Ready to be surprised? KDE Linux, a new Arch-based immutable OS featuring Btrfs, Flatpak, and Snap, made by KDE's devs, is now in development.
      •  d-RLY?   ( @dRLY@lemmy.ml ) 
        9•5 months ago

        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.

        •  Anna   ( @AnnaFrankfurter@lemmy.ml ) 
          6•5 months ago

          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.

          •  d-RLY?   ( @dRLY@lemmy.ml ) 
            1•5 months ago

            I wasn’t aware of Snaps being used in-place of regular installs with apt. Are they shown to be Snaps in the name of the program when using apt search? And if there is a Snap and a regular deb, do they both show up (again if using apt search)?

      •  thingsiplay   ( @thingsiplay@beehaw.org ) 
        7•5 months ago

        I don’t like Snap too, but it has some advantages over Flatpak. And unfortunately the most popular distribution still uses Snap. In example it is easier to create Snap packages and Flatpak does not support CLI only applicatoins ( Edit: my bad ) , but Snap does (something like grep in example). Also some may like it more that Snap relies on AppArmor instead using the custom solution of Flatpak.

        All in all, its not like black and white which is better. I still wish only one of the formats would exist, because this is not the kind of fragmentation I wish to have. But both exist and the end user should decide which of them to kill.

          •  shapis   ( @shapis@lemmy.ml ) 
            3•5 months ago

            In think it comes from flathub not having many cli applications in it. I’d love to drop snaps for Flatpak only. But I can get so many snaps that aren’t on flathub it’s crazy.

          •  thingsiplay   ( @thingsiplay@beehaw.org ) 
            1•5 months ago

            Maybe you are right. Its something I repeat it myself, after doing a research back when it was new. Given Neovim is available on Flathub, maybe its possible. Maybe it was true at some point. Good catch, I’ll make sure not to repeat that anymore, as I don’t want spread misinformation.

  •  eldain   ( @eldain@feddit.nl ) 
    15•5 months ago

    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.

    •  moonpiedumplings   ( @moonpiedumplings@programming.dev ) 
      12•5 months ago

      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.

    •  Virkkunen   ( @Virkkunen@fedia.io ) 
      4•5 months ago

      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

      •  prole   ( @prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
        2•5 months ago

        It’s not semantics, they are two different things.

        And to your edit… Are you upset that there are two different words that mean two different things? I don’t understand.

        they decided to create a bigger confusion by giving another word a completely different and exclusive meaning

        Isn’t this just how words work…?

      •  thingsiplay   ( @thingsiplay@beehaw.org ) 
        2•5 months ago

        Immutable does not mean “not changing”, but rather that you don’t have the rights to change. If you take the immutable option away, then its changing again, like when you update your system. People who have a problem with the term say, “see its not immutable, the term is a lie!”. Which I kind of agree, but somewhat conflicted.

        Atomic is an attempt to create a new “meaning” with a word, that cannot be misunderstood. Its trying to avoid the situation of “Free” in example. But I don’t like the term Atomic either, because it just suggest to me that everything is split into many little parts and is not self explanatory like Immutable. I’m conflicted here too.

        I’m always conflicted.

      •  ReversalHatchery   ( @ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org ) English
        1•5 months ago

        atomic has had a meaning for a very long time in IT, don’t pretend that it’s something made up bullshit. with this thinking we could just throw out the word mutable/immutable too, what is it my computer is radioactive and I’ll get cancer from it? of course not, because it has a different meaning with computers, and people in the know (not even just professionals because I’m not one) know it.

        atomic means that if multiple things would change, they will either change at once, or if the task failed none of it will change.
        sometimes these are called transactions, suse calls it transactional updates. but is that any better? now the complaint will be that suse must have transacted away all the money from your bank account!

        and distros are obviously not immutable, that’s just plainly misleading. we update them, someone does that daily. updating requires it to be mutable, to be modifiable.

  •  flying_sheep   ( @flying_sheep@lemmy.ml ) 
    6•5 months ago

    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.

  •  Hexadecimalkink   ( @Hexadecimalkink@lemmy.ml ) 
    2•5 months ago

    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?