dudley-os

Dudley is Josh's personal Project Bluefin variant: a bootc operating-system image that keeps Bluefin's desktop and userland contract while adding Dudley-specific defaults, tools, and release streams.

Upstream foundation: Dudley is built on Project Bluefin and its documentation, published with Project Bluefin Actions, and grounded in the Universal Blue and bootc ecosystems.

Stable is the general daily-driver stream.

sudo bootc switch ghcr.io/joshyorko/dudley-os:stable --enforce-container-sigpolicy

NVIDIA is the daily-driver stream for systems that need Project Bluefin's NVIDIA runtime.

sudo bootc switch ghcr.io/joshyorko/dudley-os:nvidia --enforce-container-sigpolicy

Dakota is experimental. It publishes matching dakota and dakota-nvidia images for the offline installer and still requires boot, update, and rollback qualification, plus a completed installer test, before daily-driver use.

sudo bootc switch ghcr.io/joshyorko/dudley-os:dakota --enforce-container-sigpolicy

Inspect the active deployment, stage an update, and reboot into it:

bootc status
sudo bootc upgrade
sudo systemctl reboot

If the new deployment is unsuitable, apply the previous deployment:

sudo bootc rollback --apply

See the operator runbook for stream switching, VM workflows, and image verification. Project Bluefin's documentation is the source for inherited upstream behavior.

Stable and NVIDIA add the Dudley product layer while retaining their Project Bluefin bases:

• shared DSB defaults and Dudley payload from dsb-common
• Dudley wallpapers, runtime Brewfiles, Flatpak declarations, VS Code payload, hooks, and recipes
• DX-style container, virtualization, and developer runtime additions
• Google Chrome installed into the image
• Dudley identity, metadata, validation, publishing, and local product glue

Dakota uses an allowlisted, distribution-neutral overlay. It includes both Podman and the real Docker Engine with Compose and Buildx, uses Ghostty instead of Ptyxis, and bakes native Google Chrome into the image from Google's signature-verified RPM payload without adding RPM or DNF to the final image. Run ujust dudley-dakota once to initialize only Dudley's curated Homebrew profile, install the Dudley IDE bundle (including VS Code Insiders), and remove the obsolete Podman-backed DOCKER_HOST redirect. Then run ujust dx-group and start a new login session to enable non-root Docker access. Dakota preserves the terminal and Zsh configuration supplied by its base/user setup. Run ujust dudley tools to install every formula and cask currently published by joshyorko/tools. The Fedora/RPM/DNF and libvirt host payload remain excluded.

Last updated: 2026-08-03

Stable and NVIDIA are assembled in this order:

1. Project Bluefin stream base
2. dsb-common/shared
3. dsb-common/dudley
4. local dudley-os assembly

Dakota uses the same ownership boundaries but applies only its allowlisted file overlay to the Project Bluefin Dakota base. Detailed change-placement and stream-input guidance lives in Maintenance and ownership.

Renovate pins image and action dependencies by digest. Project Bluefin Actions handles runner setup, preflight, image push, keyless signing, and GitHub provenance. Pushes to main publish Stable, NVIDIA, Dakota, and Dakota NVIDIA. CI SBOM publication is disabled.

Verify the published Stable image against this repository's GitHub Actions OIDC identity:

cosign verify \
  --certificate-identity-regexp "https://github.com/joshyorko/dudley-os/" \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer "https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com" \
  ghcr.io/joshyorko/dudley-os:stable

Run the repository checks before opening a pull request:

npm ci
just test
npm run test:cards
npm run cards:check

Build and exercise a local VM when an image-level change needs runtime proof:

just build
just build-qcow2
just run-vm-qcow2

Build the experimental Dakota container image locally:

just build-dakota

The matching offline installer is owned by joshyorko/dudley-iso and is built there with just iso-sd-boot dudley. Dakota still requires boot, install, update, and rollback qualification before daily-driver use.

Supporting documents:

• Operator runbook
• Maintenance and ownership
• Legacy migration record

• Project Bluefin provides Dudley's base images and inherited desktop experience.
• Project Bluefin documentation documents the upstream operating model.
• Project Bluefin Actions provides Dudley's shared build, publish, signing, and provenance actions.
• dsb-common owns reusable DSB and Dudley payload.
• Universal Blue is the broader image ecosystem.
• bootc provides the transactional image-based operating-system model.