Vanilla OS: New, highly secure, immutable Linux distro

foreign [Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers.com this time we're going to check out vanilla OS this is a very nudistro it only had its first stable release in December 2022 and it's a very interesting distro because it's immutable which means that core parts of the system are locked down they're read only to increase security and so before we install and test vanilla OS let's delve a bit more deeply into the concept of an immutable operating system immutable operating systems provide protection from malware failed updates and user error by making their core components read only immutable operating systems have also been around for many decades for example some early mobile devices run Windows CE which was pre-installed on read-only memory chips so Windows couldn't be corrupted by either the user or malware more recently several immutable Linux distros have been created these include bottle rocket which was developed by Amazon to run on its Cloud servers other examples include Talos Linux Fedora silverblue and most recently vanilla OS this latest immutable distro is based on Ubuntu and is intended to be more beginner friendly than its Rivals however some prior Linux experience is still recommended whilst the idea of a demutable OS may be appealing it also presents some practical challenges not least with the Linux root directory in vanilla OS set to read only How could a user save files and get updates well to answer the first question a few paths including we use a home and configuration directories are still writable meanwhile a utility called a b root facilitates updates and other essential installs it does this by managing two root partitions A and B one of which is always the present root and the second or was the future as for developers of vanilla OS explain drivers and updates are installed by starting a transactional shell in the second route partition if the transaction succeeds the changes are applied using an overlay and synced with the current route on reboot if the transaction fails no changes are applied due to a property known as atomicity this clever approach allows vanilla OS to apply changes entirely in the background to a non-live partition with successful changes delivered to the user on reboot however it does mean that more drive space is required as each root partition is about 20 Gigabytes in size to install applications vanilla OS has its own package manager called apx as well as providing optional support for flat pack and app image with SNAP support promised for the future when using apx applications are installed into containers given that flat packs are also containerized and app Images effectively so this means that software installations are isolated from the core operating system right now that we understand the theory of vanilla OS let's see how it currently performs in practice so let's click on get the OS 2210 like that which takes us across to GitHub we can scroll down and find the iso there it is let's download that like that and when the file is downloaded I'll write it to a USB drive using Ballina etcher and note that the USB drive needs to be at least eight gigabytes in size and that vanilla OS requires a drive at least 50 gigabytes in size for installation thank you right here we are booting up from our vanilla OS live USB drive on my I5 test rig and this has got an Nvidia graphics card so I've picked this system deliberately to see how vanilla OS deals with that and here we are in the live system where we can either try vanilla Os from a USB drive or we can do an install I'm going to go straight to the install like that well I'll just pick my language and continue and I'll now pick the keyboard layout there we go I now have to sort out time and then on this screen we need to pick a disk which will pick down there and we'll configure and here the default option is to use the entire disk which will be erased there is an option here for manual partitioning but I'm going to stick with entire disk and with that said we will continue and it now wants us to confirm changes it's going to blank this entire disk so it's a good idea it confirms which we will that's okay and now of course we need to set up a user there we go and we can continue and there we are we're now all set up to install vanilla OS and guess what it's all done so we can now reboot and there we are I'll just uh log in that was all rather painless and we've now got a first Setup Wizard which will take us through the rest of the process so let's start doing that don't know if it got it or not there we have it got it that time let's come back to the other part of the screen now obviously because it's summer trouble there which color screen should we have we'll go with light colored for now and now we have a choice of package manager and here I think we'll leave both flat pack and app image in place so we'll just click on next we've now got applications we've got core applications there which has ticked we obviously want them I'm going to want office as well I think and also common utilities let's just check what's going on here libreoffice's office that's hardly a surprise and um common utilities what's in there what am I installing there that looks pretty useful to me we'll go with all that lot as well and next and now it's asking do we want to install time shift to make snapshots of our system or it's a good idea we'll do that do we want NVIDIA drivers yes it's picked up with that we've got a Nvidia graphics card so let's uh install drivers for that that's good do we want restricted codecs so we can play video and audio things like that absolutely we do we'll do that as well and finally we've got extra settings do we want that there no I don't think we do and there we are it's all come up I just need to give it my password now and it will now get on with installation 2.0 and here we are it's now finalizing I think if I click at the top it'll show us what's going on there we are I move things again never mind and we'll just let it continue and there we are it's finished all done we can close this down and so far at least this immutable OS is proving to be beginner friendly greetings here I am back again and I've been testing things out and everything is very responsive and stable as you can see I've changed the desktop background we've got lots of choices available although I think I picked the most exciting and I've also made a few scaling changes as we can also see vanilla OS has a vanilla version of The Gnome desktop and apparently it was initially called vanilla OS because it offers a version of Ubuntu with vanilla gnome and if you're wondering it is pronounced gnome due to a double acronym and has nothing to do with tiny Stone goblins anyway love it or lose it on the vanilla gnome desktop like this we don't have an applications menu top right there was a system menu to allow us to do things like changing power settings or to a log out shut down things like that but if we want to launch an application we have to click top left and then go down to the dash which comes up on the bottom of the screen with a great piece of interface design that is and then from here we can either launch your favorite application or click on all applications and launch for example the calculator alternatively to bring up a dash rather than clicking on activities we can press the Super Key otherwise known as the Windows key on the keyboard so if I do that like that it brings up the dash and I can now just start typing I could type for example Libra and that would allow me to launch LibreOffice writer and talking of LibreOffice you may recall we installed this using the first Run Wizard but I found that when I first tried to run it it wouldn't work and the only way I got it to work was to do a reboot so I imagine that something to do with immutability anyway backwards of vanilla gnome desktop I should point out we don't have maximize and minimize controls on our windows and that doesn't stop us maximizing