Silverblue Setup

Commands and documentation

You should read the Fedora Silverblue docs first.

Some basic commands for administering your system have been given below.
For more advanced commands, see ../ostree-commands

Commands	Explanation
`rpm-ostree status`	See the status of all`rpm-ostree` deployments
`rpm-ostree update`	Update your system
`rpm-ostree search/install/remove <package>`	Search/Install/Remove packages on your base image. (Layering)
`rpm -qa <package>`	Check whether a package is currently installed in the system
`rpm-ostree reset`	Removes all overlayed packages
`rpm-ostree override remove/replace/reset <package>`	Remove/Replace a preinstalled package or Reset overrides
`rpm-ostree cleanup -rpmb`	Remove Rollback(`-r`)/Pending(`-p`) deployments and Clean Metadata(`-m`)/Cache(`-c`) files

Packages to layer

Although it comes down to personal preference and needs, I prefer overlaying the following packages on a fresh install of Fedora Silverblue:

zsh/nu/fish (Your preferred shell)
adw-gtk3-theme (Themes GTK3 and some Qt apps to look like libadwaita apps)
distrobox (More flexible than toolbox)
android-tools (For using ADB and fastboot)
langpacks-bn (For Bangla language pack support, replace bn with your language code)
podman-compose (For VSCode/DevPod Devcontainers)
OpenBangla Keyboard (For Bangla typing) [Download]

Oneliner:

rpm-ostree install zsh nu fish adw-gtk3-theme distrobox android-tools langpacks-bn podman-compose https://github.com/OpenBangla/OpenBangla-Keyboard/releases/download/2.0.0/OpenBangla-Keyboard_2.0.0-fedora42.rpm

Out of the box, Fedora Silverblue ships and configures Fedora’s own Flatpak repository, which has a limited selection of apps that sometimes have issues.
As such, I generally like to disable the default Fedora Flatpaks repository and enable the Flathub repository.
You can do so by opening the GNOME Software app and enabling Third-Party Repositories.

For a list of Flatpak apps to install and cleaning out the preinstalled Fedora flatpaks, see ../flatpak-setup

Fixing /etc/fstab issues in Fedora Silverblue

Starting from Fedora Silverblue 41 and onwards, / (root) is mounted using ComposeFS.
As such, / is mounted using kargs in Fedora Silverblue instead of systemd or by arguments sourced from /etc/fstab.

This will result in…

Options specified in /etc/fstab (notably btrfs compression options) not applying for / (root).
Errors related to systemd-remount-fs.service.
fstrim.service not trimming / (root).

To fix this, run the following commands:

# Add btrfs compression option to kargs
rpm-ostree kargs --delete=rootflags=subvol=root --append=rootflags=subvol=root,compress=zstd:1

# Comment out the line for the root (/) mount in /etc/fstab
sudo sed -i.bak '/^UUID=.*[[:space:]]\/[[:space:]]/ s/^/#/' /etc/fstab

# Manually run fstrim on /sysroot periodically
sudo fstrim /sysroot

Performance tuning

Disabling mitigations

If you’re a casual/home user with a threat model that doesn’t involve nation-state actors, you can disable some CPU/GPU vulnerability mitigations for a beefy performance boost. (esp. on Intel systems)

# For all CPUs
rpm-ostree kargs --append-if-missing=mitigations=off

# If using an Intel iGPU with the i915 driver
rpm-ostree kargs --append-if-missing=i915.mitigations=off

Enabling Intel Wifi powersaving

IF your system has an Intel Wifi/Bluetooth card like the AX210, you can enable powersaving and save 2~5W of power.

rpm-ostree kargs --append-if-missing=iwlwifi.power_save=Y
rpm-ostree kargs --append-if-missing=iwlwifi.power_level=5

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