# Ultimate Linux on the Desktop

DevFeed: [Ultimate Linux on the Desktop](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/ultimate-linux-on-the-desktop-35216.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/ultimate-linux-on-the-desktop/>)

Published: 2017-01-16T15:09:26Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Jessie Frazelle](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/jessie-frazelle.md>)

Topics: [Linux](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/linux.md>), [Containers](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/containers.md>)

Tags: [containers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/containers.md>), [coreos](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/coreos.md>), [hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hardware.md>), [kernel](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/kernel.md>), [linux](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/linux.md>)

## AI overview

The author describes a personal Linux desktop setup based on CoreOS Container Linux. They adapted the server-oriented operating system for desktop graphics, removed server-specific components, and ran applications in containers, citing customization, automatic updates, a container-oriented filesystem, and TPM support as benefits.

## Source excerpt

Over the past couple of years I have set out to create the ultimate Linux on the desktop experience for myself. Obviously everyone who runs Linux has their own opinions on things. What this post will outline is my ultimate Linux on the desktop experience. So just remember that before you get your panties in a knot on HackerNews because you live and die by Xmonad (I live and die by i3, fight me). First, you should already know that I run everything on my laptop in containers. I outlined this in my posts about Docker Containers on the Desktop and Runc Containers on the Desktop. Base OS I used to use Debian as my base OS but I recently decided to try and run CoreOS' Container Linux on the desktop. Container Linux is made for servers, so obviously it doesn't have graphics drivers. I added them and made a few other horrible tweaks that I'm sure would make some people at CoreOS cringe. I am not proud of these things but overall it worked! Mostly the changes for graphics drivers were the same exact changes you would make installing Gentoo on your host: setting VIDEO_CARDS="intel i915" in /etc/portage/make.conf, emerge-ing sys-kernel/linux-firmware etc, etc. Then I cut out the things I don't need that only pertain to if you are using Container Linux on your server, cluster management tools, support request tools (lolz) etc. These were all pretty simple changes that I made to a new ebuild that I cloned from the coreos-base/coreos ebuild. I need to clean up the mess I've made of my forks of the coreos build scripts, init, ebuilds, manifest, and base layout. But you can checkout the desktop branch at each of those. Let me go over some of the benefits I get from using CoreOS' Container Linux as my base OS. I can build my own images, it's Gentoo and I know emerge so I can customize the base anyway I want. CoreOS' Container Linux uses the same auto update system as ChromeOS, which is all based on Google's Omaha. So all I need to do to have auto updates for my OS is continuously r