What are immutable distros, and are they the future of Linux?

if you're a Linux nerd like me you probably heard the terms immutable distribution os3 or image based operating system and you might be wondering what the fuss is about why are so many people obsessed with them and why is everyone painting them as the future of the Linux desktop something I have been guilty of as well so today we're going to look at immutable distros how they work what are their advantages if they are the future of Linux but also what their drawbacks are because as always nothing is perfect not even this segue to our sponsor this video is sponsored by Squarespace and if you need a website but you don't know how to get started or you don't have any technical knowledge then Squarespace will be your go-to platform they have pre-made templates for every kind of website and you can completely customize these by just adding or removing blocks and reordering them on the page graphically you can change the phones the colors the visuals everything and when you want to start 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immutable distributions have systems in place so people can still actually use their computer most of these immutable distros still let you install apps and packages on top of the system through flat packs snaps or app images or with a specific layer of packages that is kept when rebooting and updating some immutable distros give you easy access to Containers so you can still use a full system with full right access and they are a bunch of immutable distros Fedora silver blue and Fedora kinoite are basically Fedora workstation with no more KDE but with an immutable bass vanilla OS is an Ubuntu based soon to be Debian based immutable distro that gives you access to any packaging format on Linux through containers blend os does the same thing but based on Arch Steam OS the Linux distribution that powers the steam deck and also my Linux gaming console PC is also immutable you could also say that NYX OS is an immutable distribution since you only install things and modify configurations through a declarative config file that is used to build the system and there are a lot more like micro Os from open Susa and less OS and more but why would you want to use something like this and be forced into workarounds when you could just use a normal system a question that I now realize Windows users might be asking of Linux in general so in terms of advantages immutable distros are just way more secure since you the user can't modify the base system and since the super user can't do it either it also means any third-party programs also can't modify That Base system so viruses Trojans ransomware and the like can't write to any of your system files and directories even if a hacker manages to get access to your system they won't be able to write or modify anything and if the system allows some changes to be made they will generally be lost after a reboot it is not full security your personal files in your home directory could still be accessed and downloaded or stolen or encrypted by some kind of ransomware but it's still way more secure than a regular Linux distribution and there's infinitely more secure than a Windows PC another Advantage is reliability since you can't Tinker with the system files you also have a much smaller chance of actually destroying your system third-party programs also can't botch a modification or replace your system libraries with something else or erase something you need for your system to run and also you can't fall for that pseudo rm-rf asterisk joke that you find online because well the command just won't run and in terms of maintenance since you only use an updated system after a reboot there is no risk of breaking something by updating it while it's running and there's less risk of dependency hell and all of this might make you think that immutable distros are targeting servers but that's not necessarily the case there are a lot of them focused on the desktop still they do have some drawbacks as well a big one is how do I install anything if I can't write to the system because a lot of Linux distros install programs and libraries through packages and these are written to the system not to the user directory and most most immutable distros work around that using Universal packaging formats like flat packs snaps and app Images these don't require access to the whole file system they also don't need to install libraries to the system because they come with their own and of course if you don't like flat packs or snaps or app Images you probably will not like immutable distros either those things go hand in hand but that's not the only way to install stuff onto an immutable distro a lot of them actually still let you install packages to the system in a dedicated layer that's called layering what this means is that you still have access to the distros repos of packages and you can still choose to install some of them but you won't use the usual package manager but another dedicated tool instead these layered packages are kept whenever the system is updated and they're added to the new image that you will boot on after reboot this lets you install apps that are not available as flat pack for example you can install drivers you can install libraries basically whatever you need and if you install them from your distros repos the security risks are minimal some immutable distributions also use containers generally with something like distro box the idea is that you're supposed to keep the Linux distro installed on your Hardware safe and clean in its immutable form but you can install any other distro in a container with near native performance and thus you get access to a system you can completely write to like any other normal Linux distro a good example of that is vanilla OS which uses containers relatively seamlessly to let you install any application from any packaging format it will just create the relevant container and install the app there and give you a menu shortcut for it this can be very very useful for third-party programs that aren't in the distros repos or that want to install to the system directly for example DaVinci Resolve the idea is to give you all all the power of any regular Linux distro while keeping the OS installed to Bare Metal as safe and secure as