I’ve been feeling gushy about my setup lately, I think I’ve finally found my home on Linux. For decades I’ve distrohopped each year and never was really happy with it all, but Fedora Atomic has changed that.
Some things I can do with Fedora Atomic that I cannot do with other Linux distros:
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I can rebase to Bazzite for gaming performance when I feel like having a long gaming session.
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I can rebase to Secureblue when I think I will not be gaming and would prefer a more secure linux setup.
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I can update my system and not have to worry about special instructions, its extremely stable. Many times in the past, running a small ma-and-pa distro with most things pre-configed for performance would end with it breaking after a couple of major updates. This isn’t true for configs like Bazzite and Secureblue, they are remarkably stable across many major updates due to how rpm-ostree functions.
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Distrobox and Flatpak are more than enough at this stage for most programs and they help you avoid making too many alterations to the base image, greatly speeding up the swaps between major images.
The kicker? Your user configs and home files are never changed when you ‘image hop’. It always feels like you just installed a fresh distro whenever you upgrade, and the performance benefits are noticeable. You don’t have to tinker and do the same changes over and over, its all handled for you by rpm-ostree.
10/10 this is the future of Linux. I hope for a future where I can rebase entire Linux distros while maintaining my configs with one simple command, but for now, Fedora Atomic is fantastic.
The downsides:
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There is one major downside, and its that all of your system files are read-only. Personally, I’ve found a dozen ways to get around this, it requires thinking inside the Distrobox. It is a notable issue for many people, though. This means you cannot make specific tweaks without making a whole new image for yourself. Though in practice, I have found the ecosystem has grown a lot. Other people have already made the best tweaks available for you with only a few simple commands.
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Rpm-ostree also is slow to update because its essentially building a whole git tree to make sure your updates never break and are as stable as possible. You also have to reboot each time you alter it, which can be annoying, but if you stick to flatpaks and distroboxes, this issue is mitigated significantly.
Totally get why you’d ask if you’re the only one on openSUSE MicroOS, especially with all the buzz around Fedora Atomic. Let’s explore what the latter has going for it that have helped their adoption race ahead:
Head Start & Delivering Desktop Variety: Fedora Atomic desktops’ efforts simply got rolling earlier. Importantly, they also managed to deliver a solid KDE Plasma option (Kinoite) alongside their GNOME flagship (Silverblue) in a reasonable timeframe. For instance, the ideas for Fedora Atomic started around April 2014, and Kinoite hit beta by November 2021. Now, consider openSUSE: their work in this immutable space (with some roots in Project Kubic around May 2017) is still, as of May 2025, working towards a beta release for Kalpa (the KDE version). This extended wait for a polished KDE experience – a desktop environment hugely popular within the openSUSE community and beyond – undoubtedly has implications for overall adoption and even the perceived momentum of MicroOS as a desktop project. When a major DE option, especially one with KDE’s broad appeal, is lagging, it can slow things down.
The uBlue Phenomenon: Can’t stress this enough – community projects like uBlue (and its offshoots) have been an enormous catalyst. They make Fedora Atomic super accessible with pre-configured images including NVIDIA drivers, codecs, and common tools. They’ve likely single-handedly tripled or quadrupled the user base for Fedora Atomic by just making them work out of the box for more people.
Fedora’s Broader Reach: Generally, Fedora just has a larger overall user base than openSUSE. While both are fantastic, top-tier distros, Fedora’s wider existing audience naturally gives its specialized spins, like Fedora Atomic, a larger initial pool of potential users to draw from.
So, what’s the deal with openSUSE MicroOS (or Aeon/Kalpa for desktop)?
Right now, its approach to being “managed” or declarative feels a bit milder. When people dive into immutable/declarative systems, they often see a spectrum:
People often move between these. If NixOS is too much, Fedora Atomic becomes a common landing spot. If they love what Fedora Atomic offers but crave even more control, they might look to NixOS. For someone already in this mindset, openSUSE MicroOS’s unique draw isn’t as sharply defined yet. And let’s be real, for many long-time openSUSE aficionados, the fact that YaST – arguably a killer feature and a huge USP for the traditional distro – isn’t really part of the Aeon/Kalpa experience (or MicroOS generally in the same way) definitely stings a bit. It feels like a missed opportunity when such a cornerstone tool doesn’t quite make the jump to the new paradigm.
Where I think openSUSE MicroOS Desktop is compelling is as a super logical next step for openSUSE Tumbleweed users. It’s less about being an entirely new, radical thing like NixOS (or even Fedora Atomic in some ways). It’s more like it takes the best bits from atomicity and transactional updates (think easy rollbacks with
transactional-updateand a read-only root) and blends them into the fantastic Tumbleweed foundation.So, it’s an evolution of a trusted model, beefing it up, rather than a completely different animal. This is probably the openSUSE team’s vision. Time will tell how it fully distinguishes itself, but it’s a smart way to get modern robustness without throwing out all the familiar openSUSE goodness.
Hope that lands better! It’s definitely a space changing fast.