Are Immutable Linux Distros Worth It?

[@haydn-db8z]

As an IT admin and a primarily Windows user, I installed Bazzite because it was advertised as working seamlessly with my Steam games. It did just that, and I rarely boot back into Windows on my home theater/gaming PC.

[@TheCharlos64]

Same. I installed Bazzite I have no time to maintain a Linux distro. It works very well. I have it on my laptop, my desktop and even installed it on my steam deck.

[@sale666]

Never heard of it now ill download it to test it out... Honestly this is why i do not use linux its the maintainance! Its not only ah update click here done go on with your life nopeeee... Its allways HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS of some random error/problem/CLI fixing its just a HUGE time waste!

[@Crit-Chance]

​@@TheCharlos64 Hey, how's the battery life on your laptop compared to Windows?

[@shringe9769]

@@Crit-Chance Linux battery life is very bad, but there are a couple softwares that fix that. Linux isn't usually optimized for power saving out of the box, but has no problems once it is

[@RedSntDK]

Ohh, that's looking very interesting indeed. Even comes with Input Remapper

[@inittux]

I switched from Arch to Fedora Silverblue a month ago, doing my normal work and gaming. It works great for me, so far I haven't come across anything that I was not able to do for my daily workflow that would make me want to switch back to a normal distribution.

[@DavoReds]

I think these are most useful for computers that are not really personal computers, like handhelds or PCs for universities. Systems that you don't want to mess with and that should just work. But I would never use it for my workstations, because I prefer the freedom to do whatever I want and fix it afterwards Or you could just use Nix and solve both problems

[@DaftBlazer]

I've used linux for a very long time and I actually use Bazzite on every device I have now (except my server). I don't have to worry about package conflicts during an update, codecs are installed out of the box, and actually I think distrobox is better than a regular distro. I can install some random software and dependencies inside of a new distrobox container and if I break stuff or decide I don't want it anymore, I can just delete the container and my system isn't cluttered with random packages. Also, with Davinci Resolve its actually easier in Bazzite than any other distro I've tried. You just run "ujust install-resolve" and it automatically installs a davinci resolve distrobox container with support for AMD GPUs

[@zakt9]

Really sad project u-blue was not mentioned. I think the nit pick of "Distrobox is not included in all immutable distros" is the biggest problem. As a bluefin user distrobox is my absolute primary way of running applications that are not flatpaks. While it may not work for every single application, it works a lot better then not. The enterprise also missed a point that (at least fedora atomic) is based on OCI containers. Bluefin is built on existing cloud models and making derivatives for all your workstations to run the exact same image is very powerful. Immutable people will say "we didnt remove the ability to tinker with the host system, we just moved it to CI/git."

[@vendetta.02]

Distrobox can be installed on all immutable distros with no issue, the nitpick is not very good faith IMO.

[@JosephBurt-Main]

This was summed up so well. I have been asked questions about Immutable Linux Distros and to "explain it" to them. Having to do this with IT Support staff that is "windows centric" this video is a great explination.

[@laycookie-f6i]

Hello, I have actually used an immutable distribution as my first Linux distro. From experience I can say that it is in fact true that documentation is lacking, however the community is actually unbelievably active and there wasn’t really many problems that I wasn’t able to solve in less then 30 minutes. Most of the problems that I had challenges with, were not related to the immutability of the distro, but instead they were about how Linux fundamentally works. So even tho arch isn’t immutable I usually was able to understand how to fix my issue by referencing there form.

[@MauriBT]

Ublue project (Based on Fedora Silverblue), with Bluefin, Aurora and Bazzite are the better

[@OraOraOra]

Yep! They even have a ``ujust`` command for installing Davinci. And most of the important stuff is included in the base image anyway.

[@nethshansiriwardena508]

please educate me as to why

[@renner0395]

@@nethshansiriwardena508 they fix fedora, include flathub, rpmfusion, drivers for your GPU, automatic updates, ujust (community shared shell aliases), setup distrobox, if a package breaks in fedora they can pin it to an older version that still works and you probably won't even notice anything was broken

[@pitape1822]

Bazzite is really good. I do not do video edtitin. Only web and games.

[@UsernsSurns]

immutable distros make more sense for devices directly supported by the hardware vendor as opposed to generic hardware where you have to mutate the file system at one point or other to solve issues that crop up. I guess nixos might be the exception.

[@sahilgoel]

Using uBlue bluefin and it solves a lot a good fit

[@vitelo25miki23]

A lot of problems with these desktops are fixed with distrobox

[@MinaSchloch]

No, not really. If you take a random Win11 compatible Laptop then yes maybe. But running a separate Distro to fix basic issues, is really bad. Especially on Fedora Atomic Desktops, some people advertise Distrobox (or here the worse Toolbx when it makes no sense

[@MinaSchloch]

*it is bad for efficiency and battery life

[@IfritBoi]

@@MinaSchloch They're probably taking about for desktop PC use cases. That is true, though

[@advaitc2554]

Thanks!

[@MichaelNROH]

No thank you

[@kansascityonline]

luv my Kubuntu KDE plasma.. its good stuff.. been a liberated Windows user since.. 2001....

[@specialk8723]

Vanilla OS is actually kinda cool. It would be perfect for new Linux users.

[@shib5267]

it wouldn't at all because of what he said in the video. Troubleshooting is a lot more difficult for a new linux user because of the barriers of immutability. Makes more sense for devices like the steamdeck

[@lazyh0rse]

@@shib5267 But that's exactly what immutable distros want to resolve, is to make things "just work". If it doesn't then the distro simply is not for you, you move on. If something breaks, it's just a rollback and done. It's to make troubleshooting non-existing to begin with.

