# Bluefin and Aurora 3.0

[Dino pic]

## Overview

This started off as a maintenance release but we really found some pace over the past week so we've decided it was worth the version bump to 3.0. Special shoutout to M2 who did most of the heavy lifting on this one.

Major upstream updates include:

- KDE 6.1 for Aurora users
- Nvidia 555 drivers: [Firefox users should stay on X11 for now](https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/nvidia-555-drivers-incoming-important-information/2554)

We've got a bunch of new things we'd like to go over!

## New Release Channels

Bluefin and Aurora now have a `stable` image, that will follow the latest Fedora release but with a gated kernel (see below). We feel like this hits a sweet spot for users who want to be on the latest version of Fedora but want a bit of a safety blanket.

Here's how it maps out:

[Release table pic]

Check the [Administrator's guide for more details](https://universal-blue.discourse.group/docs?topic=40#upgrades-and-throttle-settings-8) if you want to rebase, and here are the ISOs if you wanna start fresh. The websites haven't been updated yet.

#### Bluefin

- https://download.projectbluefin.io/bluefin-stable.iso
- https://download.projectbluefin.io/bluefin-nvidia-stable.iso

#### Aurora

- https://dl.getaurora.dev/aurora-stable.iso
- https://dl.getaurora.dev/aurora-nvidia-stable.iso

Asus and Surface users should stay on the `latest` channel. Aurora GTS was being published but is now disabled. We never publicized this and it's the old Plasma 5 desktop so we've gone ahead and removed it.

The major difference between `latest` and `stable` is when they upgrade. `latest` will upgrade to the next major Fedora release as soon as it is available and it builds daily. `stable` will upgrade when CoreOS does it’s userpace upgrade, which is usually a few weeks afterwards, and only builds weekly.

## Switching to Weekly Builds

Bluefin and Aurora will now publish a build once a week. This is to cut down on bandwidth consumption and to move to a more predictable model for development. (See below for more bandwidth news)

Your device will *continue to check for a new update every day*. If there's an important security update we can publish a new image on demand. Therefore we strongly encourage leaving the default update schedule in place. Flatpak applications will continue to update twice a day.

Note that the `latest` channel will continue to build daily, if you want to stay as aggressive this is the channel for you.

## Gated Kernels

Bluefin and Aurora now follow the Fedora CoreOS kernel cadence, and will be shipping the same kernel version as [the stable CoreOS channel](https://fedoraproject.org/coreos/release-notes?arch=x86_64&stream=stable).

See this [previous discussion](https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/call-for-testing-stable-branch-for-bluefin-aurora/2530) for more context. Note that the `latest` channel will continue to use the upstream Fedora Silverblue kernel.

## OpenZFS is now included (Beta)

The `gts` and `stable` channels now build the [OpenZFS kernel module](https://openzfs.org/wiki/Main_Page). Due to the nature of Linux kernel development and quick pace of Fedora's kernel cycle, and it is not enabled in the `latest` channel or any of the hardware enablement kernels (`surface` and `asus`).

This will be in beta for a while and we only recommend it for advanced users for systems that are not used in production. We're still unsure how this will work in practice as there's usually a delay of when OpenZFS gets ported to a new Linux kernel. If you use this then thank you for volunteering to gather data. :smile:

## Future Work

- P5 is currently working on implementing [zstd:chunked](https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/switch-fedora-container-images-to-support-zstd-chunked-format-by-default/123712) pushes for our images. This, along with switching to a weekly image build, will lead to less bandwidth consumption. We consider this feature to be our final boss. :smile: Note that we are preparing our publishing pipeline for this, we're expecting this to be ready when Fedora 41 releases. We'll also be using this on all our [toolbox images](https://github.com/ublue-os/toolboxes) when GitHub's Ubuntu runners update to 24.04, which will likely happen soon.

- M2 is investigating switching to an fsync kernel (the same one Bazzite uses) so that Asus and Surface users can just run on stock images. This will also be gated in `gts` and `stable`. Investigation into this is just starting so expect more details later.

# Full Changelog

Yep, it's short, most of this week was CI work. :smile: