I was under the impression that using os-tree should be totally avoided for anything other than necessary system programs

Interaction with ostree directly shouldn't occur that often; with sudo ostree admin pin *number* (and its -u option) probably being the commands your average Joe should interact with. You probably meant rpm-ostree.

and all other software should be installed with flatpaks or containers.

It's indeed true that initially Fedora intended flatpaks should be preferred. If the software isn't available there, then Toolbx(/Distrobox) is used to access it through a container. And if all else fails, then it's layered through the rpm-ostree command.

I now understand that using os-tree for some programs is inevitable, and I should embrace it, though still catiously to maintain as clean of an OS as possible for maximum longevity.

You're getting the drill! Though, I wonder why you weren't able to rebase to uBlue and had to resort to installing the Nvidia drivers through RPM Fusion instead. It's fine as long as it works, but I imagine that some issues might arise eventually. So consider sharing the steps you took so that the community might help out; perhaps even over at uBlue Discord. You could also just share it here if you will.

I want to avoid os-tree if I can, since that seems to defeat the purpose.

How so?

Great piece of information.

Thank you for your kind words 😊!

at least it (without any experience) feels like that I’ll spend more time setting it up and tinkering with it than actually recovering from a rare cases where things just break

That might be the case depending on your proficiency and to what degree the 'immutable' distro allows you to configure your distro declarative. On e.g. NixOS you can define (most of) your system declarative. As such, reinstalling your entire setup is done through some config files. You can even push this further with the (in)famous Impermanence module that has been popularized by the popular Erase your darlings blog-post, in which your system is wiped every time you shut off the machine and rebuild (basically from scratch) every time you boot into it.

Potentially I might had an option to move LVM partition on the disk to grow boot partition, but that would’ve required shrinking filesystem first (which isn’t trivial on a LVM PV)

I haven't worked with LVM yet. Defaulting to Btrfs (as Fedora -amongst others- does) has so far provided me a reliable experience, even though I'm aware that I'm missing out on performance. Hopefully, Bcachefs will prove to be a vast improvement over Btrfs in a relatively short time-span. You've pointed out to have installed Linux Mint with ZFS. Would I be correct to assume that you've been hurt by Btrfs in its infancy and choose to not rely on it since? Or is it related to lacking proper support for RAID 5/6? Or perhaps something else? Please feel free to inform me as I don't feel confident on this topic!

and the experience ubuntu has lately provided I just took the longer route and installed mint with zfs.

Understandable. Though, I can't stop myself from being very interested in their upcoming Ubuntu Core Desktop. But I imagine you couldn't care less 😜.

I somehow forgot that Fedora also had Firefox in their flatpak repos.

I got a Nitrokey for Heads

You know what's good, fam.

but for some reason it never arrived

That's messed up, though.

Apart from having all the nice KDE integration

I'm a sucker for GNOME :P , but I'll keep it in mind.

things like Keepass integration

The flatpak does allow integration, but isn't built-in unfortunately; so one has to fiddle a bit themselves to set it up.

Fido2 keys

I should rely more on those. Do you have any recommendations? I've been hearing good things about Nitropad and Yubico, but I honestly don't know if they're actually good and how they would fare amongst eachother.

drag and drop

Overrated anyways /s :P .

Also afaik the Fedora Firefox has a good SELinux profile

It's probably better configured with the native package than the flatpak one indeed. I wonder if this will change as Fedora is interested to ship Firefox as a flatpak by default on Silverblue (and variants).

it runs damn fast. I did a speed test and it was best

I haven't had the best internet speeds since I've been relying on free VPN. But that's on me :P .

Damn good find! Not expensive, about double the price I paid but still very reasonable.

Oh lol, that's a considerable difference. Though I suppose the Intel CPUs on your device probably aren't 12th gen?

they have a Tux bootsplash logo in their Bios??

Who offers that :P ? Did I somehow miss that?

And the BIOS really is great, I will miss that on Coreboot I guess. But all the necessary features should be there.

coreboot FTW!

Thanks for taking the time to take a proper look at the link!

I linked the source but sure, I’ll link it more for you.

I am aware, but the same source seemingly contradicted your point^[1]^ regarding sub-sandboxing.

Wow, thanks a lot for the work you've put into this! It might take some time for me to go through this, but I'll definitely take a look and perhaps I'll return on this at a later point. Perhaps with this I will finally be able to install my Chromium-based browsers as a flatpak and don't feel bad about it.

Once again, your engagement has been much appreciated! So please feel free to let me know if I can buy you a coffee or something 😊! Unfortunately, statements like "Thank you so much!" don't quite capture the sheer magnitude of gratitude I feel towards you right now. For whatever it's worth; I salute you, good human.

1. "It lets Chromium use flatpak sub-sandboxes" that you expressed in this comment.

Thanks, true!

😉

The people from Novacustom are very nice.

Agreed. They definitely are.

I am thankful that zypak exists so that Chromium-based browsers and Electron apps don't have to explicitly flag --no-sandbox to continue functioning. However, it doesn't undermine the fact that native Chromium's sandbox is more powerful than Flatpak's sandbox. As such, if one desires security, then one should gravitate towards the native installed one.

It lets Chromium use flatpak sub-sandboxes

Are you sure that's the case?

It's unfortunate to hear that; with the chassis being my biggest concern as I don't think you would be able to find suitable replacement for that. As for the keyboard, perhaps an affordable and portable external keyboard might help you with that.