Burn Snap out of there and I’m in.
Edit: looks like they’re not putting much towards snaps, it’s mostly Flatpak and systemd-sysext. I’m good with that.
Everybody’s bashing snaps but you can literally package drivers as snaps. If you don’t think that’s cool af I don’t know what is.
So you’re telling me that if snaps take off and become a standard there’s a good chance I’ll have to use them just to get my drivers? Now I hate them even more!
No but you see the drivers will be (must be) approved by Canonical which surely makes things better :|
The distro is designed to be a bulletproof, highly user-friendly operating system that showcases the best of KDE technology—a system that KDE can confidently recommend to casual users and hardware manufacturers.
So it looks like there will finally be a distribution that Windows, Mac, and ChromeOS users can jump to and just start using without having to learn much and with a much better and more familiar GUI than GNOME.
Just curious because Distrowatch can be easily gamed; does anyone know how this might affect the linux consumer market? I’m using Mint and see no reason to switch to this. I used to nerd out about different distros but aside from the enterprise distros or Debian or Arch preferences I don’t see why people are using smaller distros anymore. Hobbyist i guess?
Thanks for de-influencing me out of switching to KDE plasma, mint and ubuntu are the only distros I’ve tried and I’ve been thinking about trying something new
New users (like me) that aren’t necessarily passionate about linux and just looking for a windows alternative can be easily persuaded early on
Looks like there’s still something you can try, brother.
After bashing my face against the wall getting lutris to run StarCraft 2, I’m avoiding looking at my OS too hard
I feel like I should try arch just once so I understand the memes
Arch is a make it yourself distro. It comes barebones and you install what you need (which in my opinion gives better knowledge about your system). And the packages are up-to-date which is good if you are gaming.
If you don’t like to tinker then Arch may not be for you. Something arch-based could be a better fit. Like Garuda or EndeavourOS.
I too bashed my head with lutris on some games to the point that i gave up on Linux. Then i tried it again but this time using Bottles and it’s working really fine for me, almost flawless.
Ehh to snaps. That would 100% be the first thing of support to drop if I were them. That said it cool to see more immutable distros experimenting, I wonder how much overlap there is the Kalpa since it is btfs based.
Honestly there definitely still seems some good space for innovation in the immutable space before we “figure it out”, so the more smart people experimenting the better!
I use Fedora KDE but this one sounds like exactly what I need. I primarily use Linux for software dev and web browsing and Windows for gaming and Office.
I vote to kill snap
I can’t believe they used this as a pro for their distro…
I am currently only on Linux on my Steam Deck and I do have two RPi’s (though I don’t actively use them) so I don’t have personal current knowledge of differences between Snap, Flatpak, and App Image beyond that A: Snap always brings up lots and lots of hate in comments and B: is from Canonical.
But is it possible that they might choose to use Snap for having more program options due to Ubuntu being such a “mainstream” distro? I know lots and lots of programs do release Flatpaks, but are there more of them or does Snap have more? Real question since I am aware of how heated some threads get with folks being really “fuck Snap” or “it is fine.” Mostly just curious since I am more and more likely to move my main PC to Linux as my main OS after Windows 10 is dead.
Think of it as the Mac appstore VS the Windows App store. Mac apps (flatpak) are the same as desktop apps, but sandboxed, the store isn’t intrusive, and people found it convenient, so it was fine. Then the windows app store (snaps) launched and it did basically the same thing but slightly worse, except Microsoft (canonical) forced it down its users throats, so people hated it.
Both camps are right, from a technical perspective, snaps are fine, but philosophically, it sucks, and the Linux community cares way more about the latter than the former, otherwise they’d all be running windows.
Snap doesn’t just bring lots of hate in comments it also brings a lot of bloat in your system which is a big no in Linux community. Another thing is canonical is going out of their way to force snap. In Ubuntu even if you do apt install it is installing snap packages.
