Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

About the project

What is Fedora Sway Atomic’s relationship with Fedora Silverblue, Fedora IoT and Fedora CoreOS?

Fedora Sway Atomic uses the same core technology as Fedora Silverblue, Fedora IoT and Fedora CoreOS. However, Fedora Sway Atomic is specifically focused on workstation and desktop use cases with the Sway Wayland compositor.

About using Fedora Sway Atomic

Can I use Fedora Sway Atomic with an Nvidia GPU?

The proprietary Nvidia driver is not officially supported. It may work, but we are unable to provide any help with the configuration or resolve any issues. Check the Nvidia section of the troubleshooting guide if you absolutely have to use it.

The open-source driver (Nouveau) should work fine in general, but currently lacks support for the most recent generations of the Nvidia hardware.

The initial support for Ampere (30xx) GPU series is expected to appear in kernel 6.2/mesa 23.0 and hopefully will be ready by Fedora 38 release. There are no estimations for Ada Lovelace (40xx) GPU series support.

Lack of support in Nouveau also means that laptops with discrete Ampere (or later) GPUs may fail to use external monitors, as the corresponding ports are routed through the Nvidia GPU.

How can I play more videos in Firefox, like YouTube?

Firefox is included in the OS image for now (see issue#288 for progress on moving to Flatpak by default). Until that changes, getting it to play videos works the same way as it does for the regular Fedora Sway Spin: find a package with the needed codecs, and install it. The one difference is that you use rpm-ostree install instead of dnf install. An alternative solution is to install Firefox from Flathub.

How do I create a VPN connection?

/etc is not part of the immutable OS image, so you can just copy files into /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections (or let NetworkManager store them there when you recreate your connections). Certificates in /etc/pki need to be handled similarly.

How can I install my preferred IDE on Fedora Sway Atomic?

You can install most IDE directly in a toolbox where you can also install all the developments tools from the Fedora repositories. To be able to launch them directly from menus, you can copy the .desktop file for the IDE from the toolbox to your home directory in ~/.local/share/applications/. You should then update the Exec line in the .desktop file to prepend toolbox run to start it from the toolbox. You can also use the IDEs packaged as Flatpaks from Flathub.

How can I see what packages were updated between two commits?

  • If you want to compare the booted deployment with the pending deployment (or rollback deployment), simply issue:

    $ rpm-ostree db diff
    You can also see the RPM changelog by adding the -c option like so: rpm-ostree db diff -c

  • If you want to see which packages were updated between two specific commits:

    1. find out which two commits you want to compare by issuing:

      $ ostree log <ref>

    2. you can now compare the two commits by issuing:

      $ rpm-ostree db diff <commit x> <commit y>

How can I check the version number of an installed package?

You can simply use:

$ rpm -q <package>

How can I check if an rpm software package is available in the repository?

At this point in time, there is no rpm package search function built into rpm-ostree. However, you can use toolbox with the following command:

$ toolbox run dnf search <package>
The assumption is that you have already created a toolbox matching the version of your Fedora Sway Atomic installation.

How can I downgrade my system’s kernel?

If, for whatever reason, you need to downgrade the kernel, you can do so by following these steps:

  1. For the version you need to downgrade, download <kernel>, <kernel-core>, <kernel-modules> and <kernel-modules-extra> from Koji.

  2. Install the packages downloaded on the previous step by issuing:

    $ rpm-ostree override replace <kernel> <kernel-core> <kernel-modules> <kernel-modules-extra>

  3. Reboot the system to apply the changes.

How can I upgrade my system to the next major version (for instance: rawhide or an upcoming Fedora release branch), while keeping my current deployment?

OSTree allows you to pin deployments (pinning ensures that your deployment of choice is kept and not discarded).

  1. Assuming that you want to keep your default deployment, issue the following command:

    $ sudo ostree admin pin 0
    0 here refers to the first deployment listed by rpm-ostree status

  2. Verify that you have pinned your deployment of choice by issuing:

    $ rpm-ostree status

  3. After the deployment is pinned, you can upgrade your system by using the instructions found here.

  4. When you have completed rebasing, reboot the system. The GRUB menu will now present you with both: the previous deployment major version entry (e.g.: "Fedora 39.YYYYMMDD.n") and the new deployment major version entry (e.g.: "Fedora 40.YYYYMMDD.n").

    At the moment it is not possible to name (pinned) deployments and their associated GRUB menu entries.

Want to help? Learn how to contribute to Fedora Docs ›