[@paologaleotti8478]

@@lazyh0rse do you even know how complicated is vanilla OS under the hood? yes it's amazing, but not at all for a beginner. You need to understand what is going on with containers and no tutorials on the internet will work (a beginner is probably going to google a lot).

[@vendetta.02]

@@paologaleotti8478 you dont need to understand what is going on with containers to understand how to use vanilla OS, this is a bad-faith argument.

[@wargamingrefugee9065]

Think I'll just stick with the ease of upgrading whenever Kubuntu launches a new LTS version. Having root on on drive and home on another makes things pretty easy. "Easy" is also why I prefer Kdenlive over DaVinci Resolve. To me, using DaVinci Resolve is like trying to fly an F-35 when all that's really needed is a a Cessna prop plane. Thanks for the video.

[@xard64]

Immutable distribution works really well for "immutable" hardware like the Steam Deck and laptops (if you get vendor support that is). However as I just updated my NVidia graphics card on my Desktop machine and noticed that the card was too new for the current stock drivers to be recognized an immutable distribution would have been a nightmare to work around to fix the issue.

[@kvndodson91]

Im using Aeon. It's the best experience I've had with Linux. It updates itself automatically. I literally never think about the OS and just do work and play games. 10/10

[@F_Around_and_find_out]

It’s worth it, because without being able to install directly into the main system, you are forced to make changes elsewhere, that can help with organizing things, you can just shed the excess away because the main system is immutable, intact. Normal distro is like one big bubble. Immutable is one main bubble that anchor other bubbles. The main bubble maintains other bubbles but itself is unchanged, while the other bubbles can be made or popped at will: Docker images and containers, or virtual machines.

[@ASilverNMeep886]

Great video! I've been comtemplating immutable vs not for myself and my friends. Most of them are only familiar with SteamOS, but troubleshooting and achieving specific things can be a pain. I've started comparing it to a fenced playground in a park. If you are satisfied with the maintainer's design, you will be happy. If not, it can be work to go around and over the fence designed to protect you in ordee to enjoy the trees and pond of the park. For now, Bazzite+Distrobox suits my needs well. I feel catered to with the maintainers.

[@luisjavieravilaolivera2471]

I did it, I restarted my pc during a manjaro upgrade. Suddenly needed to go and the system was updating itself, thanks to btrfs backups it was as easy as choosing the previous snapshot on grub and be ready again.

[@andrabtedja]

The main idea of most called immutable distro is atomic transaction, which is same in Silverblue, NixOS, MicroOS, and Vanilla. Always have a bootable system after failure update is the main idea.

[@sebastianbauer4768]

Not the same at all, vast differences between the adaptations. There are 2 general kinds of immutable systems: 1. The one that does package resolution and installation on your system, think adding drivers to microOs. 2. The ones that do it on the server and serve you a complete image as an update. Yes, both prevent your system going boom due to an update, since 1. would discard a failed update, but it’s no easier to setup than doing it with a non immutable system. It’s also fairly likely that you will have to do maintenance to keep it running. With 2. it is possible to have the heavy lifting be done on a server, like ublue does. That way they can serve you dozens of different images depending on your needs, and if one of them fails to built, which happens *all* the time, they deal with it.

[@andrabtedja]

@@sebastianbauer4768 I don't know what you refer from point 1. But I think MicroOS will use 'transactional-update pkg in' command to layer the driver just like Silverblue does with 'rpm-ostree install'.🙏 I think both MicroOS and Silverblue are using the same concept for layering (Silverblue uses OSTree, but not sure with MicroOS), but with different things like rolling release vs point release, etc. I don't know at all about A/B system in Vanilla, but I'm familiar enough with NixOS (while none of these distro rebrand itself as immutable, cmiiw). They are using a different concept for atomic transactions.

[@sebastianbauer4768]

@andrabtedja They are not at all using the same concept. MicroOS functions entirely like normal opensuse, what transactional update does is simply applying the changes to an fresh COW BTRFS subvolume instead. For example you can enter a transactional shell and use all the normal commands like zypper to add new repos etc. The next transactional update will build on your changes since it will be just a copy. There is no base image thus your version of microOS can diverge, by using the packman repo for example. Which is why this is discouraged. It is mechanically sound though, for example i added the nix package manager in a multiuser install no problem. Silverblue on the other hand has a base image that gets updated. Extra packages then get layered on top of that which gets wiped when the base image gets updated and has to be renewed by the system. It's kinda like a union fs if you know that. It needs a entirely different mechanic to remove packages called overrides. Complex changes are difficult especially if dependencies are involved, like switching from gnome to kde. Lastly what ublue does is rebuilding the images they serve, kinda like microOS, but it happens on build servers on github and served as an OCI image. You can ofc still do the same layering and overrides as with silverblue. Not sure if that's clear, they appear similar on surface but they mechanically very different and have different properties. MicroOS is more malleable, behaving like tumbleweed once in a transactional-shell, silverblue is more resilient since changes are merely in a thin layer easily removed. Ublue combines the advantages of both, but the change is done to the image which is served instead of afterwards.

[@generic694]

Filesystem snapshots give you that for any distributions.

[@andrabtedja]

@@sebastianbauer4768 Yes, I'm agree with you. They all use different concepts. But what I refer to in my first comment is all of them use the atomicity feature. NixOS and Fedora Atomic officially never use 'immutable' as their feature. Only MicroOS from openSUSE declares that theirs is immutable.

