blendOS 2023.01.26

blendOS (sometimes written BlendOS on the project's website) is an Arch-based distribution which offers to install and run software from Fedora's development branch (called Rawhide), from Ubuntu, and from Arch Linux repositories. It reportedly runs on an immutable filesystem and uses GNOME as the default desktop, though the project's website reports we can choose the Xfce or Plasma desktops as alternatives at install time.

The blendOS website also mentions the project uses its own package manager, called Blend. We're also told we can use other package managers from supported distributions, including APT, DNF, and pacman. The website goes on to mention Flatpak packages can be installed too.

If all of this sounds familiar, it should. The blendOS feature list is almost identical to that of Vanilla OS. However, blendOS is based on Arch Linux while Vanilla OS is based on Ubuntu.

There is one edition of blendOS, built for 64-bit (x86_64) computers, and its ISO is 1.4GB in size. This ISO can be booted in UEFI mode only, Legacy BIOS mode is not supported.

Installing

The live media boots quickly to the GNOME desktop. Once the session starts a graphical utility automatically launches and offers to begin the installation. This tool appears to be a customized version of the Jade GUI installer. The installer starts by asking us to select our keyboard layout. Trying to change the default option brings up a search window of country codes, but the pop-up window is labelled "Search Timezones". Despite the mislabelled window, we can pick our preferred keyboard code and proceed. We're then asked to pick our timezone and blendOS will try to identify our timezone automatically. The next screen asks us to make up a username and password. We are also asked to choose our preferred desktop environment with the options being listed as: GNOME, KDE Plasma, Xfce, Sway, and i3. I chose Plasma.

The installer next asks if we'd like to enable IPv6 loopback networking (I don't think I've ever before encountered this question during the setup process of Linux distribution) and whether we'd like to enable compressed swap in memory (zram).

When it comes to disk partitioning we can take a guided option which just asks us to select a disk. We can also choose to partition the local disk using GParted or using a command line terminal. The automated option takes over the entire disk and sets up a Btrfs volume. The last step shows us a summary of the choices we made and pauses before the installer proceeds.

I found it interesting blendOS pauses to prompt us for elevated system access three times during the install process. Once on the partitioning screen, once on the summary screen, and once while installing packages. We are not asked for a password, we're just shown a GNOME prompt asking if it is okay for the user to perform admin actions.

It looks as though all packages installed to our hard drive come from remote servers, at least that was the impression I got from the installer's progress reports. This requirement of being on-line doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere on the blendOS website or in the installer. When the installer finishes its work, it offers to reboot the computer.

Early impressions

My fresh copy of blendOS booted very quickly to a graphical login screen. The distribution identifies itself as Arch in the boot loader, sticking to its parent's labelling. I selected Plasma as my desktop environment during the install process and found both Plasma on Wayland and Plasma on X11 sessions were available. The Wayland session is selected by default and worked well for me. The only annoyance I encountered early on was how quickly Plasma locks itself when there is no input; the desktop locks out the user after five minutes.


The KDE Plasma session is fairly vanilla. The theme, wallpaper, and layout all seem to be unchanged from upstream. Not a lot of desktop software is included. We're treated to the Firefox web browser, Discover software manager, Dolphin file manager, and the Qt design tools. The KDE System Settings panel is present along with the systemd init software and version 6.1 of the Linux kernel. The distribution runs the zsh shell by default when we open a terminal.

The Blend package manager

A core feature of blendOS is the Blend package manager. Though "package manager" may be a misnomer as Blend primarily handles containers and guides package management, both on the distribution and inside the containers. When we first open a virtual terminal the system displays a message indicating how Blend can be used. We can later run "blend help" to get a summary of available commands. There is no manual page for Blend and there doesn't appear to be any on-line documentation for Blend with examples either. A lot of my experience with Blend happened through experimenting.

Before getting into the details of using Blend, I'd first like to share an overview in how blendOS works. The idea seems to be that blendOS provides us with the core distribution (based on Arch) and a desktop environment. A few applications, like those mentioned above, are included. Virtually everything else on the system, any additional software we install, comes from one of two sources: Flatpak bundles and containers. I want to focus on the containers, mostly.

When we want to install a regular package from one of the supported distributions (Fedora, Arch, or Ubuntu), Blend creates a container on our system. A minimal core for the target distribution is installed in the container. We can then install libraries and applications inside the container using the Blend package manager. These containers (which hold the Arch, Fedora, and Ubuntu distributions along with our software) all share the same home directory our user has on the host system. In other words, if I create a document in blendOS and save it in my home directory, the document is available to any software running in any of the guest containers.

By default, Blend sets up and installs software into an Arch Linux container, but we can specify other containers to be used. Once software has been installed in a container it should add its launcher to our application menu (if it is a desktop program), or we can use Blend to open a shell which runs inside the container. When all of these pieces work together it means I can install Falkon in the Fedora container and the GNU Image Manipulation Program in an Ubuntu container and both applications can access all of my user's files through a shared home directory.


