this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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Gotta say... This is not how you'd generally do any of this. Where you get this info?
It's not how you "generally" do it because many immutable distro developers keep developing additional ways to do package management that are more and more complicated.
I think that's because the user can still fuck up their system by doing some stuff to those user files, like not managing their packages correctly. Note that for normal users anything that messes up their user experience equates to messing up "the system". But I don't really know, it's just a guess. I just run a normal distro where you can mess with everything (like god intended lol).
That's not the reason. On immutable distros, you can still mess up your flatpak packages, distrobox containers, homebrew packages, etc.
Only "OS" files like those in /bin prevent accidental modification and removal since you cannot directly change them, even with root.
wait: there's immutable versions of macos?
MacOS's has been immutable for a while now. But that's not what I was referring to. Homebrew also works on Linux, lots of CLI tools and libraries are available there. It does have some GUI apps, but not as many packaged as for MacOS.
i was aware that homebrew works on linux, i just assumed people would use apt/dnf/guix/whatever since it seems superior to me; but then again, i hardly ever touch homebrew besides my employer provided mac.
what applications does immutable macos have?
We are discussing immutable distros, where you don't have apt/dnf/guix/whatever installed on the host system. They are replaced with other package managers. On Ubuntu Core, that is snap. On Fedora Atomic, that is rpm-ostree, flatpak, and toolbox.
MacOS is immutable, there is no non-immutable version.
Bluefin maintainer here, you've described how Bluefin works except it's ~/.local/bin.
I am pretty sure we have not been developing package managers lol.
So if i were to "sudo dnf install neovim" on Bluefin, that would install Neovim to ~/.local/bin?
I didn't mean to say that Universal Blue specifically was making new package managers, but that in general new package managers have been created specifically to solve problems introduced by going immutable/atomic/image-based/whatever.
No they would
brew install neovim. System-level package management goes away entirely, that's the point.What new package managers? homebrew has been around for years. What problems are you describing? If you mean read only root that has been around since the 1980s. The problem as you describe it has been removed, you move on from package based entropy to image based systems.
This isn't a trend, modern linux is this way, it's just the desktop that has been behind until now.
I'm saying that we should be able to use package managers like DNF similarly to homebrew. Rather than managing system packages, it would only be used for packages the user installs. Whether it installs them into /usr/local, /home/dnf, ~/.local/bin doesn't matter. All that matters is that it's not managing system packages or mixing system-installed/user-installed packages.
Homebrew isn't perfect. Awhile ago I tried to go all homebrew for my packages, but
sshfsended up not working (maybe a SELinux issue?). So I had to fallback to overlaying the package. Simiarly, I tried to install tailscale from brew, couldn't get it to work.It's just that in "immutable" (I know how much you hate the term lol), there's package manager fatigue.
sshfsandtailscaledidn't work for me there.My thesis is essentially that we're creating too many package package managers with too many compromises. Traditional package management is far from perfect, but at least those package managers, you can do essentially anything. Brew could be that, if it had more GUI apps and maybe better SELinux integration (I say that not knowing for 100% sure that SELinux was the cause of my
sshfsissuse). I would like for people to take a step back and find simpler solutions, make a single package manager that can handle any kind of package.Edit: correction, tested again and sshfs is actually working, not sure what was causing the original issue. though I still have sshfs overlayed, maybe that provides some necessary dependency or SELinux tweak?