[@robonator2945]

Might be a bit of another beast but I'd be interested in seeing a video (or maybe even series?) looking-into / dedicated-to NixOS. It's been making rounds for a while but most things I've seen tend to suffer from the issue of either dump-trucking tons of information that make no sense unless you already know it, or giving information in such small snippets that they're impossible to understand. (the former being "I can't learn from you, you're too good at the thing to understand what needs to be taught" the latter being "okay, I understand these 5000 micro-examples, but you haven't explained how any of it fits together") It'd be really interesting to see an attempt at a user-first dive into Nix from an outside perspective since a lot of people swear by it but it's not really very noob-friendly. Also, Nix isn't quite "immutable". It is in a way, but it just takes a wildly different approach that makes it pretty apples to oranges. So posts like 4:13 are actually kinda talking about a different thing just using the same terminology. I'd definitely agree with your conclusion that immutable distros for real desktop "computer" use (i.e. : not something like the Steam Deck which is a console-like first and foremost) but Nix is taking a very different angle that seems to make it both much more viable for normal use and, unfortunately, much harder to actually learn. This is admitedly bordering on "LINUX IS THE KERNEL" levels of pedantry, but in this case it seems like a meaningful thing to point out since while you can certainly make the argument that it is immutable, from what I can tell it goes about that task so wildly uniquely it's basically it's own thing entirely. (which, again, is why it's such a pain to learn)

[@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115]

The creator/funder of the project was fired by "the board" for wrongthinking and not showing the due enthusiasm with "THE MESSAGE," so the project is dead man walking.

[@robonator2945]

​@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 Look I haven't hitched my horse to Nix but I'd hardly say it's a dead repo compiling. For one, the controversy isn't anywhere near that simple, it's a huge tangled mess that, as far as I can tell as an outsider looking in, is the culmination of months or years of growing tensions. For two, it's an open source project with an entire community that live by it and would die by it as *_the_* way to manage their devices. A community, mind you, that is 100% comprised of technically minded people and refer to the source code so frequently that it's considered part of the documentation itself. It has, functionally speaking, achieved software immortality. No matter how many times it needs to be forked and renamed, it has a large enough community of people that are educated enough and dedicated enough to keep it going. It's definitely in a bad spot, but acting like it's already dead is pretty unfounded. Once an open source project gets enough technically minded and dedicated users behind it becomes a digital weed; no matter how many times you cut it down, it'll just keep regrowing. Open source projects only die once they've been abandoned and something with as dedicated a community as Nix ain't gonna be abandoned anytime soon. Even if people completely lose faith in the project itself, all of it's code, everything; those people are already devout followers of the ideas it preached. They'll inevitably try to recreate it's best qualities in another project that follows the same ideals. (and since they already have all of their configs written in Nix, they'd have a strong interest in ensuring that it's backwards compatible and/or easily translatable) Do I wish it was in a healthier spot? Sure, it's technically compelling and it always sucks to see a technically compelling project run into social/interpersonal roadblocks, but sick != dying. The chance that it actually, completely, just dies is a few blocks down from nil.

[@TheOriginalEvanium]

Been using Silverblue for a few years on my main desktop, just recently switched to VanillaOS though and its great. Perfect for beginners and power users alike.

[@Otuhh]

i feel like people trying to leave windows will enjoy immutable distros. Im trying base fedora for the first time on my laptop and its been fun. As more "issues" with immutable distros get fixed and more app support things will be great by the time we get to that October 2025 deadline. The "similar experience everyone gets" i feel will help move development alot quicker too.

[@haydn-db8z]

I upgraded my Windows 10 old school Ivy Bridge (non-TPM-equipped) systems to Windows 11 long ago. I believe I used Rufus to circumvent the TPM restriction, and the whole process was bog simple. That said, I've since moved to Bazzite on both those systems, and I agree that having an immutable distro was a good fit (for me). By the time I need to move to a traditional distro, I'll hopefully have more Linux experience under my belt and the move will be easier.

[@isaboll1]

Distrobox has a guide to install in the home directory for the Steam Deck. The same instructions can be used for any other distro, and won't be overwritten on updates.

[@TheEliteMan723]

You are freaking great for beginners

[@MichaelNROH]

Thanks

[@Iroquois_Pliskin]

I am using one of these as a starter to get a feel for the Linux OS, I went all in and ditched Windows and I almost had issues due to my own foolishness tinkering with stuff in terminal and learning key binds that were remediated by it

[@FengLengshun]

I think a KDE Discover and GNOME Software plug-in for distrobox would help deal with it, though to be real it's not like we really use those GUI app store either. Sure, it's there for Steam Deck users, and people also point to them to say "You don't need terminal," but in practice it's only used for Flatpak by people who aren't really Linux users as much as "devices that happened to be Linux based." In practice, you try to install TeamViewer and they'll point to the terminal anyways. I don't disagree with your final conclusion, but I think we underestimate how hard Linux still is for non-tinker-minded users and overestimate the maturity of our GUI ecosystem. For me, the place of immutable distro is in getting what you want, and minimizing unintended changes to the main host system. If you game, you just run Bazzite, install everything via Flatpak, Distrobox, or Nix. If you code, you run Bluefin/Aurora. If you need a very exact system, use NixOS. I think the immutability design contributes in getting distro maintainers to focus on what makes their distro unique and useful for specific usecases.

[@MichaelNROH]

I believe that most apps that cause problems are not gonna be used much anyway. Everything complicated requires some niche use case. An average person nowadays requires a Web Browser and that's kinda it

[@VektrumSimulacrum]

I use Ublue Aurora on my work laptop. A lot of the things we use with the students are browser based so software compatibility isn't really an issue. I keep an Obsidian Database tracking data points but that's mostly for me to assess and modify the teaching strategy for my assigned student

[@taiwbi]

I'm thinking about trying Fedora Silverblue...