Something users may find confusing at first is that software inside a container is not automatically accessible by our user. In other words, if I install the Nano text editor in an Ubuntu container, I cannot simply run "nano" from my blendOS command line. I need to first open a shell inside the Ubuntu container and then run Nano. If that seems too abstract, here is an example:

blend install nano -d ubuntu-22.04
(Nano is installed in the Ubuntu container.)

which nano
(This returns no results.)

blend enter -d ubuntu-22.04
(This opens a shell inside the Ubuntu container.)

which nano
(This returns /usr/bin/nano)

One curious feature of blendOS is it has shortcuts for each package manager (pacman, DNF, and APT) built into the base system. This means running "pacman -Syu" doesn't update our host system, it opens the Arch container and updates software inside the container. If we want to update our host, blendOS, then we need to use the Blend package manager. The command to update blendOS is "blend system-update".


Let's look at some other examples of using Blend. Running "blend install pkg" installs a package and "blend remove pkg" deletes a package. Should we wish to handle software from a specific distribution we can specify which distribution container we want to use. For instance, "blend install firefox -d fedora-rawhide" sets up a container with Fedora's base packages and then attempts to install Firefox inside it. Likewise, "blend install falkon -d ubuntu-22.04" will make sure a container with the Ubuntu distribution is running and then install the Falkon software inside it.

We have the option of running a shell inside a container using "blend enter" followed by the name and version of a distribution specified after the "-d" flag. For instance, "blend enter fedora-rawhide" doesn't work, it will instead enter into the Arch-based container without warning. If we want to enter the Fedora-based container we need to run "blend enter -d fedora-rawhide".


I feel this behaviour I've just described is important to keep in mind because the Blend utility will often fail silently or perform unexpected options without warning us if the syntax is incorrect. This can have some strange results because we might end up running a command or shell in the wrong container without warning, or a command might run and return with no output, making it hard to tell if it performed any action. The "export" command provided another example of this habit of silent failure.

When we use Blend to install desktop software inside a container, the launcher and icon for the new application should show up in the blendOS application menu. We can then simply click on the application's launcher to open it. This saves us the steps of opening a terminal, entering into the desired container, and manually running the program. I found Blend usually did a good job and successfully added the launcher for new applications in my desktop's menu. So far, so good. However, a few times once I'd installed an application the launchers didn't show up in the menu. The Blend documentation tells us we can fix this by running "blend export app-name". Running this command, and variations of this command, such as "blend export app-name -d ubuntu-22.04" all resulted in Blend simply exiting with no information. There was no success message, no error, and no indication of a problem or syntax issue. However, the command didn't work and no new launcher was added to my application menu.

In short, it often seems as though Blend will try to figure out what the user wants and silently give it to us (or not), but it doesn't catch syntax errors, it doesn't tell us when an error occurs, and it will sometimes give unexpected results based on the parameters we pass it. Another instance of this unexpected behaviour I found interesting come when searching for packages. Running "blend search pkg-name" will attempt to find matching packages we can install. When software in one of the official repositories (of Arch, Ubuntu, or Fedora) is found, the search results are simply displayed in the terminal. Blend will also check the Arch User Repository (AUR) and, if it finds a match, the install process will be started automatically, asking us which package version we want to fetch from the AUR. This caught me off guard a few times as I had intended to compare the availability of packages across distributions and, instead, I sometimes found my system offering to install a third-party package it had found.


Flatpak packages and Discover

While a good deal of software management takes place inside containers, blendOS also offers support for Flatpak packages. The Discover software centre is available and, out of the box, it connects with the Flathub repository. Discover works well, providing quick and easy access to Flatpaks, divided into categories. Discover will also handle updates to Flatpak packages. Any new programs we install through Discover are automatically added to the application menu.




Immutable filesystem and resource usage

The blendOS website claims the project offers an immutable filesystem: "blendOS is an immutable operating system. This means your filesystem is read-only, thus resulting in stable [sic] experience." The distribution runs on the Btr filesystem and it immediately becomes clear Btrfs is not set up to be read-only. The entries for Btrfs in the /etc/fstab file show the entire system is set up to use a normal read-and-write filesystem. Users can create files in any part of the filesystem, including the root directory, and we can edit configuration files stored under the /etc directory. These changes survive a reboot too, they are not sandboxed or otherwise separated from the underlying operating system. In other words, no part of blendOS is immutable, even when set up using the installer's guided partitioning method. I'm not sure why this clearly incorrect claim is listed as the first feature on the blendOS website, but it isn't accurate.

On the subject of the filesystem, disk space gets consumed quickly. Since most software is installed through Flatpak bundles or containers, disk usage balloons, particularly early on. When I first started using blendOS, disk usage was under 10GB, but by the time I'd installed just four applications my disk usage had grown to over 13GB. On other distributions all of my applications, including Flatpaks, usually use about 16GG to 20GB of space, but on blendOS all the isolation means I could quickly consume over 20GB of space installing my commonly used programs.

