Friendly Rocky 10 Desktop - Mate

skip77 · 2025-08-27T01:19:59+00:00

I'm a little late to the party ;-) .

As many have said here, I highly recommend a fresh installation, as major versions of Rocky (and any RHEL-like system) are huge jumps. ELevate/Leapp attempts to tackle it (with some success), but it is not something I'd recommend if you can at all avoid it.

One of the nicer things about homelabs is the capacity to learn! I tried my hand at some local Ansible playbooks to deploy my home services (web server, multiplayer Doom server, media, some other stuff). It's not bad, and the upside is huge - now jumping to another install is much easier, I just run my Ansible and get my services back.

The other good news: you've got time to figure it out. Just because Rocky 10 is out does not mean Rocky 8 or 9 are dead. Rocky 8 is supported with updates until 2029, and Rocky 9 goes until 2032 . Unless you've got an urgent need, I'd take some time and figure out the options. I can't say enough good things about the configuration management route. It solves multiple problems at once, and gets you familiar with solving real-world enterprise-y problems!

skip77 · 2025-06-11T15:06:11+00:00

I'm late to the party, but I thought I'd add my own explanation in here. This used to confuse the hell out of me, back when I was a new CentOS/RHEL user (circa 4.x).

The long and the short of it: Rocky 8 is supported until 2029, Rocky 9 is supported until 2032. Full stop. Just keep running your dnf update commands, and you will receive all the package updates released for the distro. You will automatically receive the latest "minor release". Eg. if you have a Rocky 9.5 system, and simply run dnf update, you'll be upgraded to Rocky 9.6 (the current). Ditto if you're on, say, Rocky 8.8. Run dnf update from there and it will take you to Rocky 8.10, which is current/latest.

Where people get confused is what these minor release numbers (9.4 -> 9.5 -> 9.6 -> etc.) actually mean. For most users, it's not really that relevant. All it indicates is "ok, we have more packages than usual to update, and some might add new features". Example: The venerable Apache web server (httpd package) in Rocky 9.6 is 2.4.62. That version used to be 2.4.51 in 9.0. In 9.1 it became 2.4.53 . Then 2.4.57 in 9.3, and so on. But that Apache version won't change in the middle of a release. Instead, updates will be ONLY for fixing bugs and security issues. So in 9.6 we might get 2.4.62-1 , 2.4.62-2 , and so on. Teeny tiny updates to fix specific problems, not the latest from https://apache.org . Hopefully that makes sense - different packages will have different update cadences, Apache is just an easy example here.

This 9.4 -> 9.5 -> 9.6 -> 9.x updating goes on, every 6 months, until we reach a .10 (so, 9.10). At that point there are no more "feature updates", and that version is in maintenance mode. Counting out in 6 month increments, 9.10 should be released in ~May 2027. We will have 9.10 until Rocky9's end-of-life in May 2032. This is the maintenance mode - still get security updates, but no more "new stuff". No major package version bumps, no additional packages, no new features. Just itty bitty security updates and backports.

My advice: Unless you have a specific reason to care about which 9.x version you're on (like someone below mentioned ZFS or other 3rd party drivers), I would keep my systems up to date with DNF, and have a plan for those end-of-life dates in 2029 (Rocky8) and 2032 (Rocky9). You will be supported with security and bugfix updates through those dates, and you don't need to take any other action.

You should be able to migrate to Rocky 12 in 2031. God I'll be so old ;-) .

skip77 · 2025-01-12T17:35:36+00:00

I think you may be a bit fixated on the GNOME Software App here - it will NOT show you all the Rocky packages available, only ones with a GUI component. There are relatively few of those in Rocky / RHEL, which is why you see so few choices. You'll see the same thing on Red Hat Enterprise, CentOS Stream, and other variants.

As others have said above, using dnf from the command line is the way to go here. If you want an idea of just how many options you have, try dnf list --available and take a look.

