Hi there folks, I’m still learning about Linux and have yet to dip my toes properly in any arch based distro. Have for the moment fallen in love with the immutable distros based on Universal Blue project. However I do want to learn about what arch has to offer to and plan on installing default arch when I have time. But have been wondering why I haven’t heard of any immutable distros from arch based distros yet.
So, am left wondering if there are talks within that Arch community of building immutable distros?
While writing this post I found a project called Arkane Linux, which seem to be very interesting. Does anyone have nay experience with it? Is there a specific reason why immutable wouldn’t be a good idea when based on Arch?
Project: https://arkanelinux.org/
But have been wondering why I haven’t heard of any immutable distros from arch based distros yet
SteamOS running on Steamdeck is Arch and immutabl/atomic for anyone not familiar.
Another one is blendOS
blendOS keeps everything simple, delivering on application and game compatibility from various sources while offering a lightweight atomic & declarative Arch system.
But have been wondering why I haven’t heard of any immutable distros from arch based distros yet.
If your question is “Why doesn’t Arch have its own atomic/immutable spin/flavor like Fedora and openSUSE have in their Silverblue/Kinoite and Aeon/Kalpa respectively?”, then the answer simply lies in the fact that Fedora and openSUSE have a lot more incentive for venturing the unexplored waters of atomicity/immutability as their enterprise counterparts exist and will benefit majorly from it. And I haven’t even mentioned how most of the new stuff first appear on Fedora (systemd, PipeWire, Wayland etc) before they’re adopted on other distros.
The enterprise counterparts also allow funding that is essential for erecting this from the ground. But, even then, the shift towards atomic/immutable is a difficult one with a lot of hardships and complexity. From the ones that have developed their atomic/immutable projects retroactively (so GuixSD and NixOS don’t count as they’ve been atomic/immutable (and declarative) from inception), only Fedora’s (I’d argue) have matured sufficiently. But Fedora has been at it since at least 2017, so they’ve had a head start compared to the others.
In contrast to Debian (through Canonical), Fedora (through Red Hat) and openSUSE (through SuSE), Arch has literally no (in)direct ties to enterprise. Hence, it will only adopt an atomic/immutable variant if the incentive is high from the community or if it’s very easy and only comes with major benefits. But, as even openSUSE is currently struggling with their atomic/immutable variants, it has a long road ahead before it becomes something that can be easily adopted by Arch. Hence, don’t expect Arch’s atomic/immutable variant any time soon.
However, if any derivative suffices, then at least the likes of blendOS, ChimeraOS and even SteamOS are worth mentioning here.
In contrast to Debian (through Canonical), Fedora (through Red Hat) and openSUSE (through SuSE), Arch has literally no (in)direct ties to enterprise.
LOL Fedora and opensuse are copying from the commercial distros, but Debian is not copying Ubuntu (literally the opposite)
Fedora and opensuse are copying from the commercial distros
How are they copying if Fedora and openSUSE Tumbleweed are upstream to RHEL and SLE respectively?
Btw, I don’t understand what your comment was set out to do. Could you elaborate?
What matters is the important stuff like deciding what package format to use, how to handle the biggest bugs, default filesystem, systemd or not, and who gets to decide all this stuff and so on. Some distros follow the company decision and some do not. Get it?
Thank you for clarifying.
I’m not very familiar with how stuff works over at (open)SuSE. However, for Fedora, we know that they’ve gone against Red Hat’s policy more than once. At the end of the day, it is
(at the very least in name)a community distro.But, I think we can at least agree on the fact that Canonical’s influence on Debian is definitely less than Red Hat’s influence on Fedora or SuSE’s influence on openSUSE.
Btw, consider conveying this better next time 😅. I think most others, like me, misunderstood you 😜.
Have a nice day!
Don’t feed the trolls :)
Tell me you don’t understand what those distros are without telling me you don’t understand what those distros are.
The biggest issue with immutable OSs is the lack of containerized apps. Most devs simply don’t distribute their apps in flatpaks etc. Install fedora atomic. Fist think I want to do is install xpipe to manage my servers. Can’t be don’t in an unprivileged flatpaks. Great layer it on.
Let’s try seafile next to sync my files and projects…the flatpak is maintained by a random volunteer and most up to date version is from a year ago. Great, layer that in as well.
Let’s install a command line tool, before it was 1 line, now it’s a whole lot of googling only to discover that the best way is probably to just have a whole other package manager like brew
The concept is great and it has lots of potential, just it will only work if devs start packaging their stuff in a format that works with the new paradigm (containers)
The biggest issue with immutable OSs is the lack of containerized apps.
Disagree. This is a non-issue for NixOS and Guix System. If anything, what you say only (somewhat) applies to Fedora Atomic or otherwise immature and/or niche immutable distributions.