possible but it is obviously not as easy as just using a regular Linux distro another difference that could be considered a drawback is updating updates on immutable distros are never applied in place in a regular Linux distro your package manager downloads the new packages their dependencies and replaces the files for each of them in place while the system is running while this means there is no need to reboot after most updates it also means sometimes stuff doesn't work and you still need to reboot anyway and it creates potential points of failure by potentially breaking your current system while it is being updated which is also why some normal Linux distros require you to reboot to actually install updates like Fedora immutable distros do not work like that when an update is a available they will build another system image they will only download what they need not the full system but they will use these new packages to create a separate bootable system so you end up with two systems the one you're currently using and the updated one which is not currently active if you decided to layer packages on your install they will also be added to the new bootable image and so you only get your updates after you rebooted your computer so yes updates require a reboot just like on Windows and that's not great to be fair it also comes with advantages if after rebooting you find out that the updated system doesn't work properly you still have the older non-updated system you can reboot to to get back to the previous usable State you're never really stuck into a completely broken system and immutable distros in pure Linux fashion have invented a bunch of ways to apply these updates some of them create H2 system partitions like vanilla OS one partition is your current system the other one is getting the updates when you reboot onto the updated system you're actually rebooting into another slash partition with your slash home folder being handled in a separate partition some distros only have one system partition but use something akin to get each new update is a commit while the previous version of the updated file is also kept and a list of commits is used to build a system image when you reboot you can pick the system image you want and it will load the right files for that system image that's how Fedora silver blue or endless OS Works some immutable distros make a copy of your current better FS snapshot and install updates to that so you can reboot to it afterwards micro OS the immutable distro from Souza Works in this way and actually also uses this same system to install packages instead of using a layer so as a user installing updates on an immutable distro is pretty seamless you open your app store you click update and then you have to reboot which is not as simple as most Linux distros which don't require you to reboot but that method is also safer and more stable so I guess things even out now another drawback is the complexity of the systems once you're used to them they're actually really easy to use but when you're coming from a traditional Linux distro or Worse from Windows or Mac OS it can be very tricky to understand everything you try to do is different installing a package doesn't use your usual package manager applying updates is in the same command or requires you to reboot to actually use the updated system running containers for specific applications is pretty counter-intuitive you need to install a whole other distro just to launch one app that isn't available as a flat pack that's not the easiest thing to accept if you want to manually edit a config file you might not be able to do so at all depending on where it's located most distros leave slash Etc as a writable directory but if what you need to change is somewhere else you're going to have a hard time immutable distros are a different way of approaching a Linux distribution with different ways of doing stuff that you already know how to do on regular systems which makes them pretty complex to approach at first so are these immutable distros the future of Linux probably not for servers they make a lot of sense and they're a natural evolution of the containers most big deployments already use for regular users they do have a lot of advantages especially for systems that are supposed to be appliances and aren't meant to be customized or tweaked like the steam deck for example but they also have a bunch of limitations and they require some worker ramps to do pretty simple stuff and that's why I think they will never replace Place regular Linux systems for most people you can already roll back to a previous version of a package or your entire system even without using for example with better FS you can already decide to only install flat packs and use containers on a normal Linux distro if you find benefit from that if the added security and reliability isn't something you value more than the ability to access any file at any time or updating without rebooting then immutable distros will probably never appeal to you and so I don't think immutable distros will replace normal regular Linux distributions they will grow and occupy your space next to them but I think the limitations make them unsuitable for a lot of people they are an alternative another way of doing things which can be better for some use cases and some people but worse for others unlike today's sponsor which is better for everyone if you're looking to buy a new computer and you plan to run Linux on it stop buying devices that were made to support Windows and might or might not work well with Linux buy something that supports Linux 6 out of the box tuxedo does just that 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Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 94,066

Keywords: linux, open source, distribution, linux distro, linux help, linux tutorial, linux 2023, linux tips, distro, linux for beginners 2023, linux tutorial 2023, linux vs windows, immutable distro linux, immutable linux distro, fedora silverblue, immutable linux distros, immutable linux server, immutable linux mint, immutable arch linux, linux immutable storage, what are immutable distributions, fedora kinoite, vanilla OS, blend OS, microOS, nixOS, immutable distros explained

Id: 9hiPFEUoUyI

Length: 15min 22sec (922 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 18 2023