this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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Immutable Distro Opinions (www.linuxfordevices.com)
submitted 1 month ago by Kroxx@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I recently took up Bazzite from mint and I love it! After using it for a few days I found out it was an immutable distro, after looking into what that is I thought it was a great idea. I love the idea of getting a fresh image for every update, I think for businesses/ less tech savvy people it adds another layer of protection from self harm because you can't mess with the root without extra steps.

For anyone who isn't familiar with immutable distros I attached a picture of mutable vs immutable, I don't want to describe it because I am still learning.

My question is: what does the community think of it?

Do the downsides outweigh the benefits or vice versa?

Could this help Linux reach more mainstream audiences?

Any other input would be appreciated!

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[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Since the idea is that the "root partition" is immutable, serious question:

How do you fix a hardware config issue or a distro packaging / provision issue in an immutable distro?

Several times in my Linux history I've found that, for example, I need to remove package-provided files from the ALSA files in /usr/share/alsa in order for the setup to work with my particular chipset (which has a hardware bug). Other times, I've found that even if I set up a custom .XCompose file in my $HOME, some applications insist on reading the Compose files in /usr/share/X11/locale instead, which means I need to be able to edit or remove those files. In order to add custom themes, I need to be able to add them to /usr/share/{icons,themes}, since replicating those themes for each $HOME in the system is a notorious waste of space and not all applications seem to respect /usr/local/share. Etc.

Unless I'm mistaken on how immutable systems work, I'm not sure immutable systems are really useful to someone who actually wants to or needs to power user Linux, or customize past the "branding locking" that environments like Gnome have been aiming for for like a decade.

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[–] Klingenrenner@feddit.org 3 points 1 month ago

I really appreciate rarely seeing the message "update complete, please reboot now". I would consider myself on the tech savvy side though.

[–] kylo@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Has anyone had good success with setting up a development environment in an immutable distro? I love the entire concept because it fits with a lot of my other software preferences, but the tools for containerized dev environments felt frustrating.

Like, what do you do for your editor? vscode + devcontainers feel like the best option, but it's rough when I need other IDEs (like I use some of the Jetbrains products). Stuff like toolbox works well too, but to get an editor in that, you have to install it in each one, or make a container that has it built in.

Otherwise, I'll stick with plain Fedora — I use flatpaks for all of my apps anyways (except my editor)

[–] ahal@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I do my main development with Bazzite. I use the Neovim flatpak for my editor and toolbox for builds and such.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Running cli apps like neo vim from a flatpak is frustrating... "flatpak run com.something.neovim" is just the worst way to handle things. Complete deal breaker.

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[–] marlowe221@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Personally, I have found the developer experience on Bluefin-dx (the only one I’ve tried…) to be…. mixed.

VSCode + Devcontainers, which are the recommended path, are pretty fiddly. I have spent as much time trying to get them to behave themselves as I have actually writing code.

Personally, I’ve resorted to using Homebrew to install dev tools. The CLI tools it installs are sandboxed to the user’s home directory and they have everything.

It’s not containers - I deploy stuff in containers all the time. But, at least right now, the tooling to actually develop inside containers is kind of awkward. Or at least that’s been my experience so far.

I think the ublue project is fantastic and I really like what they are doing. But most of the world of developer tooling just isn’t there yet. Everything you can think of has instructions on how to get it going in Ubuntu in a traditional installation. We just aren’t there yet with things like Devcontainers.

[–] asap@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Using brew is the recommended method on uBlue, so you're already doing the right thing.

That being said, I use Jetbrains and devcontainers on Bluefin-DX and it's been flawless for me, straight out of the box.

[–] marlowe221@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Hmmm, interesting. I like brew, for sure. And devcontainers worked ok for me when I was working on something by myself.

But as soon as I started working on a side project with a friend, who uses Ubuntu and was not trying to develop inside a container, things got more complicated and I decided to just use brew instead. I’m sure I could have figured it out, but we are both working full time and have families and are just doing this for fun. I didn’t want to hold us up!

Our little project’s back end runs in a docker compose with a Postgres instance. It’s no problem to run it like that for testing.

Maybe a re-read of the documentation for devcontainers would help…

[–] asap@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I use Jetbrains, devcontainers, and distrobox on Bluefin-DX and it has been flawless out of the box. There's a single command to install the Jetbrains toolbox, which let's you then manage all their apps.

Couldn't recommend it enough, made my development lifecycle so easy.

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[–] WellTheresYourCobbler@hexbear.net 2 points 1 month ago

I switched to silver blue after a bad update and my experience has been almost identical if not smoother than standard fedora

[–] bruhduh@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Is there debian based immutable distro?

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