I was thinking about going immutable for a long time and now I’m choosing a distro to hop to.
My question is: what are good immutable distros other than Fedora Silverblue spins, UBlue family and NixOS?
Maybe someone uses/used any? What is/was your experience with it?
Bazzite! It’s technically atomic and not fully immutable but I’ve been using it for about a week now (long time I know) and everything just works. Didn’t need to install any extra drivers to get it working with all my peripherals. I like it a lot. Fixed a lot of Wayland issues I was having on previous Ubuntu installs.
One feature I found really cool is the Waydroid and Boxbuddy integration. You can have Android apps installed alongside regular fedora apps. Just opens an Android emulator in the background. Discovered that last night by accident. Typed in “calculator” and it opened up the Android version of it. Really neat!
Bazzite is cool, but it is part of UBlue family, which I excluded in my post. I’m not a huge fan of Fedora, no offense to anyone using it, tho!
Ah my bad. Your post says “other that” instead of “other than” so I misread it as I skimmed 😛
What are your issues with Fedora? I’d really recommend giving one or more of the universal blue OSs ago regardless as they’re pretty far from native Silverblue. Project Bluefin for instance has a solidly Ubuntu feel.
edit: reading your responses elsewhere I can guarantee you won’t have the same update/reliability issues you had with Fedora because the universal blue model is entirely different
Please don’t hurt me but what’s an “immutable” distro?
It’s a distro that makes all but a few system directories immutable. This means you can’t just install whatever you want in the same way you would install in a traditional Linux system.
This comes with some benefits:
- Malicious and buggy software can’t permanently fuck up your installation. Even root can’t edit those directories.
- Each system update replaces only the system layer, but you can rollback to the previous one if something breaks.
- You can rebase to other images (like going from Fedora Kinoite to UBlue Aurora) with a simple command, and you don’t need to reinstall anything or worry about backing up your /home directory.
- Most software is installed via flatpaks or appimages, keeping a layer of separation between your system and your applications.
- Distroboxes/Podman containers can handle a lot of additional software while keeping it safely containerized.
- The system is generally reproducible, so the core of what you have is the core of what everybody else has.
Some drawbacks:
- You can’t install whatever you want however you want. There are some hard limitations on where files are allowed to go, and installing certain software that interacts with the kernel can be tricky (I’m currently trying to figure out the best way to install my VPN provider’s client).
- There’s a definite learning curve to working with containers. It’s not always as simple as “create container, install thing.”
- There’s a definite learning curve to retraining yourself to think in layers/containers.
Some examples of modern immutable distros are:
- Fedora Silverblue
- Fedora Kinoite
- Universal Blue Aurora
- Universal Blue Bluefin
- Universal Blue Bazzite
- NixOS
- BlendOS
Thank you for the detailed explanation!
As I understand it, it’s read-only, so the updates you get are basically replacing your current ones but keeping your apps (like flatpaks) installed.
Gotcha, thank you!
I think about it like this:
Layer 2b: ->> User applications (flatpak, nixpkgs, etc.) Layer 2a: ->> User data (mutable, persistent no matter what your system layer is) Layer 1: -> System (immutable/read-only/updated "atomically" meaning all at once) Layer 0: HardwareOr, alternately, it’s what macos has been doing with absolutely no fanfare for several versions now. That’s not a knock, btw. It’s an illustration that it can be completely transparent in use, though it may require some habit changes on linux.
I see, that makes sense. Thank you!
I’m surprised to hear you don’t like Fedora. I recently tried Kinoite and I wish I’d discovered it sooner. I’ve never had a Linux distro that felt so detail-oriented and complete. I’d be curious to hear your reasoning!
It’s complicated and I have a few reasons.
- Last time I used it, Fedora’s updates were too unstable. I twice got updates breaking my system setup. For example, with openSUSE it happened only once (recent broken Mesa update). Also openSUSE updates surprisingly feel more stable than Fedora ones.
