Documentation
FAQ
If you have a question that's not answered here, open a discussion on the margine-image repo.
▸Why immutable / atomic? What's wrong with apt?
Nothing's wrong with apt. The trade-off is different. A traditional distro lets you change anything and trusts you to keep track; an immutable distro trades some flexibility for reliable upgrades, easy rollback, and identical-everywhere behaviour. Margine's pitch is that most desktop users don't need the flexibility and do need the reliability.
▸What is Margine actually based on?
Bluefin DX (Universal Blue's developer-oriented Bluefin variant), which is itself based on Fedora Silverblue 44. We replace the stock kernel with a MOK-signed CachyOS kernel and add a curated set of Flatpaks, GNOME defaults, and validators on top.
▸Can I still use dnf / dnf install?
Not directly: /usr is read-only. But rpm-ostree install <pkg> does the same thing, just by rebuilding the OS image with the new package layered on. Use it when you really need an OS-level package (kernel module, system service). For applications, prefer Flatpak.
▸Is Margine Gaming a separate OS?
No. The separate Gaming image was retired on June 6, 2026. Margine now ships one OS image, and the gaming stack is an opt-in layer installed with ujust margine-gaming. ujust margine-gaming-remove rolls it back.
▸Can I change the CPU scheduler at runtime?
Yes, Margine ships six sched_ext BPF schedulers in the base image, switchable live from the Margine CPU Scheduler launcher in Activities or with ujust margine-scheduler lavd. What each one is for, how persistence works, and how to benchmark the difference: CPU schedulers.
▸Where are the ISOs?
Internet Archive. Each release has a dated identifier margine-live-iso-YYYYMMDD, with a Torrent magnet + direct HTTP mirrors + SHA256SUMS. Linked from the Install section on the home page.
▸How do I print?
You mostly don't have to set anything up. A network printer that speaks AirPrint, Mopria or IPP Everywhere, which is practically everything sold in the last decade, announces itself over mDNS and CUPS finds it on its own: it appears in every print dialog, Flatpak apps included, with nothing installed and nothing configured. The queue is created the moment you print and disappears when you are done. If a printer does not show up (very old models, USB-only quirks), add it once in Settings, then Printers, and it sticks.
If you see the same printer listed twice and one of the two accepts your document without ever printing it, that is a leftover from a change Margine shipped between 1 and 22 August 2026: run ujust margine-printers-repair. It removes the duplicate and leaves the working one.
▸How often do you ship updates?
The image is rebuilt on every push to main (typically several times a week), plus a weekly nightly cron. Each build only becomes :stable if it passes a QEMU smoke-boot. Users on the latest stable get a daily background update (via uupd, which stages it for the next reboot).
▸What happens to my data on a fresh install?
The installer (Anaconda) wipes the target disk by default. This is a clean install. /home, dotfiles, documents, browser profiles: backup them first. Anaconda also offers manual partitioning if you want to preserve an existing /home on a separate partition.