[@olekaleksander]

Definetly try it! I would recommend rebasing to the ublue silverblue-main (or the nVidia) image. It deals with the rpm fusion stuff.

[@this_is_lemon]

@@olekaleksander I tried it on my gaming PC just out of curiosity (because I was going to reinstall the system anyway) and loved it so much that it's been a year, and I’ve never looked back at "mutable" distros.

[@ackimcu]

Silverblue is the only distro that was so stable I made the switch to linux full time on my laptop.

[@MichaelNROH]

Why not? 😉

[@sebastianbauer4768]

I prefer the ublue images, they make a lot of sensible small changes like offering an image with NVIDIA drivers, using the flathub repo instead of the fedora one or shipping with distrobox instead of toolbox. Loads of stuff really while staying very close to silverblue.

[@ros9764]

I was looking up what are the pros and cons of immutable over mutable distros 2 days ago and this video pops up. That has probably been the experience for a lot of people i assume considering the release of Vanilla OS 2

[@Tux-YT]

Perfect for most MS Windows users I know :)

[@LordHonkInc]

I've been using my Steam Deck as my main desktop system for a couple months now (mainly just to get the most out of my small solar setup that can't really feed my tower PC) and the immutability is kinda annoying. Like, not unusable as I've got all my productivity programs (bar one, autokey) to work with flatpaks and appimages, but annoying in the sense that I don't have things like base-devel, fish, tmux, mROC, password store, etc. (I got around the last one with brew, but it's cumbersome compared to pacman or even hand-building AUR packages) I don't bear a grudge against Valve for their decision, logically it makes sense to rein in the fast-and-loose nature of Arch for what is predominantly a gaming console, but I'm so happy with my base Arch on my desktop PC that the advantages of an immutable distro aren't enough to move me towards using one full-time. PS: All of this is, and I'm just saying this out of precaution in case I get misinterpreted, of course just my personal experience and opinion. If you like immutable distros, that's cool, I'm glad you enjoy it and it works for your use case. Don't let a stranger on the internet like me rain on your parade :3

[@JohnSmith-yz7uh]

Running a rolling distro like opensuse tumbleweed, I have set up timeshift for OS snapshots. It does require a seperate drive, but it does make a rollback possible. It's probably not as beginner friendly if your GUI breaks but is recoverable. If you make automated backups of everything except /home with a easy rollback, you almost get the same as a immutable distro

[@RetiredInThailand]

Silverblue derivatives install with BTRFS as the default file system. Just install he ‘snapper’ flatpak and use the default schedule and you get an hourly checkpoint (or make a manual checkpoint if need be) … that way your OS is protected by the regular curated boot loader/base OS checkpoint rollback, and the rest of your system is protected with the snapper checkpoints .

[@sebastianbauer4768]

No, I don’t think that’s the same at all. I have used the rollback feature exactly one time on bazzite and that was because a new NVIDIA driver brought a regression for a game I wanted to play at that very moment. The main appeal for me is having a very clean system that *stays* clean. Every day I start the distro it’s like right after installation and when I uninstall a program it’s gone, including all the files it created that are not managed by a package manager. Ever reinstalled a distro because it had become a rats nest of *stuff*? Yeah, getting rid of that feeling is what immutable are about for me.

[@danilaros]

Hi. I switch from Fedora 40 workstation to Bluefin from universal blue project (the base is Fedora Silverblue), very cool and stable. I switch because i need something for my father that is not easy to break, is works very well with my father só I made the switch to🙂

[@saberspecter]

I'm considering installing Bazzite for gaming as the preconfigured apps and settings seem better than me breaking something in Fedora and having a weeks old Timeshift backup.

[@Spiderfffun]

except for nixOS (which isn't as bad as you can still modify system level things thru the config, except for the fact that you still need to learn it), i feel like immutable distros have a worse UX just because an application may not always be available in flatpak or snap and it might be confusing to get distrobox for some users.

[@necuz]

NixOS was nice up to the point where I wanted to install something that wasn't already packaged for it and it turned out the documentation for how to do that was either just bad or out of date. I also tried some recommended tool to generate a build file and it completely failed on a basic cmake C project hosted on GitHub, resulting in totally incomprehensible errors when trying to build it. Worst package manager I have ever experienced in 20+ years of Linux.

[@MichaelNROH]

The difference in how you use them can be substential yeah

[@bigpod]

well look at ublue they do that line much better then nixOS

[@cykatroopa]

I know that this hasn't a perfect solution, but I wonder if we could add a overlayfs on a different partition. So you can still apply atomic updates to the base partition, but have persistence for changes done outside of ostree

[@martineyles]

Can there be a halfway house, where certain elements, such as the desktop environment and whatever x and wayland are and hardware drivers are immutable, but other things aren't? That's how Windows feels, with its ability to roll back core OS elements, but having software installation still use system privileges.

[@MichaelNROH]

I kind of already is that. The problem with a more flexible approach is, that you can't really keep an up to date repo of what should be locked and where

[@mikechappell4156]

For a non-technical business or a gaming system platform they sound pretty good. Not sure I'd like to use one as my main desktop though.

[@XH13]

I had some major issues on my steam deck due to heroic being a flatpack (basically, memory leaks in xdg-document-portal). The only solution I had was either restart my game every hour and kill -9 the portal, or reinstall heroic as a package and its boatload of dependencies like on my desktop arch linux.

