I’ve been feeling gushy about my setup lately, I think I’ve finally found my home on Linux. For decades I’ve distrohopped each year and never was really happy with it all, but Fedora Atomic has changed that.
Some things I can do with Fedora Atomic that I cannot do with other Linux distros:
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I can rebase to Bazzite for gaming performance when I feel like having a long gaming session.
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I can rebase to Secureblue when I think I will not be gaming and would prefer a more secure linux setup.
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I can update my system and not have to worry about special instructions, its extremely stable. Many times in the past, running a small ma-and-pa distro with most things pre-configed for performance would end with it breaking after a couple of major updates. This isn’t true for configs like Bazzite and Secureblue, they are remarkably stable across many major updates due to how rpm-ostree functions.
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Distrobox and Flatpak are more than enough at this stage for most programs and they help you avoid making too many alterations to the base image, greatly speeding up the swaps between major images.
The kicker? Your user configs and home files are never changed when you ‘image hop’. It always feels like you just installed a fresh distro whenever you upgrade, and the performance benefits are noticeable. You don’t have to tinker and do the same changes over and over, its all handled for you by rpm-ostree.
10/10 this is the future of Linux. I hope for a future where I can rebase entire Linux distros while maintaining my configs with one simple command, but for now, Fedora Atomic is fantastic.
The downsides:
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There is one major downside, and its that all of your system files are read-only. Personally, I’ve found a dozen ways to get around this, it requires thinking inside the Distrobox. It is a notable issue for many people, though. This means you cannot make specific tweaks without making a whole new image for yourself. Though in practice, I have found the ecosystem has grown a lot. Other people have already made the best tweaks available for you with only a few simple commands.
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Rpm-ostree also is slow to update because its essentially building a whole git tree to make sure your updates never break and are as stable as possible. You also have to reboot each time you alter it, which can be annoying, but if you stick to flatpaks and distroboxes, this issue is mitigated significantly.
You might wanna rephrase that or some feds are gonna have a field day.
I dunno, usually shilling something as hard as possible just means you’re a fanboy, it doesn’t mean it’s as good as you say it is.
I’ll wait and see until most people willingly make the choice to immutable distros before believing it’s “10/10 the future of linux” or whatever.
Personally, I get annoyed even on regular distros when there’s a file that I can’t easily edit. I don’t really see any of the benefit of immutable distros other than giving the fedora crowd (who loves shilling their OS) a stiffy.
I’m more interested in fixing real issues like having to prepend
prime-runto every game I want to use my dedicated GPU or why my IP can leak while connected to a VPN using my system’s network configuration.Heck, I’d be interested in seeing a fix for LUKS when entering the wrong password once requires restarting because something failed to mount or whatever.
You know, practical problems.
I’ve updated enterprise Linux machines automatically for decades. The score is tens of thousands of upgrades, 1 problem I caused, 1 packaging glitch.
You don’t need to take on risky drek like flatpaks to get there. It’s one command in enterprise and you’re kinda done forever.
Glad you like your setup. I hope it works for you and you never learn the risks of flatpaks.
I was gonna comment this, decided not to, then decided the info should be part of this thread either for OP or future readers, so here goes:
Enterprise Linux distributions are unbeatable for their purpose. To your point, I’ve never in my entire career had even the smallest issue maintaining one, they’re wonderful. They achieve this, though, by being a stable, truly versioned release that will never see anything beyond minor upgrades. The reason why nobody recommends server distros for gaming is because of hardware compatibility and library support, and you end up maintaining more of your own junk anyway. Got the latest gpu? Great, compile your drivers.
Enterprise Linux distros are awesome and the most painless Linux experience imaginable, as well as a great workstation experience too BUT they typically are among the worst options for gaming if you want a simple system.
Care to elaborate on ‘the risks of flatpak’. If you are refering to the practice of people using unofficial flatpaks: Yes I think that poses a certain risk because you are adding an additional party to your threat model.
EL 7 is EL 7. But that time is over
10/10 this is the future of Linux.
