I'd be interested in this! I moved my handheld to SteamOS from Cachy HE because it felt kind of unstable.
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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Nice to hear! It might be the case that you will have to do some tinkering at first, but I would really appreciate any info I can get so I can get this to be stable as fast as possible!
Second and last question: Will it support other init systems other than systemd?
Honestly, I haven't even thought about that yet. I don't see anything speaking against using other init systems at first glance, but that's gonna be very low on my future priorities rn. If I should have some spare time after checking every mayor box then sure, I don't mind systemd but I'm also not a huge fan.
Is your distro Pu-239 going to be The Bomb?
~~HiroshimaOS~~
May as well be called TrumpOS, we are so dead
CachyOS automatically does bootable BTRFS snapshots with every update. I don’t really see any advantage of atomic distros over this.
Can't speak much about OP's distro or CachyOS, but I can talk about how Fedora Atomic differs from simply doing btrfs backups before every update.
First, updates are not the only thing that can modify the base system. Installing packages, installing plugins or extensions, manual user modifications, etc, can all end up bricking the system. Fedora Atomic makes the base system immutable so that the only way of making modifications is via rpm-ostree, which ensures that you always have a way to rollback.
Second, one of the issues with traditional update mechanisms is that over time, updates might not do proper clean-up and leave artifacts. This is a harder problem than people realize, because users can have all sorts of permutations of packages and versions installed, and the update mechanism has to account for all of them. Over time, and many updates, a system can accumulate tons of small update errors and finally fall over. I've had this issue myself and heard of this issue from multiple sources. Fedora Atomic solves this by ensuring that every update is like a complete re-install.
Third, since every Fedora Atomic user uses the same base system as their distro maintainers, they can be sure that their base system is well tested. Bugs are more reproducible, and thus can be fixed faster. None of those "works on my system, you're on your own" issues.
Fourth, this one isn't a benefit to the user but the community. Fedora Atomic (and universal blue) distros are easy to fork. This is why there are so many flavors now. Bluefin, Aurora, Bazzite, Secureblue, Wayblue, etc. Instead of one generic distro with a huge community relying on a few maintainers, like Fedora used to have, now you have smaller specialized communities with their own leaders, and users can choose which community they align with more. And you can even switch communities, since rpm-ostree allows you to "rebase" to a different distro (eg Aurora -> Bazzite).
My problem with all of those systems is they, by definition, must be very opinionated as to what the base system is. A common counter argument is using various types of "layers" (with differing terminology depending on distro or technology used) but the fact that even for "just" Fedora there are so many bases to choose from shows how that is limited in practice, and slight differences in system preferences makes the "one clean base you can then build from" not as flexible as implied.
I love the idea of them, and definitely recommend them for a new user that doesn't care what is under the hood, but as soon as you start wanting to change core pieces they start getting more and more in your way, and "rolling back to a clean base" is no longer useful.
I think Nix has the closest ideal to what I would like for myself, but I don't like the language of its build files and the fact that the recommended way to do things is not the way the official docs describe is too off-putting, so I just run back to my Arch setup. 10 minutes of package selection and installing is more than simple enough for me if I ever need to rebuild and I get to choose exactly what stacks I am using.
With power comes responsibility. Flexibility is power, and the easier it is to modify core system components, the easier it is for you to mess them up as well.
I am not a Fedora Atomic maintainer or lead, so this is just my perspective from the outside, but the core ideology behind it is to have a tailored opinionated experience for user. I remember Bluefin's lead dev saying something like "I want that 'defaults' lifestyle". It's the experience of having everything just work out of the box, and be maintained for you.
With Fedora Atomic, the user chooses less responsibility, and thus has less power.
On the flip side you have NixOS and Arch. Maximum power and maximum responsibility. If the world starts moving towards a new window compositor (think X11 -> Wayland), you now have to figure out how to do that migration yourself. If there are customizations that you added that aren't Wayland compatible, you have to figure out how to work them out. It's a ton of little decisions. Whereas for an opinionated distro, you just trust that the maintainers handled it and just update your system. Which is exactly what happened for me, as a Fedora user. One day I was using X11, and then the next I was using Wayland, no manual configuration on my part.
This is why I recommend atomic distros to beginners. Beginners don't have the knowledge to handle the responsibility of maintaining a distro. They don't know why X11 is insecure, what systemd is, how linux permissions work. They need these guard rails. Once they get more familiar with the ecosystem they can choose to install a more customizeable distro.
Totally agree. I think they have their place for sure - though I do get annoyed when they are touted as being "the future of distros" or an objectively better approach.
I think they are a great approach of the pros and cons line up in the direction you want (give me a decent system I don't need to think about) and the base stack matches your preferences reasonably.
