FAQ – Nobara Linux | The Nobara Project
nobaraproject.org

From here:

  1. Will there ever be other Desktop Environment versions? – No. The ‘Official’ modified GNOME release layout was designed for myself and my father out of personal preference. GNOME and KDE are additionally shipped to appease most major users, and all 3 are shipped because they support VRR — variable refresh rate (aka freesync) on wayland, which is a long term goal for gaming on linux. Other DEs at this time do not support VRR.

  2. Will you create a minimal install disk so we can install our own DE? – No. Our branding changes affect packages that other DEs pull in or require, and we will not be changing those packages to accommodate for DEs we don’t ship as ISOs. Additionally there are too many individual DE quirks/bugs/differences between them and we cannot support debugging all of them.

  3. Will you create a network install? – No. There are no plans to create a minimal and/or network install.

  4. Is there a torrent available for download? – No. We currently update the ISO way too often (sometimes multiple times in the same week) for a long-term torrent to be available.

  5. I heard Nobara breaks SELinux, is this true? – No. We have completely swapped SELinux in favor of AppArmor (this is what Ubuntu and OpenSUSE use). We find AppArmor to be more user friendly, less intrusive, and easier to manage and write policies for. You will still see some SELinux packages installed which are required to keep Fedora compatibility and not break package dependencies, but SELinux is otherwise disabled.

  6. Is Nobara compatible with SecureBoot? – No. Nobara ships with a kernel that has been custom patched and is built and hosted on COPR. Packages hosted on COPR repositories have no simple way of signing the kernel after it’s been built. Additionally The boot shim has to be signed by Microsoft, whom have several stipulations that need to be met including the fee: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/hardware-dev-center/updated-uefi-signing-requirements/ba-p/1062916. We are a hobby distribution that uses a custom kernel. We have no plans what so ever to work towards meeting the shim signing requirements, let alone any additional custom kernel requirements.

  7. Can I upgrade from Fedora to Nobara using the Nobara repositories? – NO. This is a big large huge NO. The Nobara install ISOs have a ton of packages that get installed which are specific to Nobara, and not installed on Fedora on fresh install. When you try to upgrade from Fedora to Nobara by just using the Nobara repos none of those extra packages get installed. Additionally Nobara changes a lot of Fedora’s base packages and branding. Things WILL break. Fedora installations updated to Nobara using the Nobara repos are -NOT- supported. A clean installation is required.

  8. I imagine normal updates are fine, but is there anything special going on with distro upgrades? When fedora 37 comes out will nobara 37 be available as well or is it delayed? – Delayed. In general I personally waited about 2 weeks after Fedora releases for any release bugs to be ironed out. Add that to the time it will take to convert Nobara packages to version 37 and you can expect about a month delay.

  9. Is the kernel kept more up to date than fedoras kernel? Linux 5.19 improves performance greatly on my system, so will that be available when it becomes stable? – We use Fedora’s exact kernel version with our patches added to it, and release them usually as they come out or a few days later at the latest

  10. Just how modified is Nobara aside from what I can see? A recent glibc update broke eac on many games, does gloriouseggroll have the capacity to delay this should it come to fedora? (Same with other things that may introduce new bugs/breakage). Essentially how close to base fedora is it and how much control does gloriouseggroll have? – Heavily. All of the packages we modify can be see in the fedora.repo package exclude list. We ship our own version of the fedora-repos package with a large exclude list of every package that both we and fedora provide so that they do not conflict. This allows us to keep our own packages version controlled while also letting Fedora’s packages automatically update as needed. If dependency discrepancies come up they are usually resolved within a day or two and/or documented in the Nobara docs section of the website -if- they need user intervention.

  11. this project is quite new, is it going anywhere new? Is there anything to say it won’t just up stop development? Is it something that is recommendable to daily drive? (I am quite technical, and can troubleshoot my issues). – As long as I am alive and using linux this project will continue. It started because I needed something both myself and my father could easily use from clean install without time consuming troubleshooting or extra package and repo installation. As stated in the project goal — while some of us -do- have the technical adept to resolve issues, sometimes we just don’t have the time. Part of the goal is to keep those issues to a minimum.