Moving to Luft from Fedora

Luft is built on Fedora, so moving over keeps most of what you’re used to: the same kernel, drivers and command-line tools. What changes is how the system is put together. Fedora installs and updates packages one by one; Luft is one sealed image that updates as a whole, with your apps and tools kept apart from it.

The quickest way

1. Download Meet Luft for Linux, make it executable and start it.
2. It checks your computer and copies Luft into a folder, without touching your partitions.
3. Choose Replace on Luft is ready. The computer restarts into the installer, which explains what stays and what changes. Nothing happens until you confirm.

A USB stick works just as well: choose Replace under Where Luft goes.

Replacing works with Fedora Workstation’s default layout, btrfs with separate root and home subvolumes, and with any system whose /home is its own partition. An encrypted /home can’t be replaced yet.

What stays

• Your home folder, untouched: documents, dotfiles, app settings, and Flatpak apps you installed for your own account.
• Every account, with the same user name, IDs and password.
• Network connections, Wi-Fi passwords included, plus the computer’s name and SSH host keys.
• Other drives that Fedora mounted at startup.
• Command-line tools you installed with dnf from Fedora’s repositories. They’re rebuilt in a Toolbox container called fedora when you first sign in; toolbox enter fedora takes you there.

The old system is kept as a btrfs subvolume called old-system until you remove it, so its files are still there if you need something. Removing the old system frees its space.

What’s different

On Fedora	On Luft
sudo dnf install a desktop app	Install it from Schelf, from Flathub or as an AppImage
sudo dnf install a command-line tool	Install it in Schelf, which puts it in a Toolbox container and makes its commands available everywhere, or use toolbox enter yourself
sudo dnf upgrade	Settings, under Updates. The new version installs at the next restart, and the one before stays to go back to
Packages from RPM Fusion and COPR	Luft’s image already plays every common video and audio format. Tools from other repositories can go in a Toolbox
GNOME	Kestrel, Luft’s own desktop. GNOME apps keep working

Packages from RPM Fusion, COPR and other third-party repositories don’t come over into the Toolbox, and neither do system-wide Flatpak apps. Reinstall those from Schelf.