Upstream images vs bazzite: https://github.com/ublue-os/countme/blob/main/growth_upstream_with_bazzite.svg
My prediction: bazzite may have more installs than Fedora KDE by the end of the year.
Upstream images vs bazzite: https://github.com/ublue-os/countme/blob/main/growth_upstream_with_bazzite.svg
My prediction: bazzite may have more installs than Fedora KDE by the end of the year.
A htpc in which you just need to launch media
A steam Deck like handheld in which you just want your game launcher
A PC for a kid whom you don’t want messing around with system files
A PC for your technologically inept family members to just use as an email/browser/word processor
I honestly think the kid example is a counter example. Kids now don’t understand technology, because we try to keep them so far away from how it actually works. I’m very technologically literate because I was messing around with my system as a kid.
It’s the same as how older generations can take apart an engine, and most people now can’t even change their own oil. We try to “protect” users from the technology, and they never learn how it works. No, they should be given access to break it. That’s how you learn how it functions.
Because when I finish my 10 hour shift, get home from my 2 hour commute, to my 6 year old kid crying because she managed to fuck her Minecraft machine up somehow, I don’t want to spend my only free half hour that day trying to work or what she did.
That’s not a learning opportunity for her. Even if she had the patience to sit there and watch me try to fix it, she won’t r get what I’m doing. And after getting up at 5.30, getting home at 7.30 watch how good I am at not just swearing at the thing instead.
Rsync each week changes to a network share with an A/B layout, switching backup targeted back and forth each week. Something breaks? Remote in, rsync back, by the time you get home from work it’ll be back as it was and running already.
What if you have a system that just works and you can’t break?
No rsync, no remoting from work (vpn or other software et al), no “i gotta be on alert for when my kid breaks my computer again”
Also, why do we have to shame people for just wanting to use their computer?
I’m not shaming. I’m offering a simple Solution. The backups can be automated and you can NetBoot the restore process off that rsync target so you don’t have to be distracted at work. You can have a simple plan to execute if you get these calls while you are at work so there is no problem you can’t instantly reverse. It takes no time to pull off after you’ve set it up.
I do not agree about this being a simple solution, especially if you want to set up netboot for this, but I don’t want to engage this discussion any further since we’re just talking about a solution to a problem that I don’t have and I don’t care to solve, so maybe we should just agree to disagree?
That’s a wholly different problem right there. Namely the shitty wages and unaffordable housing. With proper wages, you would have the time for your kid since it would then be sufficient that only one of the parent works full time whereas the other takes care of the kid and the house and stuff like that.
Yeah, the problem might be that you’re doing it. For me, it would have been on me to fix it.
You think I should tell a You think I should tell a 6 year old kid to fix a broken Linux system? I’m sorry this has turned from discussion into bullshit.
You’re underestimating children. When I was around that age I had to fix my broken PC because nobody around me knew how to (parents didn’t care for Computers) and the next repair shop was far away.
My only support was some of the IT staff from School and books. I was setting up Windows 95 and making my own DOS boot floppies before I hit my teens, and I’m just the average working class person.
6yo? Maybe not, although they probably could. My point was they will learn if they have to. 6yos are capable of far more than people give them credit for. They just need an incentive. They probably won’t understand the system, but they can probably fix simple issues, which is also probably the only issues they’d create. They probably won’t be using the terminal. At least by 10 they’re capable of it.
The problem of the convo is that the other commenter talked without knowing the kid age, i agree that it’s unrealistic to make a 6 years old kid fix any system at all, thought i can see a 11 years old learning that
I still miss the advantages for these cases.
I can understand the kid example, but I feel that’s easily solved by not giving them root access.
Setup the system and install whatever media software. Update it every once in a while or setup auto updates. I do not see any difference between traditional os and immutable. You’re likely not modifying any system files anyway.
The producing company controls software and updates, it should be immutable anyway as users likely do not have root access. Were users to have root access this may make sense. I’m not sure, maybe the immutability would make updates easier for the company?
Are they really going to brick their system? That would require opening the terminal. But I mean, fair.
What I do not understand is why there are users swearing by bazzite and other immutable distributions. These examples you make is basically for users who just do the most basic operations with their systems. Fair, if this makes it easier for non technical people to use Linux I’m all for it. What I do not understand is why technically adept people are so excited for these kinds of distributions?
I control a htpc with an Xbox gamepad. Bazzite I don’t even think about updates, it just happens instead of saying “should probably update” and unplugging my nose and keyboard from my other PC. Or leaving mouse and keyboard sit on the floor in front of my tv cabinet.
Most handheld suppliers are shipping windows, replacing it with an immutable system is definitely the way to go. On screen keyboards are play I guess, but even my experience just doing a regular distro on a tablet it was a hassle.
Look, I’m not going into detail on this anymore. But I want to say I’m surprised by how much people are pushing back. “Oh instead of using bazzite, you could setup rsync to do an a/b switch with your server if something goes wrong”. (Elsewhere in these comments).
I just didn’t think it would be so much for people to accept there are use cases for why people do things differently to them.
I’m happy there are use cases. Another person told me to look at rpm-ostree and it looks pretty nice.
But for what you’re saying I do not understand: how is an immutable server better than a normal one. You can setup auto updates; I do not see how rsync would help with that.
I imagine safe backup is nice, but for that you still have to connect keyboard and mouse on an htpc. Possibly not into a managed server, but there you have other layers of resilience anyway.
