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

      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.

            • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
              1·
              2 months ago

              Definitely not, this kind of system is perfect for newbies. You have a distrobox you can break all day long, and your main system stays nice and working.

              That’s what I mean. You put it like it’s incredibly complicated and strange, when there’s pretty much only upsides. Do you have any idea how much time I’ve spent on various distributions to debug NVidia issues? Everything is working perfectly now, and it has for months. I’ve never had this good of a Linux experience.

                • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  2 months ago

                  Hey! So I have no experience with the Arch-based immutable systems (beyond my own Steam Deck), but it seems like they don’t support layering the way Fedora does with ostree. The easiest solution for you would be to create a script that you can execute after every update - that should at least keep the work to a minimum. If that’s not good enough Bazzite is probably your best bet. I really like the atomic Fedora systems, but I can understand not wanting to re-do your setup if it’s working well!