So, I recently got interested with the idea of an atomic distro, particularly the derivatives of Fedora Kinoite (currently testing Aurora).
What’s your experience with them? What are the unexpected troubles and did you manage to resolve them? Do you feel it’s worth it to learn the nuances of their use?
Also, on a personal testing note, did you manage to properly run AppImages and what did you do to make it happen? I couldn’t properly run them either natively or via Fedora toolbox on Aurora. (Also, I borked Aurora within 4 hours of trying to install Outline VPN that consistently had issues with tunneling).
I haven’t used one, but my guess would be they’re fine if you’re a “web browsing and email” sort, but most of us here probably aren’t, and then you’re going to have pain when you need to install some tool that expects to be installed globally, because so many pieces of open source software assume the “spew files all over /usr” installation method.
Feels like you’d be spending a lot of time fighting expectations in the same way that Nix has to.
I tried Fedora Silverblue.
Didn’t see the point. Anything that needs access to system files can’t be installed as a FlatPak or in a container.
When you need to alter the install image just to get htop or Gnome Tweaks, it defeats the purpose of running an atomic distro.
And I didn’t see any benefit. It was buggier than all other distros I tried except Ubuntu. So the selling point of “the devs test on the exact same system you run” doesn’t seem to have any effect. And I wasn’t in a situation where I would have needed to roll back to a previous state in years. Linux doesn’t really bork your install with an update anymore.
I love to install Atomic distributions for less technically savvy people. Reducing the conflict and issue potential.
It is more complex not less. Maybe one day it will be hassle free but that day isn’t right now
If we’re talking email and docs and stuff, doesn’t it make sense to install something like Debian, properly set it up and leave it be?
Sounds like an option that really really wouldn’t ever bork.
Atomic distributions have read only filesystems for nearly anything but /home, it makes it way more reliant against loss of power then just a normal Debian. I had a few people with distributions that broke due to filesystems corruption.
That’d work, too. But doing that I still had to occasionally/rarely fix my relatives laptops. I think after some of the major updates and the stupid Brother printer drivers messed up and needed manual intervention. But Debian is pretty stable. But with that said, it’s not the only option. I can imagine an atomic distro doing a good job, too. And being low maintenance, or at least fail in a way my mom could handle. I mean that’s how some modern devices work anyways. Be atomic, have A/B updates…
I run Bazzite on a HTPC, and it’s great, but I’m still deciding what to put on my daily driver PC, which needs to be able to do things like gaming and coding. As you also pointed out, Fedora atomic distros don’t like VPN clients that aren’t already packaged neatly as an RPM.
In light of that, you can either try to build your own custom downstream derivation that pulls from the upstream image of your choice (Universal Blue has instructions and a template for doing this) and make customizations to the system at build time, go with something like Blue Build, or go for a traditional mutable distro.
I’ve been trying to get Private Internet Access to install at build time on my own custom attempt, but so far, it’s been a failure. I’ve also tried on other immutable distros that use ostree alternatives, and they’ve also failed. I may just have to concede the client and only use the preset OVPN configurations, or I may need to move onto mutable options.
I switched to Silverblue and it is fine