I’m not sure if there are more snap packages than flatpaks or .deb/.rpm but most Linux users are competent enough to either add custom repos or follow simple build instructions to build from source.
Snap? Can we not?
Why? What’s the issue with Snap? Is Flatpak any better?
Yeah, Flatpak is far better. The most glaring issue: Canonical hosts the only Snap backend, you can’t host it yourself. Flatpak on the other hand is fully open.
Don’t introduce proprietary crap just so companies can profit off of it.
If it’s only there like in KDE Neon, I’m fine with it. I don’t want any of my distro apps to come as Snaps though.
This article is far too hypey. One dude has started this initiative and needs people to work on his concept to get it off the ground. I’m not opposed to a red-hat free immutable system, but this one is so far from maturity this article is selling a first drawing like an almost finished product. Remind me in two years how this went.
Harald, the main architect behind it is already running it as his daily driver. Many others (myself included) are already testing it in VMs and on spare hardware with only very minor papercut issues to be resolved.
Sounds great! I’ll have a look once the user infrastructure is in place.
I use Karch, btw.
Will they be using btrfs snapshots or subvolumes to make it immutable?
Snapshots are subvolumes.
Subvolumes.
I guess they are going the steamos route seeing as arch based.
Ingl, this sounds like exactly the thing I want. Immutability aside, this is how I use EndeavourOS right now, but more sophisticated.
I’m sold on it.
Ooo damn that sounds exactly what I’d like to try.
On the other hand I feel like I’m too old for this shit. My system works fine, I understand everything, and things rarely break and never in an unrecoverable way.
The beauty/advantage of Linux Eco-system is one can pick and choose based on his/her preferences.
I’m a bit the same but I tried the switching between versions and it’s amazing.
I thought we all agreed that “immutable” is a confusing term and that we should call it “atomic”
I disagree, because they are not the same thing.
Immutable means read only root.
Atomic means that updates are done in a snapshotted manner somehow. It usually means that if an update fails, your system is not in a half working state, but instead will be reverted to the last working state, and that updates are all or nothing.
I create a btrfs snapshot before updates on my Arch Linux system. This is atomic, but not immutable.*
There is also “image based” which distros like ublue (immutable, atomic) are, but Nixos (also immutable and atomic) are not.
*only really before big updates tbh, but I know some people do configure snapshits before all updates.
What does atomic mean in this sense? That seems more confusing than immutable.
It means a change either applied completely and successfully, or not at all (think “atomic transactions” in databases).
Atomic in software refers to an operation that cant be interrupted because it happens in one step. This one of the big selling points of atomic or immutable distros. Your system will not be left in a broken state by cancelling an update because updates do not take multiple steps, unlike traditional distros.
How could you install anything or change any setting if it was truly immutable?
Immutable OS makes sense in certain scenarios, but not in home computing.
Who said that?
Fedora has pushed for the change by rebranding their immutable distros as Fedora Atomic Desktops, and these are likely the most popular immutable distros. Bazzite’s homepage also describes the distro as atomic, but never mentions the term immutable.
No? Why?
How is atomic less confusing? Immutable means that something doesn’t change, atomic means that it’s the size of an atom or has nuclear energy
EDIT: I’ve learned that some people are overly pedantic about the meaning and practical use of the word “immutable”, so much so that they decided to create a bigger confusion by giving another word a completely different and exclusive meaning
Atomic in software refers to an operation that cannot be interrupted, like the updates in these distros. Immutable is a more confusing term, as it leads users to believe that cannot control parts of the system, when in reality these distros still have tools to do so.
How could you install anything or change any setting if it “doesn’t change” ?
Settings live in user space. Software exist in containers like AppImage, Flatpak or Distrobox. If something need deep system integration, they can be layered on top of the system in the user layer. Immutable does NOT mean less control. Just exerting control over the system in a different, usually more systematic, automatic and deterministic way.
Ah yes, the immutable OS, except for all of the various mutable parts.
We should totally not call it anything less confusing.
