this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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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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How is the base image updated though? By applying updates to software. There's no magic. You're just doing that on "one" system and cloning it to others. You gain homogeneity downstream, sure. But it's no easier for the upstream developers to find/fix bugs than with any other distro necessarily.
Somebody upstream still needs to be sorting out the bugs and security fixes. The advantage here is that I can run older versions easily because they are complete snapshots. Rollback/rollforward are the major advantages of an IBD to me as it allows you to easily test an upgrade to see if it works and then revert if it doesn't. You can get similar functionality with fancy btrfs/lvm/zfs snapshotting as well, but it's different and may require some effort to restore.
This is the part I take issue with most. If, and I realize this is a significant "if"[1], somebody is using the standard repos and installing packages using the package manager and flatpak/snap/etc. then there will be very little "drift" between libraries in the upstream and on the local system. apt/dnf/yum are quite good at what they do. After doing an "apt update" I'm up-to-date with the current Debian for things I have installed from there. There's nothing magical about snapshotting that and delivering it instead.
[1] You could make a case that maybe I've added a bunch of other upstream repos and that can lead to differences. But you can also make the case that people using IBDs can slipstream in package changes as well. If you want stability, don't do that.
Sure? But you seem to be ignoring hardware differences. Distro maintainers have a small slice of available hardware on which to test. I can't test my code on every CPU, video card, motherboard, etc. There could easily be a driver bug that affects some card I have that none of the distro maintainers has access to and so it's not tested. This you see quite a bit actually where sometimes even different revisions of a laptop in the same model/family will break Linux compatibility due to a different wifi chip being used.
Personal opinion - I think IBDs will go away and flatpak/etc. will remain. If applications are containerized then they are mostly isolated from the host anyway which is the real benefit. May be wrong though.