[@hunarpg]

Been using arch for a couple of months(a couple weeks of fedora and pop os in between) Just switched to Nix OS yesterday due to judt the distro hopping urge It's quite different but I have been having surpsringly good time

[@davidswanson9269]

Atomic and immutable from a security perspective is a big big plus. Little John Jr on dad's computer can't send it into a GURU meditation permanently by accidentally deleting or configuring or a drive-by zero day malware bug in the browser. Very refreshing! 😁

[@VHSJayden]

I'm sad that you didnt mention anything about Universal Blue. I have Bluefin and Bazzite installed on my PCs and they have been great. It installs all the stuff that Fedora should have by default. There are some stuff that I dislike but overall, it has been a great experience.

[@haydn-db8z]

After trying only three or four other distros, I'm almost sad that I stumbled on to Bazzite so early on in my search for a Windows 11 replacement. It's been so good that I'm afraid to try any others. I halfway wish that I had found it later in my journey, so I could have tried more distros first.

[@RixtronixLAB]

Nice video, thanks :)

[@dexterman6361]

I've been thinking of shifting to an immutable distro, since I tend to install a bunch of packages on install, and new ones rarely after that That's nice and all. But for sometimes, it is nice to install something, and then quickly test it without rebooting. overlay or copy-o-write filesystems are perhaps a middle-point for this, where a user can "checkpoint" on boot, make whatever changes they want that are "stored" in the overlay/CoW filesystem, and at reboot, a user can "commit" it, and then use that if it works. I've heard people talk about ublue, but ...eh I dunno, doesn't seem .... trustworthy, I guess. Maybe a git-like workflow would be sweet hahaa.

[@antinatalope]

Yeah, I use Linux because I can do what I want with it, including break it. That's why I have a back up.

[@rapacious_rapscallion]

Fedora Silverblue is fantastic. Immutable distros are the future. By the way, technically macOS has an immutable base.

[@derekr54]

I am quite happy to stick with traditional Linux as I like total control of my system. If I want to be controlled I can use Windows,Mac or Chromebook for that.There is so much hype about all new technologies and they have there place but not with me,the same goes for AI in my book. Call me an old duffer I don't care as I am one and been using Linux for two decades.

[@bigpod]

imo you have infinitly more control over your system with immutable

[@derakte4183]

Thanks for the video, always wondered if an immutable distro would suit my needs. Guess I'll stay on normal Fedora :) Since your Davinci Resolve with Distrobox video is over a year old I would like to know if this is still your prefered way of installing Davinci on linux? I didn't give it a try yet but I guess on Fedora 40 I would create a Fedora 40 Container for it, right?

[@MichaelNROH]

On AMD it's probably always going to be my preferred way. Too many things change with MESA updates and I don't want to figure out which files I need to remove from the Resolve directory every time. I personally use a Fedora 40 container, but it already involves some troubleshooting. The last version that didn't require anything was Fedora 37

[@derakte4183]

@@MichaelNROH Thanks for your answer! I'll give it a try with Fedora 40 :)

[@ThePlayerOfGames]

Once I get used to using Toolbox properly I suspect that for the majority of desktop users would be best off using Atomic Linux distros since people want their system to "Just Work"™ There's no worry about "But I can't make the system mine" when you're already rolling someone else's .ISO, you're secretly back to the "using windows" problem because you didn't go from scratch on your personal Linux installation Of course, the smaller group of seasoned veterans such as the people that care about what's under the hood rather than "does the computer do what I want it to do when I want to do it" group do care about what type of Atomic, do I use Arch, what packages are shipped. But we are in the vanishingly small minority compared to the global population, and that's fine because it's our job to summarise for others who have different things on their minds

[@I-use-Archbtw]

From arch to gentoo now im on nixos found it like mix of good parts of both system and adding some more features im only 3 days on nix so cant tell is it worth since documentation is horrible but community is great

[@asmod4n]

macOS and its child operating systems have been immutable for quite few years now, there havent been big issues with that. so yeah, go for it as your next linux distro.

[@holyhelga]

Don’t vanilla os 2 have a pretty good graphical application installer

[@MichaelNROH]

It does yes

[@hadeseh6808]

First your content is great keep it up. Seccond i hate windows and want t use linux instead i am on a laptop is there anyinux distros that work good on laptops?

Só the issue isn't that much about the distro itself but the apps that are stil not using flatpaks or snaps. Not the OS itself...even the example you gave with DaVinci... Good Luck making it work in the majority of regular distros. I think immutable is the way (forward), and the community should push all software vendors to embrace it and develop for it.

[@MichaelNROH]

It's also about some flatpak limitations. Especially apps that need to access a system bus might not be able to function yet

[@MrArrakis9]

Thanks for taking the time to make this video explaining some of the issues of immutable distros. I think I will just stick with Ubuntu

[@MinaSchloch]

Would be nice to set the "immutable" in Gänsefüßchen, because most implementations are not unchangeable and the word makes people think it is Windows or something

[@anonymouscommentator]

why would it make people think its windows

[@Sw3d15h_F1s4]

NixOS has been working great for me for months! Not super complicated either, Ive had no real issues even though this is my first time using linux.

[@Sw3d15h_F1s4]

DaVinci is packed on nixpkgs so installing it is incredibly simple. Pin it to a stable release and boom, it's fine.

[@phatmeow7764]

so suppose say a retired person needs a desktop today. would u think Opensuse Kalpa is a good fit for this person assuming Plasma DE is preferred?

[@MichaelNROH]

Well it depends on how well they handle a PC. KDE Plasma is quite easy to mess up if you missclick a couple of times. From the distro, I would suggest using one that doesn't need any manual configuring like Arch in terms of packaging. The rest doesn"t really matter

[@badger-mr1fi]

What is the default swappiness on immutable linux? Are people who want to do gaming fx, stuck with swappiness set to 60?

