The “minimal” part is incorrect; it is a super complicated container. The number of moving parts don’t leave me with any confidence that I could keep it running or fix any issues going forwards.

Mainly for security. I was originally looking at CoreOS but I liked the additional improvements by the UBlue team. Since I only want it to run containers, it is a huge security benefit to be immutable and designed specifically for that workflow.

The Ignition file is super easy to do, even for just one server (substitute docker for podman depending which you have):

Take a copy of the UCore butane file:

https://github.com/ublue-os/ucore/blob/main/examples/ucore-autorebase.butane

Update it with your SSH public key and a password hash by using this command:

# Get a password hash
podman run -ti --rm quay.io/coreos/mkpasswd --method=yescrypt

Then host the butane file in a temporary local webserver:

# Convert Butane file to Ignition file
podman run -i --rm quay.io/coreos/butane:release --pretty --strict < ucore-autorebase.butane > ignition.ign

# Serve the Igition file using a temp webserver
podman run -p 5080:80 -v "$PWD":/var/www/html php:7.2-apache

During UCore setup, type in the address of the hosted file, e.g. http://your_ip_addr:5080/ignition.ign

That’s it - UCore configures everything else during setup.___

Rootless Podman :) It requires you to learn a little bit of new syntax, for example, the way you mount volumes and pass environment variables can be slightly different, but there’s nothing that hasn’t worked for me.

I’m using this on uBlue uCore, which I would also strongly recommend for security reasons.

I switched and was very glad to do so. You increase your security and so far I haven’t seen any downside. Every container I’ve tried has worked without issues, even complex ones.

The draw is that you cannot screw them up. Non-power users are the ones who will get the most out of them!

I know that I’ll never get a call from my friend saying, “I ran this command I found on an Ubuntu forum, and now my system won’t boot…”

As a counterpoint, I installed Bazzite on a Blade 14 for a heavy gaming friend who was leaving Windows, and they have had no issues whatsoever.

I personally use Bluefun, and again, no issues at all. Incredibly good experiences on both.

I can’t imagine what you mean by needing more work to configure, they both worked out of the box with no configuration.