Memory usage tended to jump around a lot too. Signing into the Plasma desktop only used about 640MB of RAM, but each new bundle and container increased memory usage. Running one container raised memory usage by about 100MB and with software from three containers accessed I easily used over 1,000MB of RAM.

Conclusions

When I'm reviewing a distribution there are two questions floating in the back of my mind. First, do I find this project useful or interesting? Second, does the project accomplish what it sets out to do, does it meet its own goals? I want to discuss these two queries and my responses to them after running blendOS.

Is blendOS doing something interesting? It's starting to. This is a young project and it seems to be trying to match features with Vanilla OS, which got a lot of hype in the second half of 2022. This project feels like an attempt to basically: "Be Vanilla OS, but with an Arch base." And, if that is the case, it's a worthwhile goal. The idea of being able to pull in software from multiple sources, multiple distributions, and run them all together on one, relatively minimal host operating system has a lot of merit.

I really like these types of projects, ones which stitch together elements from multiple distributions. I think of them as a defragmentation of the Linux ecosystem. Now users don't need to choose whether they enjoy the development tools of Fedora, the utilities of Ubuntu, or the massive third-party repository of Arch - we can have access to all three without the overhead of dual booting or virtual machines. Projects like blendOS and Bedrock Linux merge multiple projects together to do away with the need to make those "A or B" style choices when selecting a distribution. Instead we can enjoy "A and B" on one platform.

With that said, blendOS is not yet nearly as seamless as some alternatives, like Bedrock. The Blend container and package manager is still in its early stages, prone to some problems, and requires the user to be able to enter into containers to run most commands rather than having each container's contents available in our user's executable path. In other words, I like the concept. The implementation mostly works, but needs some polish before I'd recommend most people (even more experienced Linux users) try it.

Moving on from what I think about the project's mission and approach, I'd like to talk about what the blendOS project claims it is doing and how well it meets those goals. I will list out the features the blendOS website's promotes and share how well I think the distribution is delivering those features.

• The blendOS website claims the distribution offers an immutable operating system and the filesystem is read-only. Neither of these claims are true. The blendOS distribution is not in any way immutable and it uses a read-write filesystem.
  
  
• The blendOS website says the distribution defaults to running the GNOME desktop, with support for Plasma and Xfce available at install time. This is true. The website does not mention that a few other graphical user interfaces are also available at install time.
  
  
• The project's website says we can install software from any supported distribution (Fedora, Ubuntu, and Arch). This is true. The software is installed in containers which we can then enter to launch programs. Some desktop software is also added to the blendOS application menu, in which case running programs from multiple distributions becomes seamless. This feature is a little awkward when used from the command line, but works fairly well.
  
  
• The blendOS website says we can set up sessions using other distributions and, using those projects as a base, run software in those sessions. This is entirely accurate. We can set up multiple containers and run both command line tools and desktop applications from them. Running software shares a home directory, making it easy to pass information between tools in different containers.
  
  
• The distribution's website says we can use package managers such as APT, DNF, and pacman directly on the host system. This is mostly accurate. Running one of these command line package managers from blendOS sets up a container of the corresponding distribution and runs the package manager inside the container. The package manager does not operate on the host distribution (blendOS).
  
  
  
  blendOS 2023.01.26 -- Installing Nano into an Ubuntu container
  (full image size: 908kB, resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
  
  
  
• The blendOS website claims the distribution ships with Flatpak access enabled. This is entirely true and well implemented. We can use Flatpak, and the Discover software centre, with no manual configuration. Flatpak bundles are pulled in from Flathub and it all works quite smoothly.
  
  
• The project's website says it uses a customized version of Jade GUI as its installer. This is accurate and I found the installer worked pretty well. There were a few minor interface glitches, but no serious problems.
  
  
• Finally, the blendOS website says application launchers from software installed in containers should show up in our application menu. This sometimes works, I'd even say it usually works. It doesn't always work. Even when I tried to use Blend to export a program's launcher it didn't always work. For example, VLC didn't export its launcher, but other tools such as Falkon and GIMP did.
  

On the whole, most of the advertised functionality is there. Most of the goals are achieved. Some of the functionality is still a little rough, but most of the features advertised are working as expected. The one glaring issue is with the claim of offering a read-only, immutable platform, which is not at all accurate. This feels even more odd since, when performing a package update, Blend will say it is switching the filesystem from immutable mode to read-write mode, and then back. But the filesystem is never in read-only/immutable mode. Meaning not only is the website inaccurate in this claim, the Blend package manager is pretending to toggle the feature on/off without doing anything. This is strange, but maybe an immutable filesystem is something which will be implemented later.

In the mean time, the container management and multi-distro package management mostly works and is off to a good start. I just hope Blend is made more resistant to error and becomes more verbose when something goes wrong.
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