Thank you!
bsergay
joined 4 months ago
I definitely hope that the noise ration will improve (by the amount of noise decreasing) over time. But, as it stands, the community is still relatively small. I get your grievances, but I honestly don't know what the best set of directives would be.
I think I agree with the other commenter that you should just take a break.
Sorry, I tried to search it but to no avail. What are the WRB apps?
To me, it seems as if openSUSE Aeon is heading towards providing an even more stable rolling release distro experience than what people have come to expect from Tumbleweed. However, it seems as if lack of customization/tinkering -even more so than what we expect from other 'immutable' distros- will be the tradeoff. Personally, I regard the diversity in vision for these projects as a net positive; let's see what sticks you know. The project is still relatively young, though.
Let's see what the future will bring us.
I would normally 100% agree with you. But if it's an underrated distro, then I tend to be more lean on this. However, I agree that OP should have done a better job at 'advertising' openSUSE. For example; not mentioning YaST is just criminal.
IIRC, it was related to Fedora Atomic. Out of the box, Fedora Atomic offers functionality that's very close to what you'd expect from Btrfs snapshots. It doesn't use Snapper, but instead relies on (rpm-)ostree; at least, that's my understanding of it. So, in order to make Fedora Atomic more palatable and attractive, this feature was not directly built into Fedora. Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if 'politics' play a role in this; Snapper is kinda like openSUSE's project. While Fedora Atomic's implementation is Fedora's take. Unfortunately, it happens to be (by design) not available on traditional Fedora.
Thank you for your input! I would love to read more on this. Do you happen to know a good source wherein Eelco Dolstra's leadership is discussed (as fair as possible)?
Thank you for mentioning who he is and what his goals are!
Excellent reply! I appreciate it.
OMG that's a lot of comment lol. My brain is gonna melt when typing a reply to THIS in English. But I guess I can try.
Yeah lol. I'm sure we'll (somehow) manage.
Amongst users. It's possible that every big and medium distro will have an immutable spin soon but it won't be too popular.
Aight. Thanks for (yet) another clarification. I obviously think that 'immutable' distros will heavily influence the future of Linux. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if all big distros will default to becoming 'immutable'. However, that version of an 'immutable' distro may not exist yet. FWIW, it's also (somewhat) in-line with Lennart Poettering's vision.
I'm sorry but expressing my opinion on it greatly increases the chance of running out of energy which will make my speech absolutely illogical and ridiculous.
If anything, I'd love to read this. So please, whenever you feel like it, consider returning back on this.
I indeed made it look like the features of immutable distros are disadvantages to more people than they are advantages to. This is my opinion which might be biased since immutability goes totally against my workflow and the workflows I make for other people.
Fair. If it isn't too much of a trouble, could you elaborate on your workflow? Like, are you constantly installing new stuff?
Worse for = not meant for; not meant for = unsuitable imo because there are just better options; this leads to worse = unsuitable. Maybe not completely unsuitable but at least definitely not good for.
I implore you to use other words going forward 😜. Perhaps I'm wrong, but to me, this seems like an example in which your 'bias' seeps through.
Ok listen idk much about Nix ecosystem/infrastructure. I meant NixOS here. Sorry for the confusion. The habit of not including the "OS" ending comes from the Android community.
Don't worry about the confusion 😉. But thanks for your consideration! However, if I understood you correctly, this implies that you don't consider NixOS an 'immutable' distro. Or at least not representative of 'immutable' distros. If this assumption is correct, could you elaborate on why you think that's the case?
I'm sorry, mister/miss. My attitude to the society, people in general and Lemmy users is negative and suspicious by default. I have my reasons and, no matter how controversial it is, I'm not going to change it. Most of the people by far are bad and toxic so it's ok to make this assumption the default. Again I'm sorry that this my assumption caused inconvenience for you.
No worries, fam. Again, I appreciate your consideration!
It may not be a small niche but everything has a niche (even X11, Wayland, GNOME and Windows 10) so immutable distros can have a big one or a small one. As you said, future will tell. I don't see them getting a large (more than 10-20% desktop Linux users) niche any time soon.
Interesting notion on niche. Which I don't think is necessary unjustified*. Though I am having a hard time coming up with a definition to how I understood your understanding. I initially thought of "everything that's not (necessarily) mainstream". But if you mention Windows 10 as an example, then that can't be it. Perhaps "use" or "preference"? Could you (perhaps) define what you mean with "niche"?
I don't think it's the case or at least I don't have any information on it.
Thanks for being transparent! Consider looking into the earlier given examples. Perhaps it's even noteworthy to name some of the competitors that have perished against the alternative: Wayland vs Mir, systemd vs Upstart, Flatpak vs Snap etc.
Fedora just tries making new and very perspective stuff the first and the stuff always succeeded in the past.
Interesting. So, do you pose (as an alternative) that merely the successful is adopted? So they didn't necessarily follow whatever Fedora did, but Fedora just happened to be on the winning team. Hence, the winner takes all.
Btw, what do you mean with "very perspective stuff"?