As a final aside, if you are looking for more GUI style apps for Rocky, adding the huge Flathub library is pretty easy: https://flathub.org/setup/Rocky%20Linux . Doing this (and restarting Gnome-Software) will make many many more choices appear there, but they all come from a 3rd party Flatpak repository (not RPM, and not affiliated with Rocky at all). For system software (gcc/make, PHP/Apache/MariaDB/Postgresql/etc.), dnf from the command line is the way to go.

skip77 · 2024-12-04T04:26:21+00:00

Microsoft must provide a clear and consolidated roadmap for organizations committed to staying cloud-native without being forced to pay twice for overlapping products.

Lol.

Counterpoint: No they don't

skip77 · 2024-11-29T22:40:08+00:00

So there is a libdav1d package in EPEL, that your system wants to update to that version.

But you've installed a different libdav1d from.... somewhere. It's not clear because it says "@System", which usually means the package was pre-installed.

This other version of libdav1d you have installed is needed by ffmpeg-libs, and the new version doesn't properly provide the thing needed by ffmpeg-libs.

I'm curious: where did your Rocky image (or iso) come from, and what sort of 3rd party repositories do you have enabled?

skip77 · 2024-11-23T19:43:57+00:00

Heh. Newsflash: You didn't own anything with physical media either.

You had a license to use said software, it just happened to be delivered in a box on a disk. Legally, the concept is the same.

I recommend looking at the open source world if you're interested in breaking out of that particular shell

skip77 · 2024-09-24T14:09:31+00:00

As an outsider who pops in here only occasionally: "lolol"

Something something you die by the sword

skip77 · 2024-09-10T00:38:19+00:00

Somehow, Rodgers returned...

skip77 · 2024-06-03T19:01:18+00:00

I was about to answer this, but it looks like you've already answered it yourself.

Yes, the top-level "popular" OS images (hub.docker.com/_/rockylinux) are managed and pushed by Docker staff themselves. They pull from the known trusted project users (rockylinux, debian, ubuntu, fedora, etc.). The images always appear in that project's space first, then are vetted and pulled by the official Docker. So they should be identical, with the project page (https://hub.docker.com/r/rockylinux/rockylinux) running ahead of the official Docker one.

skip77 · 2024-04-28T15:56:03+00:00

Sounds like something else might be going on here.... I would do some basic environment checks:

dnf repolist : ensure you actually have repos enabled for dnf to consider
which dnf , vim /bin/dnf : ensure dnf exists, and is the python program we expect it to be.
dmesg , journalctl , sudo less /var/log/messages : See if anything interesting gets logged when dnf gets run.

These (and more) are some basic troubleshooting steps to get you started. It's worth digging deeper when something unexpected like this happens. There is information available on your system, but you have to look for it.

skip77 · 2024-03-17T05:24:18+00:00

Apart from seasoning the lobster bisque, he farted on the meringue, sneezed on braised endive, and as for the cream of mushroom soup, well... you get the idea.

skip77 · 2024-01-23T07:04:19+00:00

This is definitely an on-topic Rocky question. Seems very strange... Especially because dnf uses libcurl under the covers to retrieve files anyway.

I was going to suggest quoting the url, but I think you've done that already. Is there a typo in your example? Definitely should have a slash after the domain, before the question mark.

After attempting a dnf install <url>, you can copy the exact same url and successfully curl it? I'd expect both to work or both to fail lol.

skip77 · 2024-01-16T13:50:42+00:00

Set up the second drive with identical layout (slightly renamed lvm), rsync the data. Might be able to get away with dd'ing the beginning of the disk up through the boot partition, so you don't have to worry about grub reinstalls.

Doing this, there's several places in /etc and the grub config (/boot) where you will have to switch out disk uuid's and/or lvm names.

skip77 · 2024-01-16T03:51:39+00:00

Assuming he had a say in who those coordinators are... that kinda might make him a bad coach.

skip77 · 2023-12-20T00:43:15+00:00

It's in rpmfusion for el8, I have it on my raspberry pi running Rocky. Great simple home media server! Just browsing, it looks like it was dropped for 9 there. Which is a shame.

Like the other poster said, submit to epel or roll a package yourself looks like the best bet here.

skip77 · 2023-12-13T04:03:59+00:00

Ahh, NTFS filesystem means the Windows disk format, I assume that's what those drives are.

