this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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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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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (8 children)

It's subjective. I freaking love Bazzite, it works for me. Not the other way around.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (6 children)

I remain interested in the immutables or atomic distros because I know a lot of smart people that swear by them.

I also don't try them just yet because I know a lot of dumb people like me that end up breaking a lot of stuff before quitting them altogether.

They could be amazing and just not perfected yet or they may be a meme and no one's proved it outright just yet. Will be lurking this thread either way lool :D

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

These distros are great for beginners or less technically savvy. They're really just harder for people who have been using Linux forever and are very accustomed to the old ways.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (3 children)

is nixos considered immutable or mutable? kind of has characteristics of both.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I'd argue it's closer to a mutable distro than an immutable one.

Nixos tends to lean on the term reproducible instead of immutable, because you can have settings (e.g files in /etc & ~/.config) changed outside of nix's purview, it just won't be reproducible and may be overwritten by nix.

You can build an 'immutable' environment on nix, but rather than storing changes as transactions like rpm-ostree, it'll modify path in /nix/store and symlink it. Sure, you can store the internal representation of those changes in a git repo, but that is not the same thing as the changes themselves; if the nixpkgs implementation of a config option changes, the translation on your machine does too.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Nixos tends to lean on the term reproducible instead of immutable, because you can have settings (e.g files in /etc & ~/.config) changed outside of nix's purview, it just won't be reproducible and may be overwritten by nix.

Interesting. If possible, could you more explicitly draw comparisons on how this isn't quite the same over on say Fedora Atomic? Like, sure changes of /etc are (at least by default) being kept track of. But you indeed can change it. libostree doesn't even care what you do in your home folder. Thus, changes to e.g. ~/.config (and everything else in /var^[1]^) are kept nowhere else by default.


  1. Which happens to be more crowded than on other distros as folders like /opt are actually found here as well.
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

~/.config is probably a poor comparison on my part; it's management is actually done by home-manager rather than Nixos proper, and I can't think of another OS that fills this same role.

Nixos generates (for example) /etc/systemd/network to a path in /nix/store and symlinks it to it's appropriate locations. After the files are generated the appropriate /nix/store paths are (re-mounted? Over-mounted? I'm not sure the implementation) made read-only (by default), but anything that isn't generated is absolutely both mutable and untracked, and that "not tracking everything in /etc" is more what I'm going on about.

If you use Nixos as intended (when you find that a package is lacking a config option you want, create your own nix option internally) the distro is effectively immutable, but if you use Nixos for anything moderately complex that changes frequently e.g. a desktop os, you eventually run into the choice: become competent enough to basically be a nixpkgs contributor, or abandon absolute immutability.

I think the first option is worth it, and did go down that route, but it is unreasonable to expect the average Linux consumer to do so, and so something like fedora atomic is going to remain more "immutable" for them than nixos.

This need to git gud is thankfully lessening with every commit to nixpkgs, and most people can already get to most places without writing their own set of nix options or learning how to parse //random markup language// into nix, but you'll eventually run into the barrier.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Could you share some pics (without anything private ofc) of bazzite? I wanted to try it but I couldn't use it as live distro. My main problem is arch because I'm used to apt and I find pacman or whatever it uses difficult for me (nothing I can't learn ofc)

I love the idea of getting a fresh image for every update

What do you mean? Thanks

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Isn't bazzite fedora-based? Meaning you use dnf instead of apt or pacman.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I don't know what it uses and as someone who always used apt, pacman or dnf is hard to understand

Edit: Not that I can't learn.. Just saying is hard for me

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