---
title: Stargazer 5 - Year in review
description: Year 2025 for Aurora
slug: year-in-review-2025
authors: inffy
---
Hello Stargazers, today we will have look into year 2025 for Aurora and also check in to year 2026. This will have mostly same stuff as the [Bluefin update](https://link-here) with some Aurora specific things added.

This is going to be on the longer side, so grab your favorite drink and lets get on with it.

## 2025 in general
For year 2025 most of our work has been on "backend" doing a lot of refactoring and cleanup on the images. We are mostly "feature complete" and don't ship user-facing changes that much anymore.

## Architecture Overview
As we have mentioned, we are currently refactoring how our images are made. We have been working with [Bluefin folks](https://projectbluefin.io) to streamline our builds. At some point we noticed that we are mostly 1:1 in features, so why spent time deduplicating every feature to both repos.

Aurora and Bluefin are combinations of a set of configuration OCI containers which are then shipped on different images. Originally the Aurora repository had everything we needed, and was a result of organic growth.

So this year we refactored the repository, since it was created before `bootc` and we were falling behind. As said, we want to share as much of the general code with [Bluefin](https://projectbluefin.io) and also with [Bazzite](https://bazzite.gg). We share many things and we wanted a cleaner way to do this. So the new architecture looks like this:

### OCI containers
These are what make up the bulk of Aurora and are shipped as OCI containers. This moves us away from classic distro packaging and towards a pure cloud native approach.

- [@get-aurora-dev/common](https://github.com/get-aurora-dev/common) - Aurora specific things live here
- [@projectbluefin/common](https://github.com/projectbluefin/common) - Most of the opinions on distro experience is here
- ujust, motd, service units, CLI configuration, application choices, etc. Most things that have to do with the workload should live in this repo
- We share this with Bluefin, so we can have the shared things in one central repo
- [@ublue-os/artwork](https://github.com/ublue-os/artwork) - Art assets repository, shared with Aurora and Bazzite
- [@ublue-os/brew](https://github.com/ublue-os/brew) and associated [@ublue-os/homebrew-tap](https://github.com/ublue-os/homebrew-tap)
- these provide homebrew itself and our selection of custom brew packages. Thanks to those of you who have been helping homebrew be better on Linux, it's **amazing**!

These containers have the advantage of making consumption by other bootc projects trivial and are (mostly) distribution agnostic. Custom images now have a granular option to pick and choose the components they want to ship instead of dealing with one monolithic experience. The common repository is structured to be extensible, here is how [we do it](https://github.com/get-aurora-dev/common/blob/main/Containerfile). This allows the team to keep configuration centralized while allowing endpoints for custom builds.

### A Streamlined, Maintainable set of Images
Decoupling the images this way, allows us a more streamlined experience. It also allows us to create something new based on these (more on that little later) containers. This has already allowed us to delete a bunch of duplicated code, and makes maintenance easier for the team. This also makes it way easier for people to contribute and resolves a bunch of `parity` bugs between the images. Maintaining Aurora happens in the common OCI layers and not as much in the image repositories.

This also gave us the opportunity to clean up a bunch of old justfiles and scripts that have not been looked at for _years_. We have also been taking a less-is-more approach by shipping less customizations as just recipes.

Thanks for your patience with this transition, it did take longer than expected but we took our time since we're planning on long-term maintenance first.

## Discord server
As we have grown and at the same time Bazzite has also seen a huge uptick in users our old combined uBlue discord server started to feel little crowded. So we decided with Bazzite that some reorganisation would be needed. So now we have a full blown [Discord server](https://discord.getaurora.dev) for Aurora and the old uBlue server has been rebranded to Bazzite server. All the uBlue specific development channels are still on the Bazzite server.

So if you are interested chatting about linux and specifically Aurora stuff, please join us @ https://discord.getaurora.dev

## Year 2026

### Aurora
Everything will mostly be the same, our main images will still be based on Fedora, but we are looking into CoreOS based workflow for "releases". Bluefin has already talked about [this](https://docs.projectbluefin.io/blog/unifying-bluefin).

So the current idea is that `:stable` stream would stay as it is currently. And then we would have `:testing` and `:next` streams, just like CoreOS does it.

#### Changes and Rationale

At first this looks like a rename, so let's go over the changes:

- `aurora:next` - all changes will land here first. We make no stability guarantees. It will build daily. This will not replace `aurora:latest` because we will for sure break things in here. This will build at least daily and every time a change lands
- `aurora:testing` - When changes in `:next` have been tested by at least one person they queue up to land in testing. We anticipate things to sit in here for a week or two at a minimum unless we need to fix a regression. This builds daily.
- `aurora:stable` - This is effectively the current version of Fedora, except all changes going into this will have at least be vetted by the previous branches.

We do NOT have this promotion process today. This is the goal. If you are on `aurora:latest` we will point you to `aurora:stable-daily` so that you are still getting daily builds. We purposely are not moving you to `next` because that will be volatile. Both the `next` and `testing` branches will be opt in.

So that is the plan. But we don't currently have any set date when (and if...) this would be happening. Unfortunately we are a small team and we cannot commit to specific dates at the moment. It might happen before F44 release cycle or after that. In worst case scenario, we'll abandon the ide. But we will update you on this, when/if we make the decision to move onto this.

### What about the LTS?
Do you remember the Aurora LTS version from way back? Well unfortunately that never happened because of things. And once again, our resources were very limited and the current team at that time didn't have the time or "need" to actually create and maintain LTS version of Aurora.

