sorry its OT but what has been your experience so far with VanillaOS? I remember there was a lot of discussion about it a while back but haven't heard much since then.
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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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.
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.
Have you considered Endless OS? It's another atomic distro based on Debian. However, it's based on the Debian stable instead of Debian unstable. Futhermore, instead of making their own tools (like Vanilla OS has done), Endless OS relies on established ones instead (like libostree, which is also found on Fedora Atomic).
Neat. I'll have to check this out as well. Thanks!
I had the same suspicion that it probably doesn't work well for seasoned linux users but its nice to see its otherwise fine. I have used ublue in the past and my experience was similar.
Thanks for the comprehensive answer.
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. 😄
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.
Yeah I have grown a liking to flatpaks too but I dont think I can live with only flatpaks yet.
The other thing I'm borrowing is distrobox+podman. I didn't know about that before. This seems useful for dev environments.
Distrobox is really nice, I even run some gui applications in containers.
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. 😄
This is the only thing keeping from arch tbh. I shudder to think of all the ways I can procrastinate on arch!
I've been using it for just over 6 months and it's perfectly fine as a desktop distribution. I'm enjoying that it's based on Debian Sid and I get a more up to date GNOME release than I would have with Ubuntu or Debian. The update process is a bit slow but you can just leave it downloading in the background and then reboot when it's ready. If you know that you want an immutable desktop distro based on Debian then I would definitely recommend it.
If you're using it for development then it's a bit more complicated as you'll need to get used to working in a distrobox container and understanding when it can and can't access the host system or communicate with programs running on the host system.
If you have the time and basic understanding to be able to switch your dev workflow to run inside a container, or if your dev environment never needs to interact with the base system that you're running it on, then it's perfectly usable for dev work - just a bit of a learning curve.
Thanks, didn't knew it was based on Debian Sid though that makes a lot of sense for an immutable distro since I assume you can easily rollback in case of issues.
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.