IMO that title really belongs with live kernel patching, which I somehow missed became available baseline in 5.10. Immutable is great for servers though. Especially ones that are running...
IMO that title really belongs with live kernel patching, which I somehow missed became available baseline in 5.10.
Immutable is great for servers though. Especially ones that are running containerized workloads.
Running Fedora Silverblue (by way of Bazzite, for great gaming defaults) on my home rig, and its been phenomomal. So great in fact, I even have it set up to run as my NAS and outbound server as...
Running Fedora Silverblue (by way of Bazzite, for great gaming defaults) on my home rig, and its been phenomomal. So great in fact, I even have it set up to run as my NAS and outbound server as well. The containerization is great, and the immutability helps ease the terror of when I get that itch to dig around in the caves and start making system changes.
Do I want to use SliverBlue on my new Framework Laptop? I like the thought of the security it offers. The laptop will be used for general browsing and photo management.
Do I want to use SliverBlue on my new Framework Laptop? I like the thought of the security it offers. The laptop will be used for general browsing and photo management.
I've recently moved onto an immutable OS (Bazzite, built off Fedora Bluefin) and I'm a fan, I may even start recommending immutable builds for Linux newbies. Ubuntu would regularly break my gaming...
I've recently moved onto an immutable OS (Bazzite, built off Fedora Bluefin) and I'm a fan, I may even start recommending immutable builds for Linux newbies. Ubuntu would regularly break my gaming setup by updating one thing but not the whole system. And it still didn't give me ultimate control of my system, I remember "resorting" to a docker to test my hard drives for SMART fraud because Ubuntu wouldn't update the appropriate package even when provided with the files.
It does require rethinking your workflows. Like the other night, I couldn't just slap on mono and run Subtitle Edit. Bazzite docs list the methods they suggest for installing and managing various programs. It was made a bit more complicated since SE is a GUI app but needed to launch off a command line program. After checking off my options, I ended up building a distrobox and exporting mono. Now it runs like any ordinary command line program, I can call mono from terminal and I also have a desktop entry for SE.
I'm debating whether to keep my server on a traditional OS or also move it to an immutable one. On one hand, stability, on the other hand, downtime to update since restarts are required. My services are run through docker though, so it is likely an improvement.
It's more fun to go the opposite direction. No repeatability and no configuration or system backups (obviously back up data though). Do all installs and upgrades with blanket "yes" and if it ever...
It's more fun to go the opposite direction. No repeatability and no configuration or system backups (obviously back up data though). Do all installs and upgrades with blanket "yes" and if it ever explodes it is just divine permission to start your next distro hopping cycle.
Losing all your configs is the easiest way to just clean house of all the little garbage you implemented over the years that is no longer relevant. Keeps you fresh on what configs you actually...
Losing all your configs is the easiest way to just clean house of all the little garbage you implemented over the years that is no longer relevant. Keeps you fresh on what configs you actually need.
This here is why immutable distros are not great for beginners unless they're in full appliance mode. Having a simple flashback mechanism ala snapper (not to be confused with Ububtu snaps)...
After checking off my options, I ended up building a distrobox and exporting mono.
This here is why immutable distros are not great for beginners unless they're in full appliance mode.
Having a simple flashback mechanism ala snapper (not to be confused with Ububtu snaps) provides that level of rollback, while still making diverting off the beaten path a bit less onerous.
I cannot comprehend for the life of me why snapper has not seen the systemd-like adoption speed on distros. I guess because it's BTRFS-specific and many users prefer speed over durability.
I think btrfs has had a really hard time shaking its reputation for losing data. I run btrfs root everywhere and snapshots and subvolumes are great. When I was an arch guy I lived and died by snapper.
I think btrfs has had a really hard time shaking its reputation for losing data. I run btrfs root everywhere and snapshots and subvolumes are great. When I was an arch guy I lived and died by snapper.
OP went down a weird path. The most likely thing a user would've found would've been Homebrew, and a brew install mono would've had them up and running. Alternatively, they'd find rpm-ostree,...
OP went down a weird path. The most likely thing a user would've found would've been Homebrew, and a brew install mono would've had them up and running.
Alternatively, they'd find rpm-ostree, which installs normal RPM packages and layers them onto your immutable root.
So the process would've been rpm-ostree install mono, reboot, and Mono is installed just like a normal Fedora install.
Welp, I read this article and then went down a rabbit hole, and now I have Bluefin installed on one of my laptops. I decided to do just that after a spare laptop with Fedora installed which I...
Welp, I read this article and then went down a rabbit hole, and now I have Bluefin installed on one of my laptops.
I decided to do just that after a spare laptop with Fedora installed which I wasn't really using.
Going down rabbit hole ramblings with Bluefin
OK so immediately I love it. I think I've found Linux a bit frustrating as of late because Flatpaks are a really useful thing that are safe for updates, but there are weird edge cases where it fails (in my case, connecting to machines on LAN, and I have no idea why).
Meanwhile, native packages are these horrible things that have deep dependencies, yet work the best and are more prone to just working. Have too many of them, and you're increasing the chance of your distro update going boom.
Bluefin is a bit different - at least what I can see. It's a fork of Fedora's Silverblue distro, but you don't touch the distro package manager in Bluefin. You either use the GNOME App Store for normal apps like Visual Studio code, or if you need e.g. ripgrep, then you use brew.
