Serpent OS Demonstrates Working Offline Rollbacks With Its Package Manager

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Serpent OS Demonstrates Working Offline Rollbacks With Its Package Manager

Hot off the recent Serpent OS Alpha release and talking up new features for 2025, this original Linux distribution led by open-source developer Ikey Doherty is now demonstrating its offline rollback support with integration around its package management system...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Serpent-OS-Offline-Rollbacks

[ikey_serpent]

Just for clarification the feature is filesystem independent and is using moss's existing transactions and deduplication, has nothing to do with xfs =]

[rav101]

Just as a point of clarification, whilst XFS is recommended, you can use F2FS and ext4 and this offline rollback will work on any of these (or future) File Systems as this is functionality within moss rather than being linked to any given FS such as BTRFS snapshots.

[Michael]

Just for clarification the feature is filesystem independent and is using moss's existing transactions and deduplication, has nothing to do with xfs =]

Thanks for clarification, updated.

[varikonniemi]

looks like a nice feature bruteforced on the package manager level instead of just relying on snapshot rollback.

Interesting how they can virtualize the package manager like that, i only saw it before on nixos.

If anyone has a link to a good overview of their technology stack please share.

[ms178]

I hope SerpentOS will also aim to maximize out-of-the-box performance like CachyOS?

[sophisticles]

Obvious question/observation:

It seems that in order for this to work you basically need to have all the required packages already residing on the disk in a separate folder/partition than the main install.

Correct?

Which means that this increases the amount of disk space needed to install the OS.

Of course nowadays disks are so large that it probably doesn't matter.

I would like to point out that Windows has had this type of features since the Win Me days, so only 25 years before Serpent.

[rav101]

I hope SerpentOS will also aim to maximize out-of-the-box performance like CachyOS?

Hey,

My understanding is that Ikey and the team at SerpentOS do have optimisation in mind, its just not at the priority list yet given that it only hit alpha status in the last couple of weeks.

Ikey was previously employed at Intel and was one of the core people that developed Clear Linux there, well known for it's optimisations and raw performance that other distros have incorporated, such is the beauty of open source collaboration and sharing of ideas. Its been a while since he left, Clear Linux has continued to develop and distros like CachyOS have done their own work, optimisations and pulled great distros together.

Serpent won't be a straight copy of any other distro, it is being built from the ground up for its reasons, but when the focus does shift to optimisation, you have a group of people who know what their doing and how to properly profile / benchmark and deliver optimised results.

[rav101]

Obvious question/observation:

It seems that in order for this to work you basically need to have all the required packages already residing on the disk in a separate folder/partition than the main install.

Correct?

Which means that this increases the amount of disk space needed to install the OS.

Of course nowadays disks are so large that it probably doesn't matter.

I would like to point out that Windows has had this type of features since the Win Me days, so only 25 years before Serpent.

In my admittedly incomplete understanding of moss and how it works:

On a fresh install (transaction 1) every file in /usr is linked and moss essentially keeps a database of every file.

On a subsequent transaction, new files are linked and a new /usr is created and a combination of the files from transaction 1 and the new files to make transaction 2. Files deleted from transaction 1 aren't really deleted, they are not pulled from the link database for transaction 2 so don't show up anymore. This goes on for however many transactions.

This will use more drive storage than actually deleting the files. However, a feature being fleshed out is the prune (and auto-prune) functionality. Prune allows you to manually delete certain transactions (or the files associated with them at least) and auto-prune will allow Serpent to only keep the last X no of transactions. It could also be dynamic based on age or disk utilisation so for exanple keep all transactions for the last week but then weekly for the last month and then monthly for the last year. This will create a nice balance in roll back ability vs disk storage utilisation. You will be able yi tag certain transactions not to be deleted (known good) such as the vary first fresh install so you always have something to recover back to.

This is all done within your main partition, you don't need to have a separate partition and the only files saved there are ones you've previously installed from a previous transaction within moss (install, update or removal of an app).

[entropicdrifter]

I would like to point out that Windows has had this type of features since the Win Me days, so only 25 years before Serpent.

Wow, I didn't realize Windows had such an advanced package manager. Last I checked most people using Windows were still in the stone ages of "download a random exe from a website and hope it doesn't have a virus or if it does that Windows Defender catches it"