- I don’t like Red Hat. Even though I understand that open-source projects are complex and I should separate developers from their software, that doesn’t change my opinion on Red Hat.
- This problem stems from the previous ones. Using Fedora I feel like a beta-tester for future Red Hat projects and especially RHEL.
Keep in mind, that I last used Fedora on versions 37–38 and things might have changed since.
Here’s a resource I’ve been keeping in my back pocket for when I dive in:
Amazing, thank you!
I’ve been using Opensuse Aeon just over a year and it’s done great.
Tumbleweed user for the last 5 years, and dealt with a few issues over that time. The usually infrequent update break that comes with rolling release. And the Opensuse ‘Patterns’ started, which I loathe and it’s a disaster to try to disable them every install.
Aeon hasn’t had any of those issues. It’s been very much a “turn it on and get to work”.
I’ve generally had less issues with Aeon than Tumbleweed - like certain flatpaks not crashing.
But downsides as I see them:
I’m not a gnome guy. It’s fine though, I don’t hate it. But some people can’t stand it.
I had a bit of trouble running wine. Something about the default security policy. There’s a known workaround.
If you don’t like gnome have you checked kalpa?
Kalpa needs to attract more developers to keep up with Aeon’s pace. I understand it is usable as a daily driver, but it’s not just a one to one mirror of Aeon with Plasma on top.
https://sfalken.tech/posts/2024-06-08-how-do-aeon-and-kalpa-relate/
Richard Brown is all in on Aeon along with whatever contributors are helping him. Stephen Falken appears to have no one helping him work on Kalpa unfortunately. I disagree with Richard’s stance that Kalpa shouldn’t exist, but I do wish there were some capable people able to help that project.
I don’t mind using Gnome anyway, it actually does solve some networking issues that I’ve always had with Plasma. (Dolphin not handling it well whilst Gnome Files has no issues)
From OpenSUSE there’s also leap micro. Never used it, but maybe worth looking at.
If you don’t like fedora it might still be worth trying one of the fedora atomics, depending on what you didn’t like. For instance, I could never get used to dnf, but it’s largely irrelevant on an atomic distro anyways.
I would love to see a true atomic Debian-based distro, but I think that’s a long way from maturity.
Edit: opensuse aeon will also be released soon, but at least the comments on this post seem to think that there’s some important things missing from Suse atomic.
From OpenSUSE there’s also leap micro. Never used it, but maybe worth looking at.
I heard of it, but it seems more server/development focused, rather than desktop.
For instance, I could never get used to dnf, but it’s largely irrelevant on an atomic distro anyways.
100% agree, dnf is a bummer. Maybe I’ll give Kinoite a shot, as it has many differences with “vanilla” Fedora.
What started as openSUSE Micro Desktop is now openSUSE Aeon. It’s still RC2, and RC3 will probably be easier to do a clean install since it will add full disk encryption, but if you want to check it out now it’s reliable and works well.
Ahhh gotcha. The websites don’t give a good indication of that, unfortunately. Trying to find the differences between OpenSUSE flavors was surprisingly hard. Thanks for the info!
In recent turn of events, openSUSE Aeon will probably just be Aeon, and the name openSUSE will disappear everywhere.
Honestly I tried Silverblue, and had a much better time after I rebased to Bluefin. I would recommend going for Aurora over Kinoite. Of course, you can always rebase.
I’ve heard good things about VanillaOS. Not used it myself though.
With their package manager apx, you can use software from pretty much any distro in VanillaOS (copied from link above):
Apx is a tool that allows you to generate work environments based on any Linux distribution and seamlessly integrates them with the system in a convenient way …
Does it support any DE other than Gnome? For the rest, looks cool!
Does it support any DE other than Gnome? For the rest, looks cool!
Sadly, not officially (atm). I think you need to use a custom image and I don’t know how well those work.
See https://old.reddit.com/r/vanillaos/comments/1d69jn0/want_to_run_vanilla_os_but_no_gnome_de/
That’s a shame. I hope they’ll add support for more DEs in the future.
