Atomic and immutable is a game changer for IT. It is essentially bulletproof, everything is containerized, packages run very little risk of breaking the system. But, it is still just as customizable and flexible in the ways that matter, the user experience. It is fine to be opinionated about particular modules and pieces on your own system, but that means turning into a sys admin, I was a sys admin when I was paid to do it, it left me with no desire to do sys admin. Now I just let it rip, but still have the knowledge to tinker when and if I want to, it’s no longer mandatory. Really appreciate that nowadays.
For example, a recent Bazzite update was busted in a particular way such that my laptop wouldn’t boot. No problem, rollback fearlessly to a previous system image, and wait with a perfectly working machine. Two weeks later, someone else figured it out, fixed it, pushed it into stable, and now the laptop updates and boots the new image without issues. No need to meddle with snapper or limine myself. The OS itself is its own snapshot system already built-in, with minimal down time and zero risk of data loss.
Every once in a while I get the itch to tinker with something, but it is aimed at clear and specific projects in my homelab and not at just running a basic functional desktop.
Oh there are absolutely benefits to using an Atomi distro. However, for someone such as myself where I am constantly modifying my systems it doesn’t make a lot of sense. For an end user that I would deploy an OS for it would make for easier support of their system. Like, if I were to get my mother to use Linux, I would choose an Atomic distro. And make it painless for me to support. She wouldn’t do much customization that would require the same level of flexibility I would need for myself.
By trade I am a sys admin. So it’s an easy thing for me to do for myself. I do sys admin work by day, and by night. The difference between the two is that for work I am shackled to the likes of Microsoft products. And by night, I am admin over a system that I love. So it’s easily separatable for me. But I get it, you do something all day, you may not want to do it all night too.
Which, all this discussion brings to me one of my favorite thing about Linux. It can be built and used for such a wide variety of use cases, wants and needs. Not being locked into one way of using it is beautiful.
Atomic and immutable is a game changer for IT. It is essentially bulletproof, everything is containerized, packages run very little risk of breaking the system. But, it is still just as customizable and flexible in the ways that matter, the user experience. It is fine to be opinionated about particular modules and pieces on your own system, but that means turning into a sys admin, I was a sys admin when I was paid to do it, it left me with no desire to do sys admin. Now I just let it rip, but still have the knowledge to tinker when and if I want to, it’s no longer mandatory. Really appreciate that nowadays.
For example, a recent Bazzite update was busted in a particular way such that my laptop wouldn’t boot. No problem, rollback fearlessly to a previous system image, and wait with a perfectly working machine. Two weeks later, someone else figured it out, fixed it, pushed it into stable, and now the laptop updates and boots the new image without issues. No need to meddle with snapper or limine myself. The OS itself is its own snapshot system already built-in, with minimal down time and zero risk of data loss.
Every once in a while I get the itch to tinker with something, but it is aimed at clear and specific projects in my homelab and not at just running a basic functional desktop.
Oh there are absolutely benefits to using an Atomi distro. However, for someone such as myself where I am constantly modifying my systems it doesn’t make a lot of sense. For an end user that I would deploy an OS for it would make for easier support of their system. Like, if I were to get my mother to use Linux, I would choose an Atomic distro. And make it painless for me to support. She wouldn’t do much customization that would require the same level of flexibility I would need for myself.
By trade I am a sys admin. So it’s an easy thing for me to do for myself. I do sys admin work by day, and by night. The difference between the two is that for work I am shackled to the likes of Microsoft products. And by night, I am admin over a system that I love. So it’s easily separatable for me. But I get it, you do something all day, you may not want to do it all night too.
Which, all this discussion brings to me one of my favorite thing about Linux. It can be built and used for such a wide variety of use cases, wants and needs. Not being locked into one way of using it is beautiful.