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submitted 11 months ago by JoeKlemmer@lemmy.myserv.one to c/linux@lemmy.ml

From The New Stack

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[-] catastrophicblues@lemmy.ca 11 points 11 months ago

Can someone tell me the recent hype about immutable distros? What exactly is the immutable part, and why is it attractive?

[-] misophist@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

The base OS is a known unchanging set of bits. Squirt this datastream onto a storage volume and boot to it and you have a known-working system. Then you can futz around with all the self-contained packaged apps you want, and no worries about weird interactions fucking over your whole system.

It's not for me, but I kinda see the appeal.

[-] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago

It's when you can't set the volume to 0% so that everyone around you has to hear how hard you're working.

[-] moreeni@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago

The system (the os files to be precise) is only mutable by package manager for specific tasks like updating. It can break certain workflows if the user wants to change system files, because they can't.

Bonuses from that are security and reproducibility. You can be sure that whatever package you have will look and behave exactly the same as on another device with the same OS. Malware won't be able to mess around with your OS so trivially as it does on mutable distros.

[-] catastrophicblues@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago

Interesting. Sounds like DevOps folks would love it. Maybe I’ll look into it more. Thanks!

this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
92 points (76.4% liked)

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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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