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!

  • ahal
    3·
    2 days ago

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

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • ahal
        1·
        2 days ago

        Why is it a bad way to handle things?

        I have an alias set up and SDKs enabled. The experience is indistinguishable from a regular install. But you could also layer it onto the os image or install it in user space if you don’t like flatpaks for the extra resource usage or something. That’s a complete non issue for me though.

        • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          I have an alias set up and SDKs enabled. The experience is indistinguishable from a regular install.

          That’s not indistinguishable - that’s you working around the problem of running flatpak run some.domain.IForget(which - BONUS is case sensitive which is awesome) to run neovim.

          Snaps install a binary you can run. Flatpaks make you remember the 3 part domain to run things. So you setup aliases after installing things to run them, and if you uninstall them you need to remove your aliases. It’s a complete own-goal by the flatpak developers that this mess exists and is completely unnecessary. Simply providing an option to create and manage a script in .local/bin or something would be all it takes to make flatpaks usable from the CLI in a way that isn’t obnoxious.

          • ahal
            1·
            1 day ago

            That’s a good point. I should have said “indistinguishable after some tinkering”. You raise a valid complaint, though it’s not a deal breaker for me.