Fedora Onyx To Become An Official Fedora Linux Immutable Variant

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora Onyx To Become An Official Fedora Linux Immutable Variant

There's been a proposal for Fedora Linux to become a new Fedora immutable variant and now it's been approved by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) to happen for the Fedora 39 cycle...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Onyx-Approved

[FireBurn]

This is the second article on this.... Still no explanation on what an immutable distro is. Saying it's like something else, doesn't really cut it when we don't know what that is either.

[microchip8]

The new buzzword! Immutable (shit)

[Anux]

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/

However, unlike other operating systems, Fedora Silverblue is immutable. This means that every installation is identical to every other installation of the same version. The operating system that is on disk is exactly the same from one machine to the next, and it never changes as it is used.

Fedora Silverblue’s immutable design is intended to make it more stable, less prone to bugs, and easier to test and develop. Finally, Fedora Silverblue’s immutable design also makes it an excellent platform for containerized applications as well as container-based software development. In each case, applications (apps) and containers are kept separate from the host system, improving stability and reliability.

That sounds like you only use flatpack or similar stuff to install programms and you are not able to make any custom system settings (/etc). Might be usefull if you distribute a programm developed for this immutableOS and it only ever runs in VMs. I imagine it would be a pain to use on individual systems where changes are needed to get it running.

[zexelon]

FireBurn microchip8 Immutable OS in the Linux world basically means "deeply painful to use, complex experience, OS". Essentially its set up to make the base OS untouchable except under very certain circumstances.

https://itsfoss.com/immutable-linux-distros/

I personally have never run one of these as to me its an added layer of annoyance and needless complexity. You can achieve a similar goal with LVM2 and thin provisioning gold images. Its probably the same level of complexity to set up. The nice thing about LVM2 thin provisioning is that it has a relatively simple CLI.

IMHO if your looking for an immutable OS type case for something, you could probably just use VM'ing with gold images instead.

[Britoid]

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/


That sounds like you only use flatpack or similar stuff to install programms and you are not able to make any custom system settings (/etc). Might be usefull if you distribute a programm developed for this immutableOS and it only ever runs in VMs. I imagine it would be a pain to use on individual systems where changes are needed to get it running.

The only directories you can't easily write to on the immutable Fedora variants is /usr and /, the former because its where OSTree mounts the current checkout at, and / because it's a synthesised root. You can however, still write to both via layering packages, but it isn't the best or quickest experience, hence why containers, flatpak etc are preferred.

/etc is tracked and gets system updates merged on top, but is fully read-write.

OSTree basically means two Fedora installs checked out on the same version will have the exact same /usr, which is verifiable. This is great for security, reproducibility and reliably, updates are atomic, they either all happen or not at all. You only pull changed files on updates because OSTree uses a git like object store it links into, this is the same system Flatpak uses for deduplication.

[misuzu]

Another try at reinventing NixOS.

[stevewmn]

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/


That sounds like you only use flatpack or similar stuff to install programms and you are not able to make any custom system settings (/etc). Might be usefull if you distribute a programm developed for this immutableOS and it only ever runs in VMs. I imagine it would be a pain to use on individual systems where changes are needed to get it running.

I think it's something that might appeal to the Red Hat corporate customer base, and Fedora is doing their Alpha testing to iron out the kinks.

[archkde]

Another try at reinventing NixOS.

NixOS is a declarative system, which is a slightly different concept. Both have their place.

[skeevy420]

This is the second article on this.... Still no explanation on what an immutable distro is. Saying it's like something else, doesn't really cut it when we don't know what that is either.

It's making root read-only outside of system updates, having the same packages installed on every system, and having updates done in a manner where everything is tracked and able to be reverted. They usually come with various container and sandboxing technologies so people can run packages and software not installed by default. They also usually offer some sort of layering method to add non-default packages to the base system (while simultaneously making updates 10x more annoying), but layering into /usr defeats the purpose of forcing everyone to have the same root for security and reproducibility. God forbid the made use of /usr/local/bin or /opt/dnf/usr/bin instead of annoying ass layers.