this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Can't we isolate DEs somehow? They've been always the most complicated and fragile part that brings down the whole system.
I wish I could containerize them easily, but it's so hard.
It's easy enough to containerize an entire DE - but if you did that, you be basically running everything from inside the container - at which point you're back to square one. You're just shifting the problem from the host to the container, and the solution to fix both is the same: restore from a snapshot, reinstall, or actually try and fix the issue.
Also, a DE shouldn't bring down the whole system btw - you should always be able to switch to a second TTY to recover, and/or have a backup lightweight DE that you can switch to from your logon screen. Unless of course something really broke and caused a kernel panic and your system is fully frozen (which should be a rare occurrence on Linux-friendly hardware).
Anyways, a realistic solution would be to use an immutable distro, such as one of the Fedora Atomic/uBlue distros. The kind of breakage mentioned by OP won't be possible in such a distro, because your entire system gets updated as a single image, so it either works or it doesn't (an atomic operation), and in the event it doesn't work, you can always switch back to a previous image from the boot menu instantly. You can "pin" known good images, and this sort of image operations makes it easy to switch between latest testing/stable image version, or even switch between entire DEs with a single command. So if your KDE 6 is broken, not only can you just go back to KDE 5 with a single reboot, you can also switch to a GNOME image, or rebase to something else entirely, without messing up anything, without creating a dependency hell.