Very simple reason: you won't even notice that something broke since the distro will fall back onto the previous version automatically
I'd rather know what's going on. Silently working around a problem is how you end up with a system no longer set up the way you think it is.
It''s not working around the issue, it's just refusing to update. You shouldn't need to manually rollback a system that doesn't boot. And you shouldn't need to manually troubleshoot or fix it either. Just report the failing update and wait for it to be fixed.
a system no longer set up the way you think it is.
The point of most atomic distros is that it's set up for you. If you want to manually investigate around and work around the issue yourself, then an atomic distro is probably not for you.
Silently working around a problem is how you end up with a system no longer set up the way you think it is.
It’'s not working around the issue, it’s just refusing to update. You shouldn’t need to manually rollback a system that doesn’t boot. And you shouldn’t need to manually troubleshoot or fix it either. Just report the failing update and wait for it to be fixed.
Jup, I think that explains my point perfectly, thank you!
The point of most atomic distros is that it’s set up for you. If you want to manually investigate around and work around the issue yourself, then an atomic distro is probably not for you.
I'd add to this that my distro will just spare you the time to unfuck your system. What you do about the fact that the update failed is still up to you to figure out, but at least you start the figuring out process in your damn DE. That in no way is "silently changing how your system works", that's literally just saving you time by doing something that you would have to manually do yourself if it was even a possibility.
UPDATE
I took your suggestions to heart and updated the website to reflect the changes I implemented today. The big change is that I found a way to keep pacman fully intact and functioning, but make it apply the changes atomically. So now this isn't just limited to Flatpaks, but LITERALLY Arch Linux but made atomic.
The new intro reads:
"Plutonium-239 is Arch Linux, made atomic. It combines the rolling release model of Arch Linux with an atomically updated root filesystem inspired by SteamOS on top of the heavily optimized CachyOS performance kernel. Unlike immutable distributions that lock you out of the native package manager and force you into sandboxes, Pu-239 keeps the core Arch experience intact. You still get the full power of pacman and the official Arch repositories, with the peace of mind of an unbreakable safety net underneath."
For more information, please check out the updated "How it works" section. Thank you all a lot for the feedback!
Not personally interested,but a big question with something like this is how much time you have and how do you plan to maintain it in the long term? Don’t want to dissuade you, but I really don’t know if we need yet another distribution based on arch.
Yeah I get you, recently with everyone vibe-coding their stuff, there have been a lot of useless distros, but I really feel like I'm onto something useful. I'm self employed and basically temporarily took on less orders so I can work on this full-time until I get the first version out and actual full on development turns into maintaining and improving. I can definitely manage it and actually look forward to it as it's super fun to me! Also I used today to make some changes as you can read in the comment I just left.
I have no idea what people keep talking about when they say Arch/CachyOS is "unstable". I have had so many more issues with running Debian (usually on servers) over the years. Since I swapped my desktop to CachyOS over a year ago, I have basically no issues at all. Just one very minor thing that fixed itself after a few days (bug in kde on new version released). For like 15 months of use, that's spectacular compared to any other system I've ever used (especially including Debian and of course Windows, obviously).
What exactly is the goal? How do you make "no issues" and "it just works" more stable?
Stable vs Unstable does not mean anything to do with bugginess or prone to breakage.
It literally just means package version changes.
Stable meaning packages update slowly and only minor versions or security.
Unstable means packages update frequently including major versions
Inherently rolling releases are unstable.
My personal experience too is that Arch has been the best distro for lack of bugs and issues on my machines than Fedora or Debian etc.
Stable vs Unstable does not mean anything to do with bugginess or prone to breakage
It would be great if that's how the words were actually used, but in most discussions I've seen it is certainly not the case. Also, when talking to new users, they are supposed to magically understand and know the word is used in a niche way in this context? It certainly won't be what they take from it when hearing or reading it.
Unstable means packages update frequently including major versions
That's what we have rolling or bleeding edge for. Sure, unstable can mean that when used within the same project/context. So having different releases be stable and unstable for the same thing, but across projects/distros that's just confusing, especially for new people. Yes I'm aware of the historic reasons and the roots in software development, but I'd argue it isn't helpful to convey the practical reality of the differences.
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This is why we should call it "bleeding edge" rather than "unstable" it's a much more accurate name and it exemplifies the advantages (albeit leaving out the (minor) disadvantages)
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Very interesting approach, please keep us posted and best of luck!
Edit: just thought, have you ever heard of RakuOS ? They seem to have similar ideas, about the unlocking while still atomic.
Check out the comment I just left, I implemented a solution that pacman is now completely usable so it's literally just vanilla Arch but atomic instead of being Flatpak-only!
Didn't know about RakuOS, nice! "RakuOS, but Arch" is exactly how Pu-239 sounds like, and I like it 😄
I find both projects very interesting too. I see some distro hopping incoming... Well, least try it out on my secondary device.
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