Thanks for posting this! I use WhatsApp Web, so seems like this may cause me problems…

anti-configurable systems

Yep! This has been my experience too. Once you want to do something that the devs didn’t build, then you have to fight the OS.

Neat. I’ve been thinking of doing something similar. My parents currently use a Mac, but they mainly just use the web browser. I was thinking of switching them to VanillaOS at some point.

mother is using Opensuse Aeon and my father in law is using Fedora Silverblue

How long have they been using those distros? Do you or they have any preferences for Aeon or Silverblue?

what’s keeping YOU from switching to an atomic distro?

I tried switching to VanillaOS a month ago. I had a hell of a time getting my niche use-case to work, consisting of using Syncthing to sync my Obsidian notes to a server via Tailscale. Apparently, I had to create a custom VanillaOS image just to install Tailscale? Also, I couldn’t get wl-copy to work. Also, docs were out of date and missing.

See notes: https://lemmy.today/post/25622342/14849341

I like Arch because I have control over the system. At least with VanillaOS (not sure about other immutable distros), it seems like I’m supposed to give up control or fight with the system to let me do what I want.

I actually have accidentally bricked my Linux system in the past, but that was a long time ago and I learned from the experience. So it’s not a problem I currently have.

I still haven’t gotten to doing this, but actually, I was thinking the locked down nature of VanillaOS might be fine for my parents. They currently only use their Mac for browsing the web and not much else. Seems like VanillaOS might be a good fit for users that don’t have very demanding computing needs.

I don’t know about foods, but do you know how to play a wind instrument? Playing trumpet for 30 seconds has been a 100% cure for me. Then you can get on with the eating.

I just sold my Framework 13 after daily driving it for a year. The HiDPI display bugs and workarounds just got too annoying.

I went back to my old Dell XPS 13 9310 and I’m loving it.

Neat. I’ll have to check this out as well. Thanks!

One thing I’m doing differently in Arch this time is I’m trying out installing as many things as possible as flatpaks. I’ve successfully ignored them until now. Surprisingly, a lot of my apps are already packaged as flatpaks.

The other thing I’m borrowing is distrobox+podman. I didn’t know about that before. This seems useful for dev environments.

flatpaks + distrobox seem to be at least 50% of VanillaOS. So I’m borrowing those and then I get to keep the simple, mutable OS with Arch.

That being said, I’ve never had a problem with pacman breaking my system, so I don’t see major value in doing this… other than… it’s helping me procrastinate! I should be doing real work right now. 😄

Oh’laville: https://www.youtube.com/@Ohlaville

Ooooh, ok. Missed that.

Hi, it isn’t possible to install Tailscale inside the VSO container since it needs to interface with the host, for this case, I would suggest using a custom image following this template and rebase to it using ABRoot -> https://github.com/Vanilla-OS/custom-image.

Aw, dang. ok.

I’m like 12 hours in. It’s not going too well right now… the biggest con is that there is basically no documentation for Orchrid…

My use case: I have Obsidian notes synced with Syncthing to a server only accessible via Tailscale. I was able to get Syncthing working by installing Syncthing GTK from Flathub (a workaround, I couldn’t figure out how to install Syncthing the normal way). But I’m still out of luck because I can’t reach the server.

The only way to install Tailscale is via a custom image it seems. :(

The other thing I haven’t figured out is if it’s possible to use wl-copy to copy text from a terminal. The terminal app basically opens into a container. It seems like wl-copy can’t break out of the container and affect the host clipboard.

The container/isolation stuff seems kewl in theory, but so far I’m finding it pretty annoying.

I’m experimenting with this because I was wondering if VanillaOS would be a good fit for my parents, which actually, it might be. They have very basic needs. All their apps are on Flathub. But for me… I think I may just go back to Arch.

You mean the post that talks about the successful install that doesn’t run? 😅

this post covers the successful install of tailscale on VanillaOS, however I cannot get it to run.

Also, that’s from 2 years ago on VanillaOS Kinetic, not Orchrid. 😢

Oh, wait. Derp. Sorry. I need to RTFM.

$ vso sys 
Execute system commands, such as upgrading the system

Usage:
  vso sys [command]

Aliases:
  sys, sys-upgrade

Available Commands:
  check       Check for system updates
  upgrade     Execute system commands, such as upgrading the system

Flags:
  -h, --help   help for sys

Use "vso sys [command] --help" for more information about a command.

The command got renamed.

1. Block a shit ton of political and Reddit communities
2. Subscribe to everything else
3. Only browse Subscribed

Maybe you could go to:

Settings > Developer Settings > Personal Access Tokens > Tokens (Classic)

And then create a new token there.

Then you should be able to clone a private repo as long as you have git installed.

When you git clone your private repo, git will ask for your username, enter that. Then it’s gonna ask for your password. Don’t enter your GitHub password. Enter your token.

Clone should work.

how concerned you quickly become with all types of water

LOL, yes! 99% of my problems these last 5 years have been related to water. It’s really made me want to learn more about plumbing.

Usually projects (especially large projects) are kept in a version control system like git. This is a prime reason why. With version control, it wouldn’t have mattered if you deleted the docker compose file, you could just bring it back. Also, usually every change has to go through version control, this way you always have a backup of the latest version of the file.