Not that many actually! (And a lot more than one might believe?)
It’s said that you need around 100-150 flowers for one gram of spice.
But one gram is much more than one might expect. A few strands per dish are enough for some dishes.
But the cool thing about this project is that saffron is just there! It grows passively in the shadow of others, like my berries, doesn’t need much nutrients, and blooms when everything else is already dead.
I also have a few ones in my houseplants pots, e.g. in my citrus tree.
I bought them at my local garden center here in Germany, but you can get them easily online (especially Amazon) too.
Just make sure they are labeled specifically as saffron crocus (Crocus sativus) and not ornamental crocus.
From what I’ve heard, they are multiplying themselves passively and without much needed care, so I would recommend you to check out your local community of hobby gardeners first, maybe they will share some of theirs ;)
It is recommended to plant them at around August to October. I planted them a bit too late probably, maybe that’s why almost no others have bloomed yet.
I believe that’s due to package drift.
Every system starts with the same packages, but due to upgrading or adding/ removing stuff, you slowly drift away from the starting point, which makes it truly “your own”. But this also introduces bugs that aren’t reproducible.
I especially noticed it with KDE. Every time I installed a new distro or configuration, it worked fine, but after a few months, the bugs and crashes got more and more.
Since I installed Fedora Atomic (the “immutable” variant, e.g. Silverblue), everything just works. It’s extremely comfortable and just exists, so I can run my apps. When you upgrade the system, you don’t just download one package and install it, you apply it to the whole OS and then basically have the same install as all the thousands of other users out there, which makes it reproducible.
Maybe that’s something for you? You can check out Aurora, Bazzite or uBlue in general.
I would’ve also provided an image of the spores, but I don’t currently have access to a microscope of sufficient magnification to image them.
That’s really great! I also have a (pretty good) microscope at home, with one of its’ purposes being exactly that. But I believe 99% of people out here, myself included, probably couldn’t discern the spores microscopically anyway, so that being missing won’t matter much or at all.
Do you have any recommendations, for future reference, for other bits of information not mentioned that would aid in identification?
Maybe you could optimise the spore print picture.
I personally like to take the prints on aluminium foil, because
For identification, when I need someone’s else opinion, I like to take them thrice.
1x aluminium foil (to see the color)
1x black paper (if whiteish)
1x white paper (if darkish)
1x glass (microscopy slide, mirror, etc.)
I sometimes find the colors on pictures a bit misleading, because most people take them with their phone, which like to manipulate the picture (weird color corrections, sharpening, AI, etc.) and are too dark.
Optimally, take them somewhere under a light with normed values (e.g. some LEDs or fluorescent lights give off “office light” or “daylight”), where the white balance can easily be adjusted.
Or, you can add some objects with known colours for reference, e.g. something like those take-things moviemakers use, certain LEGO bricks, and so on.
But nothing I said is meant as criticism. Not at all. Your post was great! Take it as inspiration, maybe it will help someone :)
Very great report! We need more of those similar to that!
I’m sorry to disappoint you, but even though they look similar to P. cyanescens, they aren’t.
Cyans have white-ish stems, dark gills, a purple-black spore print and bruise blue almost instantly when touching them.
Good luck next time! :)
The problem with package based distros (everything non-immutable) is, that a distro is very complex.
Even if you manage to “swap out” the package repositories, you usually still have a lot of remaining stuff in the background and many things tweaked by the maintainers. It’s a huge mess.
In theory, you could absolutely do that, but to be honest, why bother? You already always should have a backup of all your personal data, so why not reinstall it cleanly?
Speaking of image based distros (“immutable”), the cool thing about most is that that you can easily swap out the underlying OS with just one command.
For example, you can always rebase from Fedora Silverblue to Kinoite to Bazzite to something with Hyprland and then back to vanilla Silverblue, without any traces.
So, for example, if the guy who makes your custom image on Github stops maintaining it, you can simply switch to something else in just seconds.
Maybe this is something relevant for you :)
Yeah, +1 from my side for Fedora Atomic, especially uBlue.
For this use case, I can absolutely recommend using Aurora (KDE) or Bluefin (Gnome), especially with the gts
branch.
uBlue offers different branches, namely:
latest
: in sync with the current Fedora repos, all the newest stuff official Fedora also ships, including kernelstable
this is the default by now. You have to wait two weeks more for feature and kernel updates, but they are better tested. If something would have broken, others would have noticed and already fixed it.gts
: this one is what I recommend for this use case. With that, you’ll get the last release.At the moment, F41 hit Bazzite/ Aurora latest
already three weeks ago when it landed, on stable
, I got it a few days ago, and on gts
, you have to wait another 5 months until F42 is released, and then you’ll update to F41.
gts
is perfect for those who don’t need the very latest features, and want something more chill with fewer surprises.
And the other benefits of uBlue/ Atomic also apply of course, like better hardware enablement, QoL tweaks, automatic staged updates, and much more.
9.5/10, can absolutely recommend!
I recommend you Aurora. It is basically Bazzite, which you already suggested, but without gaming stuff.
Why do I recommend you that?
GTS
variant around, which uses the last big release of Fedora, which is still kept up to date maintenance wise.
So, you are always half a year behind in terms of new features, but it has been tested for half a year more than regular Fedora or the other images.
When you choose the more conservative GTS variant, you’ll get way fewer surprises.After installation, you can hop into the terminal and use the ujust rebase-helper
, where you can select which image variant you want to have
latest
: synchronous with Fedorastable
(default): features are two weeks behindgts
: already said, last release, but still secure and more polished.I think it is the perfect balance for you between “Debian is too stale” and “Fedora and many other distros change too often”.