But now James has been tinkering with the idea and he also has working version of Aurora LTS which is based on CentOS, just like Bluefin LTS.

So everything in the image is pretty much working. We won't make any promises how this will go, but hopefully we can atleast at some point release it to live next to the Fedora based one.

### Bazaar takes over with F44 (SUGGESTION)
*This one we will need to decide together*
With Fedora 44 coming up in Spring 2026 there will be a change regarding our application stores. We have allowed the use of Discover as a replacement but starting with F44 it is time to let it go and make Bazaar the only Flatpak store on Aurora.

Bazaar has seen great amount of development and we have a great relationship with the development team. And now as we are using the flatpak version, we will get the bugfixes immediately after they are released on Flathub.

## Developer experience
Our developer experience (dx) is also getting some new paint and Homebrew will be a big part of it going forward.

In 2026 we will strive to remove the need for a dedicated `aurora-dx` image and give you more flexibility moving forward:

- Plan is to add `containerd` to the image, which will also bring in Docker so everything works out of the box, there will not be a need to do the adduser mumbo jumbo, we'll take care of that for you.
- How we'll accomplish this transition is still a bunch of guesstimates, so consider this one a slow burn.

### Curated experiences
Thanks to to Vito Castellano from [Bold Brew](https://github.com/Valkyrie00/bold-brew) for continuing to improve the experience! We've got all the issues fixed so this menu should work great moving forward. The intent is less stuff baked in, and more options, that you can freely install and remove. Note that these will also all work on any Linux with Homebrew:

The first is our [`ide`](https://github.com/projectbluefin/common/blob/main/system_files/shared/usr/share/ublue-os/homebrew/ide.Brewfile) selection, which offers a selection of VSCode, Codium, and Jetbrains toolbox for graphical IDEs, as well as `nvim`, `helix`, and `micro` for you CLI nerds.

The [`experimental-ide`](https://github.com/projectbluefin/common/blob/main/system_files/shared/usr/share/ublue-os/homebrew/experimental-ide.Brewfile) selection includes the individual Jetbrains products if you prefer to install those one-by-one, as well as [Antigravity](https://antigravity.google/) and [Cursor](https://cursor.com/). These will be promoted to the production tap as we get more feedback. We've also started to add [Swift tools] into the list so that we can tap into this exciting open source community!

Thanks to the new [flatpak support in brewfiles](https://docs.getaurora.dev/blog/consolidation) we can ship all sorts of combinations now!

And finally, thanks to our [custom tap]([@ublue-os/homebrew-tap](https://github.com/ublue-os/homebrew-tap)) we are investigating on how to bring `bluefin-cli` to MacOS, so that you can have these same convenience tools on multiple operating systems. James [has a prototype](https://github.com/hanthor/bluefin-cli) that you can check out.

### AI/Machine Learning Tools

Our [AI toolset](https://github.com/projectbluefin/common/blob/main/system_files/shared/usr/share/ublue-os/homebrew/ai-tools.Brewfile) continues to expand. I'd like to highlight [goose](https://block.github.io/goose/) as a tool that I have been really digging into lately. Its donation to the [Agentic AI Foundation](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-announces-the-formation-of-the-agentic-ai-foundation) makes this a great choice for your local LLM/CLI needs.

We've also added [Codex](https://developers.openai.com/codex/cli/), [Copilot CLI](https://github.com/features/copilot/cli), [Gemini](https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli), [LM Studio](https://lmstudio.ai/), [Mistral Vibe](https://github.com/mistralai/mistral-vibe), and [Qwen Code](https://qwenlm.github.io/qwen-code-docs/) to the list. Please continue to send us feedback on the tools you use.

::: info [Thanks Docker!]

You'll find the new [Docker model plugin](https://www.docker.com/blog/docker-model-runner-universal-blue/) included too, a huge shoutout to the folks at Docker for working with us!

:::
## Other Goodies

And here's the stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else in this report!
- Powerwash is here! - `ujust powerwash` is now in alpha and ready for testing - use this command if you want to blow away the data on your PC for donation. This wraps the `bootc install reset --experimental` command for convenience behind some confirmation dialogs. Be careful with this one! Check the [bootc documentation](https://bootc-dev.github.io/bootc/experimental-install-reset.html) for more info
- We also moved our image rechunking process away from the previous hhd-dev/rechunker to the upstream rpm-ostree integrated one. Check the [blog post](https://link-here) about it

## Metrics

On to the numbers! First off let's look at our critical upstreams. This level of growth confirms our decision to trust in systems that prioritize application developers.

- [Flathub 2025 year in review](https://flathub.org/en/year-in-review/2025) - 20.3% Year over Year Growth, and [Bazaar] continues to get better all the time.
- [Homebrew Yearly Statistics](https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/os-version/365d/) - Bluefin (#11), Bazzite (#12), and Aurora (#15) have a strong showing in homebrew usage
- gnome
- ours: [ do these last for freshness]

### Development Roadmap(ish)

Here's some important dates (these are preliminary)

* January 2026 - Auroras transition to the common OCI containers is complete
* April 2026 - Aurora upgraded to F44 base
* Spring 2026 - Aurora LTS (maybe - no promises)

## See you in 2026!
This ended up longer than anticipated, thank you for joining us in 2025, and we look forward to working with you in 2026! And lastly if you've made it this far and still want more backstory, make sure you check out this interview with Michael Tunnell:

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