windows we can just click to maximize like that and click it will store again or we can drag to maximize by get it right like that and we can drag drag back like that and if we want to minimize a window well that's a bit more of a challenge now I'm sure there are people in the comments saying Chris you should just install gnome tweaks or you should just learn to work differently to embrace the vanilla gnome desktop however personally I do hope that the next release of vanilla OS include an option in the setup wizard to restore a dock and windows controls like we have in Ubuntu and which would make things far more accessible to 99.99 of computer users on the planet there is no doubt at all that vanilla OS is a really Innovative distro it offers something new it's a fantastic piece of development with a really beginner friendly setup and so it would be a great shame if the decision to stick with this vanilla gnome desktop prevents people from migrating to this otherwise excellent highly secure operating system talking of excellence in addition to being speedy and stable vanilla OS has got great documentation let's just uh show you that let's go to the web using a web browser here it's actually called Web here we are on the vanilla OS site let's go to the handbook that's the documentation bring that up like that and as I said this is this is really great documentation so for example if you want to install it in a virtual machine there's a great guide here and they've gone to a lot of trouble there's lots and lots of screenshots everything is really really clearly laid out this is very beginner friendly we've got much better documentation here with this new distro than we find for many older distros the other thing I want to show you is if we go back to our little Dash so I want to show the control center let's go across to vanilla OS control center like that and here in updates I like the fact we can schedule our updates weekly or monthly I like that and we can turn on or off automatic updates very quickly and we also have what are called smart updates so the system if we turn that on will not update if it's very busy or if you're on a laptop and the batteries are low the other thing we can see here is subsystem I find this fascinating this shows us the containers in which applications may be installed and as you can see we've got a subsystem here for the standard apx managed applications apx are now understand should be pronounced Apex in the context of vanilla OS and in addition to this subsystem we could add if we want other subsystems for Fedora for open Souza for archery looks Etc this really is a very innovative distro and just to show you how things work I also want to take you to disks let's just go across here and go to utilities and disks like that and if we pick the SSD on which our system is installed we can see we've got our two root partitions A and B we can see immutability in action on this system and with this before our eyes I think it's now time to try and install some applications inevitably installing software in an immutable distro like this has the potential to be more challenging than in a regular operating system so I therefore thought we should set ourselves a target of adding these popular applications so how are we going to install them well the easiest ways to use the graphical genome software stall so let's fire it up like that and do a search for our first application which is Firefox like that there it is that was nice and easy and we'll just click on install and cross our fingers and there we are it's finished and does it work straight away or something else is happening let me see it go on there we are and uh live demos are always fun aren't they is it going to open yes that's working absolutely fine so let's try now to the other applications I wanted to add in should be fairly straightforward we'll start with there we are and install lovely jubbly and we'll now go back and do a inkscape Escape Escape like that which is a fantastic vector graphics package a great Adobe Illustrator Alternatives will install that as well very good and we'll now go back and do the audacity audio editor fantastic and next here we'll install the Caden live video editor once again we seem to have success so we'll now just add in solitaire there we go and finally we'll do a search for lender although before we launch this let's just check everything else has worked let's just look in our applications because things been added in are they all sitting there have we got things that will run can we run up for example uh it seems we can let's just try some of the others I'm being very impressed with this so far I thought it'd be difficult to get things working in this immutable distro but it seems that's not the case let's just take those as the defaults here and inkscape that's absolutely fine yes inkscape is clearly working as well this is a very good what else do we install I forgotten already well also on my list oh Audacity Of course because audacity going to work but a first one plug-in stuff and I'm sure it'll come up looks like it's going to work it is that's that's fine as well and finally here I think we had something else which was oh it was Caden live wasn't it the video editor actually that'll be an interesting one to a check because Caden live normally installs a few things on first boot but no no all there this is this is very impressive so the only thing I've got left to install is blender so let's press the final install button let blender install on our system I hope you've been keeping up with my recent blender tutorials and there we are that's finished as well hopefully blender is now down in our little set of applications is it going to be down here somewhere there it is can we now or not blender it looks like we can oh it's the latest version just come out isn't it very very exciting so we'll just have to run through that there we are that's fine and we can do a normal blendery stuff messing around with a cube that's very exciting but you may be thinking you forgot Solitaire Chris of course I didn't forget Salter would I forget salta that could not possibly be the case it's over here somewhere isn't it where's Solitaire gone I've lost it I've gone past it in my excitement you must be here somewhere there it is and as it comes up and I resize things for Optimum play I would just point out we've just managed to install a load of applications very easily in this immutable distro and we haven't even gone near the terminal although if you want to install applications in the terminal you can use the command line Apex package manager where you would install things like for example blender by typing the command apx install blender no need for a sudo because Apex Works in user mode anyway I'm not going to test to see if solto is working properly that might take me some time and so we'll now speed on through to the end of the video vanilla OS is a bold attempt to create a new immutable distro personally I'm not going to be installing it as my own daily driver just yet but I am very interested in the concept of an immutable operating system and so I'm going to keep a close eye on the development of vanilla OS but what about you are you attracted to the idea of an immutable operating system do let us all know down in the comment section but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed but you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed Please Subscribe and I hope to talk to you again very soon foreign [Music]

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 243,154

Keywords: VanillaOS, Vanilla OS, immutable operating system, immutable OS, immutable Linux distro, what is an immutable OS?, What is an immutable distro?, what is an immutable operating system?, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt, apx package manager, abroot, Vanilla OS abroot, Vanilla OS tutorial, Vanilla OS review, Vanilla OS demo, immutable

Id: CHQ8c7QqlbM

Length: 18min 49sec (1129 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 16 2023