[@thomasjones4131]

why does Bazzite only lets me select 3840x2160 at 120hz refresh when I have a 144hz 4k monitor? Why does lutris and heroic launch only allow in game 1080p resolution? would steam have the same problems as the lutris and heroic launch? is there ways of solving all these problems? or is Nobora a better option for me and 4k gaming.

[@MichaelNROH]

Could be an issue related to HDMI. If you are using it, you might want to consider displayport instead. The HDMI forum is very hostile to Open Source since they have proprietary modules which require a paid license so not all standards work on Linux. No clue why it became the default in the first place

[@thomasjones4131]

@MichaelNROH my monitor has display port 1.4 ports which is 120hz anyway and one hdmi 2.1 which goes higher. Any suggestions on Lutris and Heroic Launcher 1080p max ? How can get them to let games run at higher resolutions without game scope?

[@Dobaspl]

I can't understand what people see in this. If I want to protect the system from a failed update or my own incompetence, I configure a btrfs snapshot. Silverblue doesn't protect the etc directory, so I can still throw out fstab, for example. And a btrfs snapshot protects everything. How is it better?

[@PrazgreenStudios]

okay, I might switch to Vanilla OS as it has become very stable and in many ways is better than my current Fedora system

[@pylotlight]

Nobara is plenty stable and runs on Fedora which is obviously the best :P

[@PrazgreenStudios]

@@pylotlight true, but is sadly too bloated for my specific usecase and hardware, but it is great for other users, just not me

[@MinaSchloch]

As an Android (GrapheneOS) user: Absolutely it is. If the OS defaults are good.

[@sachinchaudhary1310]

I use nixos and i love it

[@ZaberfangX]

I dont think is that far from the future is depending valve drops steam os for everyday use. That when a bulk of windows user will do or waiting on. Even if steam os notba good idea other then ging it won't stop people going to it.

[@MichaelNROH]

I actually think that Steam OS on the Desktop wouldn't work well. The main gimmick is the Gamescope session, which is not really practical on the Desktop. And booting into Plasma by default would also kind of go against it all

[@ZaberfangX]

@@MichaelNROH yeah I agree that steam os on desktop wouldn't work well, but only takes 1 over hyped and people are trying to install it on their main systerms that don't give them a good understanding or installing stuff or removing stuff they don't understand.

[@bukkfrig]

If an update breaks something, and you have to roll it back, now what? Won't you just get the same update next time? Or else you have to hold the package while updating others, so you're in some weird untested configuration, and now you may miss out on the later version that doesn't cause the problem?

[@bigpod]

in most cases that wouldnt bother you as immutable systems tend to update as a whole and if update doesnt apply correctly you just dont get update until it works. I never had to rollback becuase of an update

[@MichaelNROH]

You have more than one "image" installed. You can always boot into the older one and just not update if it's a known issue. Should be rare though, since a bad update like this would affect many machines

[@lzcoder]

Aeon Desktop just works, one of the best experience i had with a desktop distro.

[@Redditor5000-gg5pv]

i think nixos is by far the best os for advanced users

[@eygs493]

ye its future ye

[@sebastianbauer4768]

That kinda depends on your use case. I have a nice nix config for my system cause it was fun making one, but it’s not perfect because the package base it relies on is not perfect. I think the package quality is somewhere between arch main and AUR, nothing like Debian, fedora or opensuse. Also they should kinda make up their mind on whether they want to do flakes or not and get a proper documentation going. Documentation is kinda important it turns out. I’m specifically talking about nixos btw, nix package manager and home-manager feel much more useful because they are narrower in scope.

[@galactic_dust42]

It's the worse in fact, it's terrible if you want to do something custom; It's great for newbies, but for advanced users it's totally the inverse ! Declarative approach is so bad for linux, SO BAD.

[@MichaelNROH]

Yeah, I don't know. I feel like NixOS is only really suited for replicating a Desktop on many machines. The rest is kind of like a tiling Window Manager, it takes time to setup

[@Redditor5000-gg5pv]

@@MichaelNROH Much more than that - I only use my main config for 2 machines and a separate config for servers, it has many more benefits, config in one programming language, biggest repos (much more maintained than aur so a big benefit). It's a good syntax and easy to configure settings for many very advanced tools and easily visible, all the benefits of other immutable distros just more matured. A completely different way of managing packages, I can just import a github revision for unstable (still a sort of versioning unlike arch), or a stable release. Best for programming because of nix flakes/shells, very secure, impermanence is easy - most data is stored in /nix/store or home - I only keep /nix, a few config files and files in home. There's so much more stuff like the massive amount of tooling, extensibility (modules), security, and it is easier overall for me if ur using ur machine for things like programming, etc etc. In conclusion, I can't go back after investing some time in learning it.

[@DaleDix]

Gotta have a new Linux toy to play with!

[@sebastianbauer4768]

You missed quite a lot of stuff. For one, much of the filesystem isn’t read only. /etc, /home, /var, /opt to name just a few places. That brings me to my second point, anything that works by installing software in those locations works in immutable as well. For example homebrew, nix package manager, appman, manually compiled packages or tar balls etc. Say you want to run neofetch on your system and not in a distrobox, you can just install it like this: “brew install neofetch”, that’s it. Not exactly rocket science or jumping through hoops like you make it out to be is it?

[@MichaelNROH]

The read only filesystem and how its enforced differ drastically per distribution, but that's not quite the point. The point is the lack of documentation. For example, sure you can install packages with rpm-ostree on Fedora, but most guides tell you to use dnf, since they don't account for atomic Desktops. This might sound like something that you would of course search for, but even if you do, you still often get the wrong information. This is the problem

[@alexstone691]

I have fedora kde on desktop, fedora kinoite on my laptop and i must say GUI updates suck There is literally no progress and rpm-ostree takes a loooong time on slower devices (5-10m), cancelling is weird and just takes too long

[@Z4KIUS]

takes so much time and effort to set up and some packages aren't even available in the immutable package manager that would be there in the regular one...