GNU Guix is the only other one I know about besides the ones you listed.
Guix is interesting, but I need to use proprietary Nvidia drivers to play games and it goes against Guix nature.
@JustMarkov @OneRedFox it’s against GNU recommendations, but the nature of open source is about modifications, adaptations, improvements and sharing… and so there is the non-gnu channel.
While true, there is the nonguix repository that packages both the proprietary Nvidia driver and Steam. Otherwise, you’re probably better off going back to regular distributions based on the others that you’ve ruled out thus far.
There’s the non guix channel which can be added very easily to guix! :)
There is blendOS which is an arch based immutable distro similar to Vanilla OS with different DE options
Secureblue, GnomeOS (if you like updating daily), VanillaOS, AOSP, SteamOS, blendOS, and many more.
There’s also the Wayblue family of Wayland distros, based on Ublue.
It’s hard to say for certain whether a distro will work for your hardware, even the Nvidia-specific images can have bugs related to the Nvidia drivers or their interaction with compositors.
I’ve used NixOS for a year.
I also tried Fedora Sway Atomic for a week or so. It mostly worked well, but I eventually found that it’s really hard to use Nix for development on a graphics application, because linking with the system Vulkan drivers is near impossible. The loader used by Nix’s glibc will ignore FHS locations. That seems to rule out a lot of the benefits of using Nix.
So I gave up on using Nix + Fedora as a failed experiment and went back to NixOS.
My wish list for Nix, Wayland, and Sway is pretty long. I kinda wish I had the time to make a new distro.
Fedora Atomic is greag. uBlue is better ootb, but most of it can be simply achieved by layering some packages (rpm-fusion, enable auto updates through
/etc/rpm-ostreed.conf).NixOS is a whole nother beast and I’d only recommend it if you use standalone compositors (labwc, hyprland, sway, wayfire, river, …), or want a declarative system.
Edit: Just read your comment about not liking Fedora. In that case I’d recommend OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Other immutable distros are smaller and I don’t have any experience with them. (IMO with atomic distros the distro doesn’t matter much because apps are installed through flatpak or distrobox anyway.(
Currently, the only projects I’d refer to as (remotely) GA are ChimeraOS, Endless OS, Fedora Atomic, Guix System, NixOS and their derivatives. The rest is, unfortunately, simply not there yet. The closest to these would be openSUSE Aeon. But, if you’d like FDE on your device, then you’d have to forego it for now. Currently, I would advice against relying on any other projects; including Arkane Linux, AshOS, blendOS, carbonOS, MocaccinoOS, Nitrux, openSUSE Kalpa, rlxos and Vanilla OS. Unless, you’re fine dealing with whatever random and fringe issues you may have to face.
As for the previously mentioned GA ‘immutable’ distros, you don’t like to pursue Fedora Atomic, NixOS and their derivatives for IMO fair reasons. ChimeraOS is primarily an OOTB console experience distro (aka couch gaming) that happens to be ‘immutable’. Therefore, bending it (to become your distro for general use) will definitely be an involved process. But, it’s possible. Likewise, Endless OS is somewhat locked down (beyond what you’d expect from your average ‘immutable’ distro) and has to be bend (at least slightly) in order for it to be more suitable as a daily driver.
This leaves us with Guix System. IMO, if you want to pursue this right now, then Guix System is simply the only remaining way of going forward. It’s fit to suit whatever needs you’d have and offers access to official documentation that’s at least a decade ahead of the one found for NixOS. However, don’t expect this to be entirely painless; ‘immutable’ distros require (in general) a bit more know-how compared to traditional distros. And within the ‘immutable distros’, Guix System and NixOS are uniquely positioned for how ‘powerful’ they feel compare to (literally) any other distro. But, with great power comes great responsibility. Hence, you should definitely know your shit.
Finally, if FDE is not a hard requirement for you and if you can live with GNOME and if don’t have qualms against containerizing everything and if you don’t intend to tinker, then you might also consider openSUSE Aeon.