Love me some Fedora, why should I switch to an immutable version? The thing that gives me pause is I like being able to change my system when I need to and have it persist, which is from what I understand the exact opposite idea of immutables (but I may be misunderstanding, thus this comment asking lol).
It’s not so much that you can’t change parts of your system permanently. Think of it more so like the system partition of the OS is versioned like it’s a git repo. Each time you make a change to the OS filesystem the change is written to a new version of your OS that is layered onto the previous version, and then those changes are commited to the filesystem store, and a new boot entry is created.
So it’s a slightly more involved process to install new/update system packages (you have to reboot into the new version of the OS for the changes to take effect), but you gain a massive advantage in stability as a result (if the new version fails to boot or has other unexpected behavior, just reboot into the old, known working version).
Interesting, I’ve never heard it described that way. I’m running Bluefin for a year, and up to now I’ve just avoided making any system level changes. I run flatpacks for most things, and containers for any odd bits that need dependencies.
Is what you’re describing, using rpmostree? I haven’t used it yet, afraid of messing things up, because I LOVE the stability I have now.
Used to run Ubuntu, and I’d reinstall for every new release, because I’d already mucked up my install anyway so might as well start fresh. And other times I’d just break stuff so thoroughly I needed to reinstall.
Yes, you’d use rpm-ostree install on some downloaded RPM after adding the repo manually in /etc for updates later (they really make it painful because layering system packages should always be a last resort).
You’re doing things correctly already. If everything is working fine with all the applications installed in a containerized way (distrobox, flatpak, etc.) no need to mess with rpm-ostree.
100% I was in the same boat as you with the yearly Ubuntu refreshes, and that got so old. Now if there’s an update the breaks something I just rollback and pin the working version until there’s an update that works or I have time to troubleshoot the issue.
So essentially you have a base system and you add what you need through flatpak, distrobox, homebrew, and if all else fails, by layering the packages on the base image with rpm-ostree.
What you can’t do (that I’m aware of), is remove packages, or make bigger changes like adding another desktop environment aside what it came from. I mean, I guess you can do it by layering but it’s probably messy.
Configuration and customisation are not an issue: /etc and /var are not immutable of course.
Distrobox is super cool btw, I knew it existed but Bazzite pushing me to use it was what I needed to finally try and appreciate it.
Same, I enjoy the classic shared library and package system which I still feel is superior to flatpak versions in most cases, even ignoring the technical aspects of each.
Tried silverblue once and it just felt more like android to me, and I even found myself using RPM layers almost immediately for core things that dont ship as Flatpak because its infeasible.
Plus Bazzite has its own release schedule which I feel like slightly removes the benefit of Fedora kernels being cutting edge, with critical packages updated almost as fast as Arch.
The good thing though is that it’s much more dummy proof, so I would feel comfortable letting anyone use it with zero experience, whereas I only recommend Fedora to those who have an inherent interest in Linux.
I used to be afraid of immutable distros. I was wrong.
That’s good you have admitted your wrongs, unfortunately, you are still required to repent upon the altar of nix
I’m afraid I’m too old for that journey
Love me some Fedora, why should I switch to an immutable version? The thing that gives me pause is I like being able to change my system when I need to and have it persist, which is from what I understand the exact opposite idea of immutables (but I may be misunderstanding, thus this comment asking lol).
It’s not so much that you can’t change parts of your system permanently. Think of it more so like the system partition of the OS is versioned like it’s a git repo. Each time you make a change to the OS filesystem the change is written to a new version of your OS that is layered onto the previous version, and then those changes are commited to the filesystem store, and a new boot entry is created.
So it’s a slightly more involved process to install new/update system packages (you have to reboot into the new version of the OS for the changes to take effect), but you gain a massive advantage in stability as a result (if the new version fails to boot or has other unexpected behavior, just reboot into the old, known working version).
Edit: I’m using Bazzite on two devices btw
Interesting, I’ve never heard it described that way. I’m running Bluefin for a year, and up to now I’ve just avoided making any system level changes. I run flatpacks for most things, and containers for any odd bits that need dependencies.
Is what you’re describing, using rpmostree? I haven’t used it yet, afraid of messing things up, because I LOVE the stability I have now.
Used to run Ubuntu, and I’d reinstall for every new release, because I’d already mucked up my install anyway so might as well start fresh. And other times I’d just break stuff so thoroughly I needed to reinstall.
Yes, you’d use rpm-ostree install on some downloaded RPM after adding the repo manually in /etc for updates later (they really make it painful because layering system packages should always be a last resort).
You’re doing things correctly already. If everything is working fine with all the applications installed in a containerized way (distrobox, flatpak, etc.) no need to mess with rpm-ostree.
100% I was in the same boat as you with the yearly Ubuntu refreshes, and that got so old. Now if there’s an update the breaks something I just rollback and pin the working version until there’s an update that works or I have time to troubleshoot the issue.
So essentially you have a base system and you add what you need through flatpak, distrobox, homebrew, and if all else fails, by layering the packages on the base image with rpm-ostree. What you can’t do (that I’m aware of), is remove packages, or make bigger changes like adding another desktop environment aside what it came from. I mean, I guess you can do it by layering but it’s probably messy.
Configuration and customisation are not an issue: /etc and /var are not immutable of course.
Distrobox is super cool btw, I knew it existed but Bazzite pushing me to use it was what I needed to finally try and appreciate it.
Same, I enjoy the classic shared library and package system which I still feel is superior to flatpak versions in most cases, even ignoring the technical aspects of each.
Tried silverblue once and it just felt more like android to me, and I even found myself using RPM layers almost immediately for core things that dont ship as Flatpak because its infeasible.
Plus Bazzite has its own release schedule which I feel like slightly removes the benefit of Fedora kernels being cutting edge, with critical packages updated almost as fast as Arch.
The good thing though is that it’s much more dummy proof, so I would feel comfortable letting anyone use it with zero experience, whereas I only recommend Fedora to those who have an inherent interest in Linux.
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