In the case of immutable distros, I feel like it's gonna be some nice to watch chaos because new users will have to understand how to disable immutability to install drivers and fixes
On what 'immutable distros' is 'immutability' disabled for installing drivers? I don't recall the last time "disabling immutability" was mentioned within the discourse for a legitimate reason or fix. At best, some people that don't know how specific changes are meant to be applied on the specific distro they use, succumb to the infamous XY problem and try to do stuff the wrong way. But this is not a problem found exclusively on 'immutable' distros.
which means much more research (because most answers will just say "disable immutability for the directories that the fix needs" and the user will have no idea of any of that) and terminal commands.
Honestly, I have never encountered this. I don't know where you get this idea from. I feel like you might have fundamentally misunderstood how (most) 'immutable' distros work. If possible, could you provide a link or anything in which that proposed solution is indeed mentioned most when tackling a specific problem found on an 'immutable distro'?
Btw, I'm open to the notion that I completely misunderstood what you're saying here. Therefore, if possible, could you mention your notion of what "disable immutability" entails. Like, how does that even work on something like e.g. Fedora Atomic?
At the same time, immutable systems may be less suitable for advanced users who like tinkering.
It depends. Some advanced users actually love the reproducible aspect that comes with (most) 'immutable' distros, because this enables them to tinker to their heart's content without being afraid of losing a working system.
This makes a huge part of the Linux user base.
While I wouldn't be surprised if this has been the case for the longest time, I do think that as Linux successfully attracts an ever bigger crowd, that eventually a huge part of the Linux user base will consist of normies. And, as it stands, I can only see them go for stable (by release cycle) distros or 'immutable' distros unless some other drastic changes happen in the mean time that enables your Average Joe to run a (semi-)rolling release distro without troubles.
Thank you for the quick reply!
There is no philosophical side. I don't believe in them getting very major on desktops and laptops. That's it.
Alright. Thanks for clarification. Does "getting very major" primarily apply to adoption rate amongst users? Or does it primarily take into account adoption rate amongst distros?
Yes but the hype should disappear a long time before it happens. And that's what I meant by the bubble. It's very hyped, misunderstood and misused thing now. It will go away and then immutable systems will find their niche or die out.
Clear. Thank you. In your view, how should they be understood and used?
I said immutable systems have advantages and disadvantages (in the next comment I think)
I saw the part about advantages right after. However, I also noticed how the first disadvantage was written without nuance. The set of disadvantages and advantages that followed right afterwards was accompanied with "for some" (or something like that IIRC^[1]^). Therefore, to me at least, it seemed as if you meant that there were disadvantages overall. But some of these disadvantages may be perceived as advantageous to some. Which, I thought was perhaps more in line with the general outlook of your comment. Or at least, my understanding of it*.
Dual system partitions and Flatpaks are both not great for machines that use HDDs.
HDDs in general are not great :P . But, "unsuitable" =/= "not great". So, this does not justify the (previous) usage of "unsuitable". So, do you still stand behind the earlier use of "unsuitable"?
Old PCs.
Thank you for another clarification!
It doesn't because Nix doesn't have the just mentioned disadvantages of immutable systems.
Interesting.
I just noticed that I read your "Nix" as "NixOS". Which is blameworthy*. Uhmm..., so I have to ask for some (more) clarifications then 😜. Did you strictly mean Nix; i.e. the package manager and/or language? Or NixOS? According to you, does NixOS fall into Nix; i.e. simply the system that's built on Nix?
This looks like an attempt to start a fight or act like the aggressive part of the Nix community.
but you either didn't read or decided to just fight instead.
Idk why you misunderstood this but imo it seems suspicious of you.
Fam. Chill. Please. I don't intend to antagonize or whatsoever 😅. Like, the (overwhelming) majority of my previous comment were queries for clarifications and questioned related to how I initially understood them. There's no need to make it more than that 😉.
All in all, thank you for clarifying and answering almost anything I asked. However, the following (I believe) still requires some attention:
Furthermore, like how do you reconcile this with Fedora’s ambitions for Fedora Atomic?
To clarify, from my understanding, it seems you regard/view 'immutable distros' at best as some niche. Which, to be fair, is absolutely fine. And perhaps you're right; the future will tell. However, we know what Fedora intends for 2028; i.e. users of Fedora Atomic (and related 'immutable' projects led by Fedora) would constitute the majority of its user base. Furthermore, they've spoken since 2021 (IIRC) that Fedora Atomic (so likely Fedora Silverblue) will eventually become what people will install for Fedora Workstation. So, their ambition is clear. And their ambition contradicts with how you view it. How do you reconcile this with the fact that other distros (more often than not) join Fedora into whatever direction they depart? Examples of this include systemd, PulseAudio, PipeWire and some might even mention Flatpak and Wayland here.
- You've since changed your original comment (which is fair), so I'm not able to directly quote*.
Thanks for the reply!
In general, I'd have to say I agree with your post:
However, I'm hopeful of what they'll cook for their 'immutable' spins.
Btw, FWIW, regarding the reset option, perhaps there's reason to be optimistic regarding its future; here's Richard Brown on the topic and here's a page he refers to related to this.