I hope it’s a future of Linux, not the future. I’m not a fan of atomic distros, mostly because if their reliance on flatpak and the like
What about NixOS? It seems to be doing something very different from most distros. I used it briefly and it was a refreshing experience to just update the config file to add and remove programs, I know that a lot of people share their configs and it makes it easy to keep programs consistent from different installs. I would have installed it on this laptop if the installer wasn’t giving me so many issues, so I ended up with MXLinux instead, but I still look on my NixOS days fondly.
It’s on my list to try!
Flatpaks are better for security though. Containerization is a necessity for any serious device connecting to the internet.
Linux users got way too confortable giving any obscure package they found on AUR root access to their entire device, lol.
Why are you installing malware in the first place?
And that’s why it’s good that it’s an option! I just don’t want it to become the only option
Fair. I think for as long as there is a will to maintain traditional distros (which there is), there will be options.
Hell, people are still keeping Thinkpads T480 alive and relatively secure by making custom libre bootloaders! The F(L)OSS community is awesome.
I agree. Fundamentally, you still need good distros to plug into distrobox to make swapping between immutable systems quicker. In general I feel like running Fedora Atomic has really opened my eyes to the possibilities of using distrobox + boxbuddy to get quick and easy installs from AUR or something and saving annoying-to-make configs in a backup file somewhere.
Atomic is also absolutely fantastic for throwing on an old computer that you use rarely. The update will not break after letting it sit for so long without them.
I think this approach is going to fair the best for mainstream adoption (i.e. Windows refugees). So I would agree that the “future” is going to involve immutable distros as a large, possibly majority, of all Linux installations.
Try NixOS. It’s not that hard to use. And also try Home Manager when you’ll be on it.
I never see the cons (excluding nixos) being that only a few desktops(eg kde,gnome,i3 and budgie) are offered compared to mutable distros
I agree it is great, but am I the only one running Opensuse MicroOS?
10/10 this is the future of Linux
Totally agree
does an Atomic / Immutable distro use more disk space than say my Arch install? if yes, how much more? if no, I am moving immediately.
It uses more, yeah. But it’s not a lot more. You could maybe compare the iso sizes
I’ve been running bluefin for about a week and I agree. One of the best things about these different distros is they install and configure a lot of things for you. Bluefin installs with flatpak, homebrew, distrobox, podman/docker, devcontainers configured and running on install, good peripheral support, good desktop tweaks, and sensible but easily removable default apps. Bazzite does something similar for gaming installs. It’s great. If there are common apps or configs that their users want they try to implement it and get it set up and running on install, if possible. The most friction free linux install I’ve ever had.
It’s not the future… it’s the present for all users running mobile linux-based computing devices called Android smartphones. The paradigm is very similar to Atomic distros. As for what the future might hold for linux, that remains to be seen.
The Atomic UX has proven very popular with mainstream users running by Steam Deck and similar devices as running Bazzite. They may not be aware how they are built, they just know it just works and that’s all they need.
As for the maintainers, containerized development removes a lot of development time, provided they have experience in cloud native development environments. Old school developers get annoyed by this constraints.
All in all, it’s just another alternative, don’t diss it out of fear it might take over the Linux scene… let others have what they need, provided by Linux and open source software.
Distrobox and Flatpak are more than enough at this stage for most programs
Maybe for you, but personally I could never get by with only that. I have zero interest in atomic distros. To me they look like an inferior version of NixOS, which I have yet to fully wrap my head around. Until then I’ll stick to Arch (BTW)
I think i’ll be heading back to Pop!_OS for my main rig. While i like Bazzite, i can’t get VR to function on it, or get my 5.1 surround sound system working. I think it’s great for a hand held, but not for a main rig.
You might want to look at the ujust commands on Bazzite, they have some options for setting up surround sound and VR I’m quite sure. I have a pretty simple setup personally so I’ve never used those things.
wonder how it is on aarch64, I might try it
Why not just run a hypervisor and use containers?
I have a build like this for tinkering but to say it is slow and inefficient is an understatement. Very secure though. I can’t really see daily driving it.
