ”get stuff done”, especially if they develop around containers.

It should also appeal to the same audience now more used to an iOS, Chromebook or Android-like experience where the OS is static, automated & reliable and the Apps are the main thing the user cares about.

To deep dive on the origins and the case why some users should use openSUSE Aeon check out the following workshop:

[YouTube] Why you should be running the MicroOS Desktop

Design Goals

Aeon should be reliable, predictable & immutable, just like openSUSE MicroOS.

Aeon should be less customizable than regular openSUSE Tumbleweed/Leap.

Aeon should be small, but not at the expense of functionality. Printing, Gaming, Media Production and much more should all work.

Aeon should just work “out of the box” without the need for additional configuration to get key functionality like software installation and web browsing working. All features offered by default should work - features that don't work shouldn't be offered/visible/available to users.

How to Download and Install

Please checkout our new Install Guide

Installing Apps

It's recommended to install software in the following order of preference:

Flatpak
User Distrobox
Root Distrobox
Transactional Update

Flatpak

Flatpak apps are the preferred app distribution on Aeon. Flatpak and the Flathub store are enabled out of the box. Flatpak apps can be installed from Gnome Software or from the command line.

Distrobox

User Distrobox: distrobox is a tool that allows you to install any Linux distribution inside your terminal. You can enter a tumbleweed distrobox by running

 $ distrobox enter

For those who want to run GUI apps via a Distrobox can do so with a special export command so that apps feel more native and integrated with the system. Learn more about distrobox from their Github page and openSUSE's documentation.

Root Distrobox: distrobox also has a root mode for more specialized uses. For most use cases, user distrobox should be used. Learn more about root distrobox here.

Transactional Update

openSUSE Aeon's underlying OS is deliberately minimal and should not be touched. However, it may be necessary to modify the underlying OS to install drivers, kernel modules, or certain VPN services. The `transactional-update` can be used to achieve this.

openSUSE Aeon does not use zypper like openSUSE Tumbleweed or openSUSE Leap to install RPM packages and use them directly. openSUSE Aeon uses transactional-update with zypper under the hood.

Most of the time, you should not need to use any of these commands interactively, as Aeon has automatic system updates via the transactional-update.service systemd service.

Example Commands

Commands for transactional-update are listed below. NOTE: Remember to reboot after the command is finished to see the changes!

sudo transactional-update pkg install package_name install a rpm package
sudo transactional-update pkg remove package_name remove an rpm package
sudo transactional-update dup perform a system upgrade to the next release
sudo transactional-update shell open a shell of the next snapshot (you can use zypper commands there). This should only be used for debugging purposes. Any bug report that can only be reproduced by using transactional-update shell is almost certain to be closed as WONTFIX.
sudo transactional-update rollback snapshot_number roll the system back to the numbered snapshot. Use 'last' instead of the snapshot number to roll back to the last working snapshot. Do not use snapper for rollbacks.

Automatic Updates

By default transactional-update.timer handles automated system updates. This is set to daily which means that the task will be executed each day at 00:00:00.

In the event this might be at a time when the computer is off, as the timer is set to persistance=true, then the update will then take place the first chance it can.

Some of the reasons why it may not be able to trigger an update could be:

the computer was off
the internet connection was disturbed - at time it is scheduled to.

This should not cause issues due to the way transactional-update works since the new packages are installed on a new snapshot for which to take effect you must reboot.

To track if transactional-update is able to upgrade, and run correctly you can use journalctl:

 $ sudo journalctl -u transactional-update.service

You can also use journalctl with the -f flag to tail the logs in real time.

About Snapshots and Boot Behavior

By default, each transactional-update command produces a seperate, self-contained, snapshot that includes the changes requested by the transactional-update command.

This snapshot is BASED ON THE LAST KNOWN GOOD/BOOTED SNAPSHOT. The last of the snapshots produced by multiple transactional-update commands then takes effect when rebooting.

In other words sudo transactional-update pkg install $pkg1 followed by sudo transactional-update pkg install $pkg2 and then rebooting results in a system that has $pkg2 installed, but NOT $pkg1.

This is the expected, and sensible default behaviour - Aeon always wants to move from the last known good/booted snapshot to it's new state in the smallest, least disruptive way possible.

This is especially sensible when you think the default/expected behaviour is that Aeon updates itself automatically and most users should not be using transactional-update interactively at all. With transactional-update dup happening regularly in the background automatically, Aeon wants to make sure it's updating only to the latest clean system update state, not some weird hybrid of previous unbooted, unchecked, intermediate transactional-update dup that never got booted.

However, when ignoring this best practice and using transactional-update interactively, there may be times where you wish to run transactional-update against an existing unbooted, unknown-if-good snapshot.

For this use transactional-update --continue

Example:

sudo transactional-update pkg install $pkg1 followed by sudo transactional-update --continue pkg install $pkg2 will install $pkg1, then $pkg2 in the same snapshot that included $pkg1, marking that combined snapshot as the next boot target.

If problems occur however, there is no additional complexity figuring out whether it was $pkg1 or $pkg2 that broke anything, as users will need to rollback to the snapshot before $pkg1 was installed to return to the last known good state.

GNOME Software + Flathub Integration

Gnome is currently in a RC stage.

At first boot flatpaks are enabled and some flatpaks are installed by default (Mozilla Firefox, Text Editor, Gnome Calculator and Extension Manager).

After the first boot script finishes you can open Gnome Software to install more software from Flathub.

Reporting Bugs

Please use the following link for reporting bugs: Report a bug for openSUSE Aeon

Please see Submitting Bug Reports for more information on how best to file a bug

Place for questions

openSUSE Aeon has various places to discuss the project:

Telegram: https://t.me/openSUSE_Aeon
Matrix: https://matrix.to/#/#aeon:opensuse.org

These channels are bridged together via Matrix, so sending your comments in one, will be seen in the other.