Fedora Silverblue is better than ChromeOS and Windows S

Written on 10 Mar 2025

When it comes to operating systems like ChromeOS and Windows S, the primary audience are those who are new to PCs. Perhaps people who have used a smartphone before, but aren’t quite used to what a complete PC operating system can offer.

For that kind of user, ChromeOS and Windows S aren’t very good options. Fedora Silverblue effectively has all the advantages (minus one important one that I’ll touch on later) while not compromising on being a fully featured operating system for those who need it.

First, let’s start with ChromeOS. For a long time, what you could do with ChromeOS has been quite limited. Somewhat recently, ChromeOS has added support for Android apps and running a GNU/Linux container (Debian being the default) to get better app support. Still, the container is not enabled by default and requires an additional step to enable.

To enable the GNU/Linux container, you’ll have to go through what might be one of the worst designed GUIs I’ve ever seen on a desktop operating system. Beyond skin deep, ChromeOS is not designed very intuitively. This is quite bad when you consider the fact that this is an operating system meant for people who are new to computers.

I think the elephant in the room though for ChromeOS is the 5 year artificial cap that you have on operating system updates for your device. This just either creates e-waste after a perfectly fine computer no longer receives security updates or means that people are running outdated and potentially insecure software on their device. People are keeping their devices for longer and longer and computers are becoming obsolete at a slower pace than ever, so such a cap is just a move to force planned obsolescence on people.

Moving on to Windows S, I think a problem with it is the fact that while the operating system itself isn’t as fully featured as Windows (or even Fedora Silverblue) it does contain the full Windows interface. Windows GUI design is better in many aspects than the horrendous slop of ChromeOS, but is still nowhere near as intuitive and easy to use as GNOME. New users will likely be overwhelmed with the amount of icons and buttons present at first startup. Windows also has the problem of containing many legacy apps that haven’t seen an update

Another problem with Windows S is the Microsoft Store, which is simply put in an absolutely horrendous state. Few apps that you’d actually want to use are located there, and most of the store seems to be taken up by some of the lowest quality applications imaginable.

While Windows hasn’t done the same artificial time limit on updates as ChromeOS has, Microsoft has been willing to discontinue official hardware support for certain hardware after some time has passed. Microsoft has also been pretty clear that even if you can find a bypass for installing Windows on unsupported hardware, that they might compile Windows in such a way that might prevent you from using it on your hardware in the future. Somewhat recently, Microsoft has shown this by requiring the CPU to support the SSE4.2 instruction set preventing older but still fairly capable computers from running the newest versions of Microsoft’s operating system.

I think the biggest problem that Windows S has though is the fact that if you want to install an application outside of the Microsoft store, you have to switch out of S mode and forfeit all the advantages it provides, and you can’t switch back.

Meanwhile, Fedora Silverblue has much of the same advantages as ChromeOS and Windows S with much fewer drawbacks. Fedora Silverblue, like those operating systems is atomic. Using a read-only file system for the system makes it effectively idiot proof and more secure than a traditional operating system. It is the entire reason why ChromeOS is much harder to break than a traditional GNU/Linux or Windows based operating system, and is also why you can trust just about anyone to use Fedora Silverblue without breaking it. Furthermore, Fedora Silverblue makes snapshots after updates so in the rare case that something does break, you can easily roll back.

Fedora Silverblue also comes with the GNOME desktop environment which is simply the easiest and most intuitive graphical user interface on the desktop, especially for those who have never used a PC before. From my experience teaching people how to use a computer they tend to struggle much more with Windows or macOS than they do with Fedora/GNOME. GNOME is very simple to use by default which is perfect for a new computer user, but can be powerful when needed with extensions.

What Fedora Silverblue doesn’t have is any real artifical restrictions on what hardware you can run it on. You could run it on an old system with an Athlon 64 X2 CPU, or a modern system with a Ryzen CPU. You can expect upgrades to the operating system to support your PC beyond it’s obsolescence.

Fedora Silverblue also has the flathub repository built in and GNOME Software (a software store and update manager) preinstalled. Fedora Silverblue has automatic updates configured out of the gate, so you won’t even have to manually do anything until a new version of Fedora is released. Flathub contains applications you’d probably want to actually use. It even contains Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, if you prefer using those (slop) browsers. You’ve even got container support enabled right out of the box if you want to install an app not on flathub but available in the system repositories. Even if you want to install a system app and not use containers, you can do so using rpm-ostree than rebooting and you’ll keep all the advantages that come with an atomic operating system without having to switch to a more traditional operating system.

So, you’ve got all the advantages of an atomic system with Fedora Silverblue but you might be wondering about it’s disadvantages. First a more minor disadvantage is when you install system updates and system apps, you will have to reboot as the operating system being read-only and image based means any changes you make to the system will only become active after a reboot. This however, is inherent to all atomic operating systems and is the same way with ChromeOS too.

Earlier I said there was a major disadvantage to Fedora Silverblue when compared to ChromeOS and Windows S, and here it is: Fedora Silverblue doesn’t come preinstalled on very many devices. It’s an utter shame it doesn’t, because so many people that would benefit from a fully featured yet easier operating system won’t even know of it’s existence let alone have the ability to use it. I think this is where (to some degree) you can be the change you want to see. I am someone that people (in real life) typically come to for tech advice, so I am in the position that I can install Fedora Silverblue on their computer for them. I’ve also sold some of my used/refurbished devices with Fedora preinstalled on them.

So in short, Fedora Silverblue does pretty much everything that ChromeOS and Windows S does better and it can do more than those operating systems but it sadly doesn’t come preinstalled on very many computers. Fedora Silverblue, for the target audience of people who are new to computers, whether they be 8 or 80 years old could benefit greatly from using it over ChromeOS or Windows S.