Sure, you likely have to do less things to fix it; but at this point the annoyance of having to move the keyboard to another room is much greater than 15 minutes figuring out what is wrong and how to fix it.,
Sorry, I’m not pushing back because I dislike the idea. I’ve been introduced to the rpm-ostree and It seems a good idea to me, maybe there’s more nice ideas to find out.
Root vs non-root is, in a nutshell, a tangled mess with millions of opportunities for “oops, didn’t think of that” situations: https://www.cve.org/downloads
Immutable keeps the legacy system confituration basically unchanged, but also restores it “from ROM” every time you power on. (not real ROM, but effectively.) In an immutable system, the attack surface is dramatically reduced, and much more diverse among systems than with a mutable OS.
I reckon this must be true. However I do not see this as a reason for wide adoption of immutable systems. I guess that is a fairly valid use case.
I’d like to understand why some users are enthusiastic about bazzite. As of now I understood two of the reasons:
However I do not understand why these two things make their users so enthusiastic. It’s two things you rarely worry about when using a computer. They are indeed important, but in my opinion not much of a problem in modern distributions.
In the other hand you have to install everything through flatpak, which is something which would really get to my nerves.
I understand there are some good advantages, I just fail to understand which ones those are.
It’s actually quite a lot more than a bit more secure. Think of it as the difference between traversing no-mans land on a bicycle (current systems) vs in an armored personnel carrier with armor thick enough to stop EVERYTHING that the other side can throw at it. Sure, you could just open the door of the APC and take a hit, but if you don’t do that, you’re pretty safe.
Are you trying to think logically about that question? Because that would be a huge mistake.
Yeah, not my favorite either. A BIG part of why I’m not loving the majority of the immutable systems I have investigated is because they all seem to heavily lean on tech like flatpak, snaps, etc. and there are valid logical reasons for that, but I’d really rather not go there…
It requires literally zero work from me to maintain, that’s why I’m enthusiastic and want the project to do well. Saying mutable Linux is zero work is dead wrong. And if you do put work into your system, it actually sticks and doesn’t decide to explode one day over it.
Most of the work in my system is installing software and changing configurations of said software. The rest is using the software. What is the difference in the amount of work here? I guess on an immutable system you will also be installing software and modifying configuration files.
In my system something can malfunction to which I have to change some system configurations: for example past week I had to change some systemd-resolved configuration because on a specific interface it was using some random DNS I didn’t want it to use. I assume this work will also have to be done on an immutable system.
What is the work which you have to do on a normal distribution and not on an immutable system?
How long have you been using Linux? I’ve been using it since around 2004. About every 2 years a major upgrade would make my computer kill itself and I’d have to manually repair it over the course of a weekend. I do security software work and often to make that suite of software (some of it not niche like vpn apps) function you must alter some system files. Layering these apps over the system solves the problem.
I’ve been using Linux as my main OS for about 15 years. I had my system break down in other occasions in the same way you describe. It is a nuisance, but luckily it never was a major problem. I believe once I had to reinstall the system, I was very happy to have a separate home partition.
I’m not sure what you mean by layering apps over the system, that could be interesting. Especially because I imagine something like a VPN needs root access. Is it possible to install a binary as a service with root access if that is not available in the repositories? I do for example have to use a quite obscure VPN protocol.
Yeah. You can layer it like a git repo fork layers it’s changes. If something breaks you can just clear that forked branch and redo it. Takes like 2 minutes to fix.
So yeah you can alter system files in a very safe way and can easily revert changes if you don’t like the result. rpm-ostree reset is the command that clears all changes and resets to master.
Zero-maintenance and upgrades.
You’re overthinking it, there’s no reason to care if the root disk is readable or not. If it updates reliably out of the box there’s no reason to touch it.
You don’t need to open a terminal to brick a traditional linux system they tend to do that on their own.
I can’t speak for “immutable distributions” but for bazzite it’s to ensure working upgrades.
I’m technically adept at Linux I expect software to work. (system upgrades should work, app installation shouldn’t break the PC, etc.)
So, the main advantage is that it is ensured that an update will not brick the system?
That is pretty neat, but it’s been quite a while since the last update which broke something for me. And that was either on arch of switching Debian version.
I reckon it is nice that you ensure updates won’t break anything, even though I’m not sure that can be ensured, in most cases I had it was the repo itself which made mistakes in packaging the software who broke it and I don’t think there’s solution for that. Either way, I myself do not see this such an advantage as to displace the pain of having everything run in flatpak.
Updates can be ensured and broken repositories go away entirely that’s the entire point. I don’t think it’s “nice” I would consider that a basic feature in Linux. If you like Linux your way then that doesn’t go away.
What do you mean? How can it be possible to eliminate a packaging error? If the packaging team makes a mistake you get a broken software, regardless whether you download a binary through a repository or through flatpak.
Because the image never gets built if there’s a packaging error, so the user never ends up on a broken image. A broken package never makes it to the end. If it’s broken the user just doesn’t get an image until the package is fixed and then they get a new image.
I had broken packages getting installed before. They would compile correctly but certain functionality would not work due to how it was packaged. This is not something which can be prevented, I do not believe it is possible.
Yes exactly, my potentially hot take is that twenty years from now we’ll look at immutability as the tipping point that sent Linux mainstream on desktop.