this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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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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Besides the somewhat unfortunate and false 'immutable' name, what makes them inflexible according to you?
Can't install a new system package for most immutable distros without going through some magic incantation, then doing a reboot as an example.
Everything immutable is designed to be inflexible for the user. Am not saying that it's a bad thing if that's what you clearly want.
First of all, thank you for replying 💙 !
blendOS: Replace
sudo pacman -Syuwithsystem installFedora's 'immutable' distros: Replace
sudo dnf installwithrpm-ostree installopenSUSE's 'immutable' distros: Replace
sudo zypper installwithsudo transactional-update pkg installWhile Guix and NixOS offer somewhat similar functionality with their
guix installandnix-env -iAcommands respectively, usage of said comments are rarely done by advanced users as other means to install packages are more sophisticated. And in terms of how sophisticated installing a mere package can get, one might argue that Guix and NixOS are to 'immutable' distros what Gentoo is to mutable distros.And with that we just went over the 'immutable' distros that are prevalent in 95% of the discourse (besides Vanilla OS; but that one's in a major overhaul) and none of the commands found above strike me as particularly hard. Though, of course, your mileage may vary.
I'll just briefly mention that
--apply-liveexist for Fedora's immutable distros if you like living on the edge. Furthermore, both Guix and NixOS don't require a reboot in most cases. Finally, while the soft-reboot feature from systemd benefits all distros, one can't deny how impactful it is to 'immutable' distros in particular.laughs in NixOS being as flexible as Arch, having about the same number of packages and better stability, as well as offering rollbacks, a stable release if you want that breadth of package availability on a static release system, that also has a declarative configuration, making it far, far easier to set up over time, or on multiple machines
NixOS is very different from something like Fedora Silverblue or MicroOS. Am not even sure we are talking about the same thing here.
Still immutable. You can't make a claim about all immutable systems, when some don't follow the same principles and don't necessarily have the same limitations. With SilverBlue you can still use rpm-ostree and I think it is also possible to install such packages on MicroOS, but I don't know how.
Found an article that clearly describes what immutable distros are. I don't know where NixOS fits in all this.
My claim about them being inflexible is because that's how they are designed. Doesn't take 5 minutes to come to that conclusion compared to traditional distros.
They are not as flexible, but claiming them to be inflexible creates a false perception. It might not be as easy to change some parts of them, but it is certainly possible
An saying that's how they are designed.