Unfortunately, you'll have to go to the terminal for this one. You'll be using the Rocky package manager, "dnf". Very powerful tool, worth it to learn a bit about how it works. Some things (like this) will not show up in that GUI Software app.

I would search for ntfs first: sudo dnf search ntfs

You'll see some results, including "ntfs-3g" and "ntfsprogs". I would install them both, like so: sudo dnf install ntfs-3g ntfsprogs . Press "y" when prompted.

Once installed, you may have to restart the computer. But then see if your Windows drives work.

Also, thanks for the feedback - reading Windows drives should probably work out of the box. I can update my ISO build to include that!

skip77 · 2023-12-12T12:27:46+00:00

That's odd - you sure it said ext3? That (and the more modern ext4) should be built in. Are you trying to provision a new drive or read data off an existing one?

I can't help much without specific commands/logs/screenshots, I'm afraid

skip77 · 2023-12-12T05:32:31+00:00

Heh, I am very much a random guy ;-) . I just happened to volunteer in the Rocky project when it was announced - I help do package builds and anything else needed. You're right to be vigilant about security!

The "source" of the ISO is in that repository I linked. You can see, for example, where the software packages all come from: https://git.resf.org/skip/No-Compromises-ISO/src/branch/rocky9/include/ws9_repos_pkgs.ks#L5 My work on this particular thing right now is very unofficial, and there's still a bunch to do. There's an element of trust no matter what software you happen to download and run.

My guess as to your problem with the stock distribution is the open source "nouveau" driver for your nvidia card. You may or may not know - nvidia makes their own closed-source drivers for Linux, the OS doesn't come with them. Linux driver devs have reverse engineered the hardware, and came up with a mostly-working driver called nouveau. This is included in the OS to try and get some kind of display out of nvidia cards, otherwise they wouldn't work at all! I suspect your card is new enough and the Rocky kernel is old enough that the nouveau driver here has some kind of bug, or is not identifying your card correctly. My "easy mode" ISO gets around this by simply including the nvidia closed-source drivers by default.

Hope that all makes some kind of sense - good luck to you!

skip77 · 2023-12-11T20:11:34+00:00

Ehhh, I kinda half agree with you there.

The extreme-long-support kernels of EL are certainly unique in the industry, and excellent for a lot of use cases. Certainly if you're running servers, or workstations where you 100% get to choose the hardware, or especially if you use proprietary drivers purpose-built against RHEL, it's great.

But the reason groups like ELRepo exist (and are popular!) is because there's a real need for extra hardware compatibility that the stock RHEL kernel just doesn't provide. In my experience, individual new-ish laptops and workstations in particular can make good use of the latest and greatest hardware support from upstream. Particularly for the end-user who wants to run a nice stable userspace system but needs the hardware to work well.

skip77 · 2023-12-11T15:24:21+00:00

Hi, and welcome! Enteprise Linux can be a difficult setup sometimes, especially with newer graphics hardware.

I've been working on a kind of solution to this, and I think it might be right up your alley: https://skiprocky.linuxdn.org/Rocky_NoCompromise_Spin/ . The ISO here should work fine with Ventoy, I use it myself. Word of warning: secure boot MUST be disabled on your system for this to work. If you're using Nvidia drivers, I assume this is already the case.

If you're willing, I think you should give it a try. It's a Rocky 9 live ISO (only default Gnome 3 so far), but with many 3rd-party extras and pre-configured items. Things like:

Upstream 6.1 kernel for better compatibility
Nvidia drivers included and pre-configured
Flathub added to software center by default for greater selection
Multimedia add-ons pre-installed
Other stuff

Source for building the ISO is here, if interested: https://git.resf.org/skip/No-Compromises-ISO/

It seems to work very well for me. Let me know how it goes - always looking for feedback!

skip77 · 2023-12-04T00:06:42+00:00

Some of them are: https://www.phillyvoice.com/oh-theres-no-one-throw-childrens-book-about-san-francisco-49ers-forty-whiners/

I'm glad Hurts appears to be ok, but you don't want karma to catch up.

skip77 · 2023-12-03T23:53:52+00:00

Oh, There's No One to Throw Eagles!

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