The following has been prepared with help from an LLM. The content is basically mine; it only helped me with wording/phrasing etc. Sometimes, my RSI-like pains come up and I can’t be bothered to do otherwise. Thank you for your understanding:
I saw wireguard tools, isn’t that a kernel module?
The WireGuard implementation has two parts - the kernel module (built into the Linux kernel) and the userspace tools package. This sysext only provides the userspace tools (wg and wg-quick commands), not the kernel module itself.
Although this looks interesting, I have trouble understanding the pro’s and cons vs something like flatpak or containers.
Sysexts fill a critical gap in the Fedora Atomic ecosystem that neither Flatpak nor containers adequately address.
While traditional distros let you install packages natively, Fedora Atomic’s direct alternative to this (i.e. layering) comes with significant drawbacks - updates take longer, require reboots that disrupt workflow, and can sometimes block future updates entirely. This has been a persistent pain point for users.
Flatpaks technically support CLI tools but rarely package them, and containers are impractical for things like shells (imagine running fish or zsh in a container to use on your host). Similarly, applications like Steam or certain browsers sometimes need deeper system integration than Flatpak provides - which is why projects like Bazzite and SecureBlue install them (read: Steam and Chromium-derivative respectively) natively.
The CLI situation has been particularly frustrating, even for Universal Blue, which has driven much of Fedora Atomic’s ever-growing adoption. Their exploration of various solutions (eventually landing on Homebrew) demonstrates how challenging this problem has been.
Sysexts offer an elegant alternative - they provide system-wide integration without breaking immutability or requiring reboots. You intuitively know when to use a sysext versus Flatpak or containers - they’re not competing but complementing each other.
They aren’t a silver bullet (we’ll still need layering for kernel modules, etc.), but for many tools, sysexts provide the solution the immutable OS ecosystem has been waiting for.
OP, consider making up your mind regarding which one between GNOME and KDE Plasma you’d like to use (at least for the foreseeable future). Afterwards, consider answering the following so that we may do a better job at helping you:
Note that both Fedora and openSUSE may be considered beginner-friendly. Though, there does exist some considerable difference in design ethos between these and say something like Linux Mint; the former two give you a relatively bare system and assume (at least some) responsibility from its user while setting up the system. By contrast, Linux Mint offers considerable more hand-holding. This may of may not be to your liking.
Note, however, that Fedora and openSUSE are far from the worst offenders in this regard; within the spectrum, they definitely belong to the better half as we’ve even got distros that assume their users are willing to learn an otherwise useless programming language from scratch. (FYI: I love NixOS and I wouldn’t want it anyway else.)
Therefore, allow me to ask another question:
There’s also the fleet of distros by Universal Blue that some swear by. These operate with a different paradigm; most of its users would describe them as a better alternative for newbies (under certain circumstances). But I digress…
Finally, I have noted how you’ve pronounced your preference for a stable system. I do think I understand what you mean by stable, but just to be sure: