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Arch Silverblue

Arch Silverblue

Atomic updates. Automatic rollback. Still your fully writable Arch.
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Terminal window
silverblue-update            # snapshot the root, upgrade it, validate, boot it next
                             #   → reboot → auto-marked good, or auto-rolled-back on failure
silverblue-update --rollback # boot the previous snapshot on next reboot
silverblue-update --dry-run  # show the plan without changing anything

Why Arch Silverblue

Section titled “Why Arch Silverblue”

Atomic by snapshot

Every update builds a brand-new root in a Btrfs copy-on-write snapshot. The running system is never touched mid-update, and a failed upgrade leaves no partial state behind — the half-built snapshot is simply discarded.

Rolls back by itself

Three independent safety nets: a failed post-boot health check triggers an OnFailure rollback, a hung userspace is reset by a hardware watchdog, and an unbootable kernel is demoted by systemd-boot boot counting.

Fully mutable

Unlike Fedora Silverblue, there is no read-only /usr, no overlayfs, no immutable root. It stays plain, writable Arch — atomicity comes purely from snapshots, not from locking you out of your own system.

Pure pacman, stock Arch

No custom package format, no pacman wrapper, no patched bootloader, no signing scheme. The update is a normal pacman -Syu — it just runs inside the snapshot instead of your live root.

systemd-boot and GRUB

Both bootloaders are supported and detected at runtime. systemd-boot is the primary, CI-validated path; GRUB is fully implemented and covered by unit tests.

Derivable and tested

Fork it into your own branded distro by editing one file (config/distro.conf) and rebuilding. Everything is shellcheck-clean, unit tested with bats, and integration tested end-to-end in QEMU.

How an update works

Section titled “How an update works”

  1. Snapshot. btrfs subvolume snapshot clones the running root — instant, copy-on-write, and the live system is never modified.

  2. Upgrade in the clone. arch-chroot into the snapshot and run pacman -Syu. Any failure discards the snapshot; no partial state is left.

  3. Validate. Require a kernel and initramfs in the new /boot, and a clean systemd-analyze verify inside the new root.

  4. Register a boot entry. A new bootloader entry for the snapshot — with a boot-counting suffix on systemd-boot, or a regenerated menu on GRUB.

  5. Boot it once. The new root becomes the next boot only; the permanent default is unchanged until it proves itself.

  6. Keep the fallback. The previous root stays registered; at most three snapshots are kept, pruned in lockstep with their kernels and entries.

  7. Bless or roll back. After reboot, a health check either promotes the new root to permanent default — or the system falls back to the previous root, automatically.

Read the full flow, the on-disk layout, and the rollback-trigger table in Update & Rollback Flow.

Built on Arch Silverblue

Section titled “Built on Arch Silverblue”

Arch Silverblue is designed to be forked into your own atomic distro by editing a single file and rebuilding — see Derive Your Own Distro.

SilverDeckA gaming-console distribution that boots straight into a controller-first, fullscreen console UI — no desktop. Built on Arch Silverblue's atomic update engine, SilverDeck is the reference implementation of how to fork Arch Silverblue.