I recently took up Bazzite from mint and I love it! After using it for a few days I found out it was an immutable distro, after looking into what that is I thought it was a great idea. I love the idea of getting a fresh image for every update, I think for businesses/ less tech savvy people it adds another layer of protection from self harm because you can’t mess with the root without extra steps.
For anyone who isn’t familiar with immutable distros I attached a picture of mutable vs immutable, I don’t want to describe it because I am still learning.
My question is: what does the community think of it?
Do the downsides outweigh the benefits or vice versa?
Could this help Linux reach more mainstream audiences?
Any other input would be appreciated!
I think it’s good if you have a ton of storage and want to set it and forget it. For me, immutable depresses me. I came to Linux for the tinkering and the ability to do what I please to my system, not to be restricted. That’s just me, though. For handhelds/strictly gaming machine (a Steam machine for example)? I think immutable is the perfect fit for it.
Do you have any examples of the kind of “tinkering” you couldn’t do with an immutable distro? I haven’t run into any restrictions after more than a year.
You can’t even install packages using sudo. You can, but they’ll be overridden on next update.
… why would you want to install packages with
sudo? The proper way is to install them (as a user, not root) usingrpm-ostree, which will layer the packages on top of the image, automatically installing them for every future system as well.You haven’t actually looked into immutable distributions, have you?
I admit that I didn’t know about how rpm-ostree is capable of what you mentioned, but I still don’t like immutables for the other reasons I’ve mentioned. I did look into them and I can’t use them. I like my regular distro
I keep hearing this, but people never elaborate on those “other reasons”. Did I miss where you mentioned them?
You mentioned storage, but AFAIK atomic Fedora doesn’t use more space (unless you keep multiple versions for rolling back).
I don’t want to deal with images. I don’t want to have to be cleaning the system from those images to reclaim my storage. I dislike flatpaks, snaps and appimage on which immutable distros rely. The lack of customization as you can’t modify system files or install traditional packages outside the immutable framework, which limits personal tweaks. Apps availability, not all apps on the planet exist in flatpaks. The learning curve. Having to change the way I interact with my computer completely, I’m too fucking lazy for that and way too cozy where I am. They’re just a burden that I don’t want to deal with and I hope that that’s ok with you. Lmao
Of course it’s ok! You do whatever you want. Though I’d like to clear up a couple of misconceptions:
I don’t want to deal with images. I don’t want to have to be cleaning the system from those images to reclaim my storage.
You don’t have to, happens automatically.
I dislike flatpaks, snaps and appimage on which immutable distros rely.
Fair, though you don’t have to use them at all - you could run everything in a distrobox.
The lack of customization as you can’t modify system files or install traditional packages outside the immutable framework, which limits personal tweaks.
This really depends on what system files you mean. Anything in
/etc/? Fully writable. Everything is configurable either in your home directory or in/etc/, so I haven’t run into any issues with not being able to modify something - and if you do run into that, you always have distrobox.Apps availability, not all apps on the planet exist in flatpaks.
Don’t need to, you have distrobox for that.
The learning curve.
That’s fair. It’s been very small for me, and the issues have helped me become a better Linux developer, but it does bring its own problems in some cases.
Having to change the way I interact with my computer completely, I’m too fucking lazy for that and way too cozy where I am.
That’s the thing, I hear this a lot, and I just don’t know what the big changes are. I installed Kinoite, set up a distrobox, and have been smooth sailing since - all my previous installations have had far more issues, and I just haven’t really changed much (besides switching from Ubuntu to Fedora, but I’m happy about that, fuck Canonical).
Immutable vs Mutable weird normalNixOS is kinda the best of both worlds, because it does everything in a way that is compatible with an immutable fs, but it doesn’t force you into abiding by immutability yourself.
You can always opt into immutability by using Impermanence, but I’ve never seen any reason to.
Edit: That said, the syntax has a steep learning curve and there are tons of annoying edge cases that spawn out of the measures it takes to properly isolate things. It can be a lot to micromanage, so if you’d rather just use your system more than tinker with it, it may not be a good fit.
Since the idea is that the “root partition” is immutable, serious question:
How do you fix a hardware config issue or a distro packaging / provision issue in an immutable distro?
Several times in my Linux history I’ve found that, for example, I need to remove package-provided files from the ALSA files in
/usr/share/alsain order for the setup to work with my particular chipset (which has a hardware bug). Other times, I’ve found that even if I set up a custom.XComposefile in my $HOME, some applications insist on reading the Compose files in/usr/share/X11/localeinstead, which means I need to be able to edit or remove those files. In order to add custom themes, I need to be able to add them to/usr/share/{icons,themes}, since replicating those themes for each $HOME in the system is a notorious waste of space and not all applications seem to respect/usr/local/share. Etc.Unless I’m mistaken on how immutable systems work, I’m not sure immutable systems are really useful to someone who actually wants to or needs to power user Linux, or customize past the “branding locking” that environments like Gnome have been aiming for for like a decade.
My guess would be: have an additional overlay filesystem on top of your immutable root and apply all your fixes to it.
On the one hand sounds sensible, on the other hand I wonder if that’s possible when wanting to apply things that need to take place as early in boot as possible (eg.: modprobe options for a module, apparmor profiles, …).
Immutable, doesn’t mean extreme secure. It’s a false sense of security.
It could be more secure.
But during a runtime, it is possible to overwrite operational memory, mask some syscalls, etc.That’s my 3 cents.
Immutable distros are great for applications where you want uniformity for users and protections against users who are a little too curious for their own good.
SteamOS is a perfect use case. You don’t want users easily running scripts on their Steam Decks to install god knows what and potentially wreck their systems, then come to Valve looking for a fix.
Immutable distros solve that issue. Patches and updates for the OS roll out onto effectively identical systems, and if something does break, the update will fail instead of the system. So users will still have a fully functional Steam Deck.
If you’re not very technical, or you aren’t a power user and packaged apps like Flatpaks are available for all your software, then go for it. I prefer to tinker under the hood with my computers, but I also understand and except the risk that creates.
Immutable distros are a valuable part of a larger, vibrant Linux ecosystem IMO.
It’s definitely great for the mainstream. Think of Linus Sebastian who has somehow broken every OS except for SteamOS.
It’s not great for me who uses Arch Linux btw with the expectation that if the system doesn’t break on its own, then I will break it myself.