Fedora Atomic, especially Bluefin, Bazzite and Aurora.
Nearly unbreakable, very reliable and stable in everyday use, needs no maintenance (updates itself, etc.) and more!
I chose to continue with my current setup until I get the time and motivation to upgrade.
I will build a new server from scratch. For that, I bought an used mainboard for a few bucks, which has 6 SATA slots.
Instead of using a caliper, like the others have said, you can measure the distance with your printer if you don’t have such a tool.
Just go into the “Move axis”-mode, and move your nozzle from the home position to the top layer.
Let’s say your coordinates are now X0, Y0 and Z49,3.
You can then move the object in your slicer by just changing your Z axis to -49,3.
Just make sure you:
You won’t need any additional driver, since, as you already said, it is already included in the kernel.
However, as owner of a RX6600, I can tell you that the GPU will be quite loud sometimes. I can recommend you to check out LACT
, which let’s you define fan curves, which makes it A LOT less noisy.
Your case sounds like a perfect fit for Bazzite or Aurora.
ujust
command away, many complex things are made easier with those commandsIt’s a mastodon post where “Fedora” is typed as a hashtag, and then it is followed by “Linux 41…”. The title should say “Fedora Linux 41 will be released on October 29”
Bazzite Bazzite Bazzite!
I was at the same point a while ago.
Everything I touch breaks, and I also had enough of my system breaking because updating with an unstable power grid is like playing russian roulette.
I turned to Fedora Silverblue first, then rebased to uBlue. Aurora first, and then Bazzite. Silverblue feels exactly as the regular variant, Aurora is great for desktop use, and for my gaming PC, Bazzite is fucking great. It just works.
It comes with a lot of tweaks and super many small additions that just make your life easier, especially for gaming.
Updates just happen in the background when there’s nothing better to do and get applied to the next boot image. And in case something doesn’t work as expected, you can always go back in time.
You can also customise it almost/ just as much as regular distros, but it isn’t quite as easy if you want to customise A LOT (e.g. using TWMs).
I didn’t notice huge performance boosts tho, it just comes with more tools ootb, for example to make your GPU more silent when idle.
As said, Bazzite is based on Fedora, so you always get new great modern stuff, at the same time as the other Fedora users do.
Can 100% recommend.
The only difference between -deck
and the classic one is the default environment it bolts into.
With -deck
, you boot into the Steam big picture mode, and with the normal variant into normal KDE.
If you chose -deck
, you can still enter desktop mode by clicking the power menu and then “Exit to desktop”.
For the beginning, I would recommend you to stick to a more popular Distro, like Mint, Fedora, Debian, and therelike.
Many niche distros, like CachyOS, are more tailored towards advanced users who know what they’re up to, or for special use cases, like TailsOS for extreme privacy (e.g. buying drugs, journalism, etc., it’s also commonly installed on an USB stick for portability and non-persistency).
With Fedora or Mint you get way more community support and resources in case something doesn’t work as expected for you, which it certainly will some time.
They’re also (mostly) identical performance wise.
For gaming, I would recommend you Bazzite, which gives you a first class gaming experience, and is extremely robust due to it being a completely new kind of distro. It also has the Nvidia-drivers already baked in if chosen, which makes it more reliable.
But regular Fedora (especially the KDE spin) or other common distros are perfectly fine too for that.
I’ve had this happen more often than I’d like to admit.
There were quite a few instances where I just couldn’t game in the evening after turning on my PC, mostly because of my power supply (outages while updating, unstable grid, damaged PSU and hard drive, etc.) and my ability to shoot myself in the foot in regards to my IT skills.
I imagined spending my friday evening differently than chrooting my install from another USB more often than I’d like to admit. At least Linux is repairable, good luck trying that with Windows…
Now, thankfully, I live in another house with a landlord that actually cares that I don’t get electrocuted in my shower, and I don’t have those problems anymore. I also don’t tinker as much with my OS anymore, at least not much.
Still, Fedora Atomic feels way more robust and less buggy than regular Fedora, especially KDE. And the QoL tweaks from uBlue are great too!
Probably Bluefin-DX.
The “DX” stands for developer experience. It’s a variant of uBlue/ Fedora Atomic (Silverblue) with a lot of added programming tools like Brew, Nix, IDEs, local LLMs, and more.
You can read more about it on the website.
There’s also Aurora, which is the same, but with KDE instead of Gnome.
The dx
-images are meant to be a plug-and-play solution for developers.
You just install it, share your container config to your project colleagues, and go. Don’t worry about not being able to work because of a bad update or some misalignments in your package manager broke your OS. Most stuff is containerised, and if your host breaks, you can just roll back, because the system is basically powered by git.
I’m no developer, but I use the regular variant for casual purposes (no specific tasks, mostly browser) on my laptop, and Bazzite (also very similar, but gaming focused) on my desktop, and both are wonderful! They’re the most boring distro/ OS I’ve used yet, and that’s great. They’re immutable/ image based and always work reliably.
I can really recommend them for a lot of people, from ranging from IT professionals to my mum.
My desktop is a full AMD system that I set up specifically for Linux compatibility, and the laptop is also one of the best compatible ones out there (Dell XPS) with firmware updates included.
Theoretically, the system should be less buggy than other ones, because due to Fedora Atomic, there is less configuration drift and easier fixing for devs due to reproducibility.