I remember seeing brew on Linux a few months (years?) back and I was absolutely confounded - why on earth would you ever use something like brew which just pollutes your local directories with its own dependencies and whatnot, but now I get it. It's all local on your machine so you can easily rip it out if you need be, and brew's dependencies are different to the distro's dependencies, so it all plays nicely with each other.
Other than that, everything seems to work, and opening the terminal reveals a lovely banner which helps you with some shortcuts to install stuff easily.
I've literally just tried it today, so I don't know if Bluefin will nag me for updates or if it will stealthily install the updates behind the scenes (man I hope it's the latter - I literally just want to use my computer, not take care of it!) but so far I'm deeply impressed!
IMO that title really belongs with live kernel patching, which I somehow missed became available baseline in 5.10.
Immutable is great for servers though. Especially ones that are running containerized workloads.
Running Fedora Silverblue (by way of Bazzite, for great gaming defaults) on my home rig, and its been phenomomal. So great in fact, I even have it set up to run as my NAS and outbound server as well. The containerization is great, and the immutability helps ease the terror of when I get that itch to dig around in the caves and start making system changes.
Do I want to use SliverBlue on my new Framework Laptop? I like the thought of the security it offers. The laptop will be used for general browsing and photo management.
Sure! It'll work great, haven't had any problems on my laptop either.
I've recently moved onto an immutable OS (Bazzite, built off Fedora Bluefin) and I'm a fan, I may even start recommending immutable builds for Linux newbies. Ubuntu would regularly break my gaming setup by updating one thing but not the whole system. And it still didn't give me ultimate control of my system, I remember "resorting" to a docker to test my hard drives for SMART fraud because Ubuntu wouldn't update the appropriate package even when provided with the files.
It does require rethinking your workflows. Like the other night, I couldn't just slap on
monoand run Subtitle Edit. Bazzite docs list the methods they suggest for installing and managing various programs. It was made a bit more complicated since SE is a GUI app but needed to launch off a command line program. After checking off my options, I ended up building a distrobox and exportingmono. Now it runs like any ordinary command line program, I can callmonofrom terminal and I also have a desktop entry for SE.I'm debating whether to keep my server on a traditional OS or also move it to an immutable one. On one hand, stability, on the other hand, downtime to update since restarts are required. My services are run through docker though, so it is likely an improvement.
insert NixOS shilling
You can have it all! At the cost of all of your free time and sanity!
It's more fun to go the opposite direction. No repeatability and no configuration or system backups (obviously back up data though). Do all installs and upgrades with blanket "yes" and if it ever explodes it is just divine permission to start your next distro hopping cycle.
Losing all your configs is the easiest way to just clean house of all the little garbage you implemented over the years that is no longer relevant. Keeps you fresh on what configs you actually need.
That said, yes backup all your scripts and /home
I have a love hate relationship with NixOS.
I use it on a laptop but wouldn’t use it on a desktop.
This here is why immutable distros are not great for beginners unless they're in full appliance mode.
Having a simple flashback mechanism ala snapper (not to be confused with Ububtu snaps) provides that level of rollback, while still making diverting off the beaten path a bit less onerous.
I cannot comprehend for the life of me why snapper has not seen the systemd-like adoption speed on distros. I guess because it's BTRFS-specific and many users prefer speed over durability.
I think btrfs has had a really hard time shaking its reputation for losing data. I run btrfs root everywhere and snapshots and subvolumes are great. When I was an arch guy I lived and died by snapper.
And that was mostly only applicable in raid5 scenarios. Doing RAID1 has always been fine, and works well with their JBOD.
OP went down a weird path. The most likely thing a user would've found would've been Homebrew, and a
brew install monowould've had them up and running.Alternatively, they'd find
rpm-ostree, which installs normal RPM packages and layers them onto your immutable root.So the process would've been
rpm-ostree install mono, reboot, and Mono is installed just like a normal Fedora install.Welp, I read this article and then went down a rabbit hole, and now I have Bluefin installed on one of my laptops.
I decided to do just that after a spare laptop with Fedora installed which I wasn't really using.
Going down rabbit hole ramblings with Bluefin
OK so immediately I love it. I think I've found Linux a bit frustrating as of late because Flatpaks are a really useful thing that are safe for updates, but there are weird edge cases where it fails (in my case, connecting to machines on LAN, and I have no idea why).Meanwhile, native packages are these horrible things that have deep dependencies, yet work the best and are more prone to just working. Have too many of them, and you're increasing the chance of your distro update going boom.
Bluefin is a bit different - at least what I can see. It's a fork of Fedora's Silverblue distro, but you don't touch the distro package manager in Bluefin. You either use the GNOME App Store for normal apps like Visual Studio code, or if you need e.g. ripgrep, then you use brew.
I remember seeing brew on Linux a few months (years?) back and I was absolutely confounded - why on earth would you ever use something like brew which just pollutes your local directories with its own dependencies and whatnot, but now I get it. It's all local on your machine so you can easily rip it out if you need be, and brew's dependencies are different to the distro's dependencies, so it all plays nicely with each other.
Other than that, everything seems to work, and opening the terminal reveals a lovely banner which helps you with some shortcuts to install stuff easily.
I've literally just tried it today, so I don't know if Bluefin will nag me for updates or if it will stealthily install the updates behind the scenes (man I hope it's the latter - I literally just want to use my computer, not take care of it!) but so far I'm deeply impressed!