For Fedora Atomic (and others that operate similarly), pet containers (read: Toolbx (and later Distrobox)) were originally envisioned as the solution. But, even Nix (and as you’ve noted brew on opinionated uBlue) has been used to that effect.
Though, yes, I don’t ignore that sometimes you just gotta layer it. Thankfully, as that’s exactly why we got that feature 😉.
Can’t those be installed in toolbox?
I don’t think xpipe would work, it needs too many permissions.
Something like seafile would work, better than overlaying it I guess but still isn’t park of a package manager with easy auto updates etc like it would be if the devs published to flatpak.
At the end of the day it’s a lot more work that the promise of opening discover, searching an app and hitting install.
I know
ssh -Xworks fine in a rootless podman container, and so does waypipe. I’d be shocked if xpipe didn’t.
What are “containerized apps”? Do they run in docker, podman, firejail, or bubblewrap? Also, what is their benefit?
Actually yes. Fedora atomic has a system called toolbox that uses podman to encapsulate desktop apps. Flatpak also provides a sandboxed container.
The idea is to keep the OS and apps separate as much as possible for both security and stability.
I just started toying with Arkane Linux. It’s fairly easy enough to make your own image and they provide some simple templates you can use if you don’t want Gnome. To me, the greatest thing about Arch is the AUR and unfortunately it doesn’t support AUR packages out of the box. This might not be a problem since you could mostly get along with flatpaks or distrobox. It might be a chore for someone new to Arch to have to compile something straight from the AUR that your device needs to function, like what I’ve had to do.
Give NixOS a shot. It’s got a learning curve that may be difficult if you’ve never read code, but it’s my preferred immutable setup.
It even has more packages than Arch.
Here’s the video that got me onto it:
Aside from what others have already mentioned, atomic distros usually come with “batteries included”, they have a desktop environment and bundled software. The goal is to have a complete setup where only the user space will need to be modified (for example by installing applications through Flatpak).
Arch doesn’t really have a “batteries included” default install.
I always thought immutable distros would be for servers. Am I missing the point?
Honestly, I’d rather it didn’t, or at least maintain the standard Arch as it is today. I get the appeal of immutable distros/installs, but they are just not for me. They feel like a lot more work, for not much benefit.
Also, given that Fedora atomic distros are the ones people seem to compare against, I don’t like that flatpak is effectively required. I like flatpak and what it offers, I don’t like that all apps I install must be flatpak, or that I have to go around that default in some way (when I tried one of the atomic spins, I kept running into apps that just didn’t distribute as flatpak and it made things more difficult). I suppose this old dog doesn’t want to deal with some new trick just to use his system like he always has with a simple
pacman -Sorapt install.You don’t have to install everything as a flatpak if you don’t want to. You can totally install most things in a rootless distrobox container, then use
distrobox export(if you’re using distrobox instead of toolbx) to get a nice desktop entry. It’s how I run VSCode and Quartus Prime, for example.Its honestly not that bad installing apps on these distros. Yeah the main one is flatpak, secondly appimages as easy as ever, and any other app can be installed via distrobox and exported if needed. If not that, then apps can also be layered onto the system if needed.
Ultimately it boils down to user preferences, but considering the growth and popularity of Immutable versions of distros, I would be surprised to not see a few more attempts from the Arch side of Linux.
I’m not trying to be a Luddite here, I love technology when it solves a real problem. I guess I just don’t have a problem that an immutable distro would solve.
There have been at least 1 PoCs for arch linux based on ostree: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/User:M1cha/Install_Arch_Linux_inside_OSTree
In addition, VanillaOS’s ABRoot has been packaged through the AUR
SteamOS3 is immutable and arch-based. You can see a fan-recreation of the image builder here
Otherwise, you can use the alpine linux immutable root with atomic upgrades guide.
Generally speaking, though, pacman is really basic, and the majority of the atomic/immutable magic happens in the package manager. That’s why only existing, complex package managers such as rpm-ostree (which shares a code base with DNF) have full support for it.
What is the benefit of an immutable distro?
I could see it being useful for like an office or something, where you do a big roll-out to a bunch of people. I’d assume having the system files be read-only and (presumably) the same on every system would eliminate a lot of guesswork for IT troubleshooting.
For me:
- atomic updates
- reproducibility
- (to some degree) declarative system configuration
- increased security
- built-in rollback functionality
and their consequences;
- rock solid system even with relatively up to date packages
- possibility to enable automatic updates in background without fearing breakage
- (quasi) factory reset feature
- setting up a new system in just a fraction of the time required otherwise
are the primary reasons why I absolutely adore atomic/immutable distros.
Furthermore, it minimizes all kinds of issues related to or caused by bit rot, configuration drift and hidden/unknown states. (Note that you won’t reap all of these benefits on all atomic/immutable distros.)
Yep, also ability to rebase to some other image. Maybe that’s what you meant by setting up a new system.
Oh no… what is rebasing in this context? This isn’t something related to git, I imagine?
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