Honestly, my current stance on immutable distros is: why don’t you have a mutable distro and just try to follow the best practices without being forced to?
Install flatpaks, use Distrobox when something is only available as a standard package, but doesn’t actually depend on non-isolated system interaction, etc.
This way, nothing breaks the way it does with immutable distros, but you still have a reasonable level of confidence in your system.
For home? Yes. For professional use where you have to deploy and support tens to hundreds of desktops? Immutable + a proper build tool chain is the best thing since sliced bread. And when you already have that, a copy of that for home makes it good for home use too.
If we got to the point where popular machines had custom images with all the necessary extra drivers etc, it might be a value add. But for now I’m not seeing a huge benefit
I initially tried guix -> switched to nix with home-manager because it’s got a lot better repos -> installed all user packages through nix on Debian -> nixos
Before nixos I used flatpaks for some packages because nixgl seems abandoned.
To me, the main advantage of using an atomic distro is that I use my own custom image. It comes with all the packages I need from rpm, and all of my config included. Switching between different machines is a breeze now.
BlueBuild makes creating custom images super easy.
Dude. Find a security guy who knows about validation and supply chain risks. Tell that person those two phrases. Learning should commence if they’re any good.
Honestly, my current stance on immutable distros is: why don’t you have a mutable distro and just try to follow the best practices without being forced to?
Install flatpaks, use Distrobox when something is only available as a standard package, but doesn’t actually depend on non-isolated system interaction, etc.
This way, nothing breaks the way it does with immutable distros, but you still have a reasonable level of confidence in your system.
For home? Yes. For professional use where you have to deploy and support tens to hundreds of desktops? Immutable + a proper build tool chain is the best thing since sliced bread. And when you already have that, a copy of that for home makes it good for home use too.
Sure, I had to make that distinction. I only mean personal home use here.
Yeah, I’m leaning toward this option tbh.
If we got to the point where popular machines had custom images with all the necessary extra drivers etc, it might be a value add. But for now I’m not seeing a huge benefit
I initially tried guix -> switched to nix with home-manager because it’s got a lot better repos -> installed all user packages through nix on Debian -> nixos
Before nixos I used flatpaks for some packages because nixgl seems abandoned.
To me, the main advantage of using an atomic distro is that I use my own custom image. It comes with all the packages I need from rpm, and all of my config included. Switching between different machines is a breeze now.
BlueBuild makes creating custom images super easy.
Fair point!
But again, this is mostly useful in a production environment, not as a home user imo.
Dude. Find a security guy who knows about validation and supply chain risks. Tell that person those two phrases. Learning should commence if they’re any good.
Wow.
We’re talking risk for the system here.