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!

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      … why would you want to install packages with sudo? The proper way is to install them (as a user, not root) using rpm-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?

        • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 months ago

          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).

            • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
              1·
              2 months ago

              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).

                • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
                  2·
                  2 months ago

                  All that’s totally fine! I wasn’t trying to convince you. I just don’t want newbies to get discouraged by reading “all this stuff is non-standard and you can’t tinker and do stuff”. Because you can, it’s the same stuff.