[@UltraZelda64]

Well said. Immutable distros are a pretty cool idea with some unique use cases, but they're far from ready for anything even close to resembling "mainstream." Until some pretty major problems regarding their use on an average desktop are fully worked out, they will remain experimental and only useful in very specific situations. Some day they will likely advance to the point of actually being useful on a desktop, but even then they will likely always coexist with traditional distributions as simply another option.

[@erixIsOffline]

How the rollback works i can reload my whole system to state before update? Will it remember my prievous changes and things i have install

[@bigpod]

basically rollback is just go back one version of installed system so if you did something (to the OS) between version you are rolling back to and now you will loose that but anything that happened before will be remembered.

[@erixIsOffline]

@@bigpod thank you man ❤️

[@ThePaulest]

AAAAA. Please, as community, let's throw away term `immutable` and use term `atomic` as Fedora did. Because we actually want - is that any update will be `atomic` and easily revertable. At least on system level

[@MichaelNROH]

Distros need to do it first though

[@jayarmstrong]

And while we're at it, throw out 'atomic' (as in, indivisible) and use 'monolithic', because that's more apt for what's actually happening: updating the entire image and all packages in one huge 3gb download.

[@bigpod]

@@jayarmstrong atomicity one of 4 ACID transactional properties, behind atomic distros is kinda the point as in all updates in set happen or non of them happen.

[@jayarmstrong]

@@bigpod yep, I'm just picking on the word choice

[@kienhwengtai8113]

They are basically using the android and iOS style implementations to make Linux distros. Users will have a harder time breaking the system but fixing it is also harder.

[@draftofspasiba2]

If distrobox didn't exist Immutable distros would be total useless to me, but even so i prefer normal distros like EndeavourOS in which everything is centralized and easy to config unlike flatpaks where every app is sandboxed from each other.

[@angeldude101]

So many problems with immutable desktops would be solved by just letting the user change the image image that gets used in an update, though I suppose that wouldn't be very "immutable" would it? It would still be _atomic_ though, and being atomic is _way_ more important than being immutable.

[@sebastianbauer4768]

That’s what ublue does, it’s why many like it.

[@MichaelNROH]

Fedora kind of does this with rpm-ostree. It basically has a mechanism to update the package on an image to image basics and just adds manually installed apps as well

[@bigpod]

yea thats what most of them do

[@oscs4556]

I prefer atomic desktops myself now - using Nixos rolling, aurora-dx and bazzite

[@Xaito]

I haven't tried immutable distros other than Steam OS. However I have started my Desktop Linux journey by heavily using Flatpaks. Then I tried Arch with normal packages and noticed that all applications start up immediately whereas flatpaks would take many a second. Also I constantly had to deal with permission problems. That sealed the deal for me. I'll stay in the Arch ecosystem where almost everything is available as a normal package or from AUR. If I ever have the desire for some reason to use immutable, I'd rather use Nix packages than Flatpaks too.

[@nocopyrightgameplay-b2vm]

Vanilla os 🎉

[@grizzlyindustries7593]

Still using Bazzite which is a custom Atomic based Fedora Workstation distro. I can absolutely say. It has become my main OS because it is immutable. And it is also the entire reason I fully moved away fron Windows cause it does everything I need it to do. No matter what kind of stupid crap I do. I can't break it. And that does make me happy even as a long time but still novice Linux user. My only major issue with it is messing with any other internal drives. Whether I want to use Bazzite to just use my 6TB game drive(which is BTRFS). Or I want to just clone a drive. Resize a drive. Yeah. Yeah that don't work in Bazzite. I can never resize or clone drives. It just will never happen. And even when I set the UUID, changed boot permissions, and fully got the 6TB drive to start with the system. It will still not detect the drive at all or any drive sometimes on boot. It just randomly happens and not only with my internal drives, but any external drives too. It drives me nuts! And I have showed other Linux users this. Nobody knows why except for one single reason. I kept getting "It's an immutable file distro man." So, thank you for video. Yeah. The immutable distro will get there one day. For me though, I only wish for a hybrid solution where I can control my all my other drives and my main system drive will be the immutable one. Now that would be awesome. Hope you have a nice day.

[@sebastianbauer4768]

Uh, that doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with being on an immutable distro. I also use other internal drives, for example my steam games are on their own drive. It doesn’t matter how you do it, for example as an entry in /etc/fstab should work fine …

[@luizansounds]

@@sebastianbauer4768 yeah. I have a really customized fstab with an ext4 SSD mounted in a hidden folder, and a 256mb sd card for passwords so its probably something entirely different

[@Amos_Huclkeberry]

I have a printer that requires a driver to be installed. This cannot be done on immutable distros.

[@musicalneptunian]

Would an immutable distro block wine from working?

[@haydn-db8z]

Bazzite (immutable, Fedora-based) comes with Steam pre-installed and runs Proton, which is based on Wine.

