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!

  • noodles@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    3 days ago

    Secure != stable Immutable distros aren’t always more secure but rather more stable and hard to break Also btw nixos can apply updates without rebooting

      • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
        0·
        3 days ago

        NixOS is immutable and atomic, but it isn’t image-based.

        Immutable simply refers to how the running system configuration can’t be changed by simply putting a file somewhere (e.g. copy a binary to /bin, which is a bad idea).

        For example, Fedora Atomic and derivatives are image based, although they are more flexible than the A/B types like SteamOS.

        OpenSUSE MicroOS uses btrfs snapshots to apply updates atomically, and is more flexible than most image based immutable distros.

        Edit: But I don’t think those terms have a single definition, so how would you differentiate these terms?

        • ivn@jlai.luEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          I’m on NixOS right now and just dropped a Chewy in my /bin, only had to sudo touch /bin/chewy.

          • priapus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            That doesn’t make it not immutable. /bin is not a critical directory in NixOS, only the contents of /nix are, which are immutable. /bin isn’t even part of your path by default.

            • ivn@jlai.luEnglish
              0·
              2 days ago

              Well that was an approximation to keep it simple and disprove the given example. There are other directories in the root filesystem that are in the path by default, or used in some other critical way (like /etc). Even if they are links to directories in the nix store you can replace the link.

          • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
            0·
            2 days ago

            Good point. I’ll have to stop using immutable and stay with atomic (and declarative).

            Interestingly /bin and /usr/bin are not in PATH by default, so /bin/chewy can only be executed by its path directly and won’t affect the systems reliability.

          • zwerdlds@lemmy.ml
            0·
            2 days ago

            At the surface, you can pin the commit you pull packages from, but if you want to go deeper, you can essentially define your own channel and dependent binaries, allowing you to store every aspect of how a generation is built.

            • ivn@jlai.luEnglish
              0·
              2 days ago

              Yes, or use flakes which gives you a lockfile pinning everything. But this is related to reproducibility, not immutability.

                • ivn@jlai.luEnglish
                  0·
                  2 days ago

                  Isn’t immutability related to the root filesystem being read-only? I can write on my root filesystem, even if it’s mostly links to the store I can replace those links.

                  • zwerdlds@lemmy.ml
                    0·
                    2 days ago

                    I guess that’s true, tbh the reproducibility aspect is really what I like about nix, and I guess I’m confusing a bit here. I guess I’m saying nix gives a good compromise with immutable generations and high repro, but you’ve convinced me it’s not immutable per-se.

      • jamesbunagna@discuss.online
        0·
        3 days ago

        In your opinion, when can we refer to a distro as being immutable? How do you regard the likes of Fedora Atomic, openSUSE Aeon or Vanilla OS? Are any of these immutable in your opinion?

        • ivn@jlai.luEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          To be honest I don’t know these very well. I only use NixOS. My understanding is that in an immutable distribution the root filesystem is read-only. Granted in NixOS the nix store is immutable and most things in the root filesystem are just links to the nix store, but the root filesystem itself is not read-only.