Finally got tired of my Windows 11 install, and I considered a Linux move. For years and years, I tried to move over, even all the way back in the Ubuntu 16.04 days, even daily drove for a few months, but there would always be something that would make me move back (including but not limited to HDR, support for my old iPod, Outlook calendars, so on). However, on my most recent attempt (running Arch and KDE) things just… work? Yeah, some command line trickery is needed for stuff like HDR gaming (and turns out the screenshots work now, they just get downsampled to SDR by Steam), but this works so so much better than my previous attempts to move over. In recent years, the experience is just so much more polished than it used to be. The situation is no longer “that won’t work”, it is “you can do that, with some minor tweaks”. All my Steam games work nearly perfectly, with only a few changes like Proton GE needed. There are now even improvements like how text on my QD-OLED monitor (which is notoriously fuzzy on Windows) is crisp and clear, or how my Xbox controller’s screenshot button works over Bluetooth on Steam unlike Windows which ignores the button entirely over Bluetooth. Things are really looking up!
Honestly, I just use Kubuntu. It just works, out of the box, with no fuckery involved and I can customize it as I want. You can read more about what I think about immutable distros in my blog post
While your blogpost isn’t completely right, it’s also not completely wrong.
You can absolutely customize image based distros, just as much as package manager based ones. You just need to do it from upstream, to modify the image itself, not from bottom-up like usually.
uBlue is the best example. There are already hundreds of available customized images around, including for Hyprland, Deepin, and much more.
That’s why immutable is often considered the wrong term for it. Image based, or atomic, is way better fitting.
One of the biggest pros, apart from the lack of maintenance needed (updating, etc.) is the reproducibility.
It’s very similar to Android, where every phone is the same.
Therefore, every bug is the same too, which is why the devs can roll out patches that fix everyone’s install at once.
Also, every update is basically a “reinstall lite”, so no package drift occours.
This makes them way less buggy in my experience.
I used the normal Fedora KDE spin for example, and after a few months there often came weird bugs that only affected my install.
Since the time I use Atomic, none of those problems came back.
Even if you decide to utilize BTRFS-snapper, which you suggested, the underlying system drifts apart from the original install.
Also, instead of Kubuntu, I would recommend the Fedora KDE spin or just Debian with KDE, if you really want to use something traditional.
I just don’t see any reason to not run Kinoite compared to a non-atomic distro, and it will only get better in the future.
(In reply to the post) Actually, I’ve found my immutable distro of choice (Silverblue) to be a lot of fun to tinker in (not with), but you just have to accept that tinkering does work a bit different here, with toolbox/containers instead of your actual host system to install most stuff you want to try etc. on
Honestly, I use X, Y and Z
It works out of the box (basically everyone here)