[@MichaelNROH]

If it's not installed, then you probably need Flatpak Apps like Lutris, Bottles, etc. Those work fine

[@haydn-db8z]

@@MichaelNROH Lutris was seemingly not only preinstalled on my Bazzite install, but the Lutris icon is present by default in the Taskbar, alongside Steam. :D (And if Lutris _wasn't_ actually preinstalled, I must have installed it *very* easily as part of the first-run wizard that launches after Bazzite is installed.) Bazzite is super easy to install and use, and the built-in ability to run games through Steam will allow many Windows users to migrate easily. The only non-intuitive thing I had to do was install ProtonUp-QT to get an even better version of Proton than the one supplied by Steam, and there are KZbin videos available for that. The funniest thing (for me) is that I have a DVI-only, former mining GPU (RX 470 8GB). Yes, I can use a DVI -> HDMI adapter and atikmdag-patcher to get 4k on my TV, but audio sputters in Windows, perhaps due to DVI bandwidth. I was not able to get "hybrid graphics" working correctly in Windows (using the RX 470's GPU while outputting over my 12700K's iGPU/motherboard's HMDI port), but it worked automatically in Bazzite. Crazy stuff... Disclaimer: I use an AMD GPU, which of course works more easily than nVidia in Linux - at least for now.

[@nikichashadow]

i use LInux from scratch BTW

[@bhargavjitbhuyan9394]

You what?!

[@aravindmuthu5748]

I still can't understand, Android, a linux distro technically, has its system resources hidden yet could be seemlessly updated with all apps compatable. Why is that not the standard in the linux world??

[@MichaelNROH]

Because Android is proprietary, and thefore has elements and rules how you need to implement apps into the OS. It's also much bigger and companies develop their apps far ahead of the release of a new Android version. Such a "dictated" approach wouldn't work on Linux, because it wouldn't be possible to freely develop apps for it

[@CaffeinePyroxene]

For my personal use, I would never use an immutable distro. The reason i switched from Windows was the control over my system and giving up that, just makes it like Windows so it's a no no no

[@JohnnyThund3r]

Yeah... this really is a weird trend... It's like a hyper-fixation on security or trying to be "more like Mac" without any real good reason behind it other then "I'm not good enough at Linux not to mess it up" and asking someone else to do it for them. Like if that's what you want just install Chrome OS.

[@MinaSchloch]

You have a lot of control on "immutable" systems. They are not immutable. The word is just wrong. Just like running docker containers doesnt mean they are immutable. You can make changes to them, some like Fedora Atomic Desktops will always apply these changes to the vanilla updated image, some others (which I find a bit pointless) like OpenSUSE microOS or VanillaOS will just allow to modify the system however you want, without a "reset" feature

You can do "whatever" you want with the system... You just need some more steps to do it... Gaining resilience for a multiuser environment. I share my computer with 3 teenagers, I don't want them messing it up by following some weird tutorial online. And if they do... I want to have peace of mind that I can just roll it back.

[@CaffeinePyroxene]

in that case, yeah it makes sense to use the immutable distro, but if its only one person using the machine for personal use, then normal ones are good

[@bigpod]

actually in my opinion atomic "immutable" image based distros like fedora silverblue give you infinitly more control as traditional linux

[@dylanv.dmerwe5960]

Ublue!!!!!

[@shrirammadurantakam]

All other immutable distrios are kings until nix os enters the fray

[@oraz.]

I would say no

[@ArefinKarim]

I tried Vanilla OS once, could get my wifi drivers get working, so yeah thay are very far except for some kids for watching youtube, docs, so that they don't mess up the system.

[@ZaberfangX]

Is what I am using now, yeah if it don't come in the kernel or some weird off set then that can be a problem

[@originzz]

Why not try to focus the efforts where the user would benefit the most, like on phones and gaming devices?

[@saxtant]

Wow, we have AI now, my Linux machine is none of anyone's business, I had no idea people thought they could control your distro. Linux user of 30 years.

[@CathrineMacNiel]

huh? where do you get the idea of people controlling your distro?

[@MichaelNROH]

I literally have no idea what you want to express 😅

[@nikichashadow]

slould i buy a steam deck i dont have alot of steam games

[@EaglexEyeGaming]

Well the Steam deck is essentially a handheld gaming pc so you can use it like a normal desktop and play games from epic and gog using lutris and heroic

[@edfl497]

It depends on a few factors such as if steam is the main place you get games for due to the steamdeck being more of a console then a PC ( desktop mode is still there and it’s good for most tasks but I’d still personally carry around a laptop if you can afford to do so personally ) it’s still easy enough to install other games via heroic and lutris and adding them to steam but still tedious to do so imo just make sure the games you want to play are compatible via protondb if you care about retro games emudeck is worth a look to

[@haydn-db8z]

I know Steam lets me launch non-Steam games in Windows. If you can do the same in Linux, would any non-Steam games automatically get "Steam benefits" in Linux like Proton? Or would I have to use Lutris or Heroic?

[@EaglexEyeGaming]

@@haydn-db8z You can force steam play/proton in game or global settings in steam.

[@scrapp706]

canonical and redhat try not to take away all independence and fun of using linux challange: impossible

[@CathrineMacNiel]

what does canonical have to do with immutable distros? or even red hat (I don't think silverblue was their idea)

[@MichaelNROH]

Immutable distros are not about that. They are just image based. Doing updates like this is incredibly useful, since you can almost guruantee that no third party app causes issues

[@buneyecat]

Debian on the server, arch on the desktop. Thats how it always should be

[@BR0KK85]

Standards Standards Standards is what linux needs. Not bifurcation into another avenue of how to do things ... I guess we need a distro dictatorship if this is supposed to go anywhere. Linux on Desktop is simply unusable for normal people. 😅 Then again you Google something you might find an answer to your problem might .... Not guaranteed Don't go asking forums tho ...unless u like the pain that ensues. The gatekeeping in the Linux community is still alive and very strong!!! 😅

[@theworldoffun8997]

If Linus used immutable distro he wouldnt have been able to delete his desktop and complain about his distro breaking 😂

[@Dobaspl]

First, it still could. Second, it wouldn't survive the drivers installation.