this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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NixOS is an immutable file system if they are disaster prone. You will have to load everything for them ahead of time, browser, email client, Only/Libre Office, etc.
I had to switch a friend's mom to this because after switching her to Linux Mint previously, she somehow deleted the UI entirely.
Good lord. If you're not already familiar with NixOS, there are far, far easier ways to go immutable.
Configuring Nix makes Arch seem like a walk in the park.
What are the other alternatives?
Aurora/Bluefin or Silverblue/Kinoite.
Those are not immutable, especially on the file system. I'm glad the fedora team switched the term to "atomic", because "immutable" set all the wrong expectations.
So you're saying that most directories in
/usrand (also) some other directories in/are not read-only during runtime (under regular system maintenance/management) on Fedora Atomic?No, that's not what I wrote.
Thank you for clarifying what you didn't write nor mean. Could you be so kind to explain what you did mean with what's quoted below?
Sure. Not all directories are protected and the ones that are, are just protected from immediate write access. A malicious app or a user who copies the wrong snippets can create overlays and apply them immediately without a reboot. Having atomic distros is awesome but it has nothing to do with immutability and it someone needed that for example for PCs that are in random control at least some of the time, then they need a different solution on top, that gives actual immutability.
So, you referred to immutable in the absolute sense? If not, would you be so kind to mention distros/systems that you actually refer to as immutable?
I never needed it. I know from my school days that windows supports that use case. You get a full system and can do with it as you please but on reboot you get a completely fresh file system. The only thing that persisted were the user profiles that roamed through active directory. Seemingly there was no way of tampering with the file system, that would persist a reboot. And as school kids we tried hard 😅
I would be surprised if Linux didn't have utilities for that, that were better designed and safer - but again, not my expertise.
I'm so confused now as I'm trying to understand why you answered that way 😅.
But, if I understood you correctly, you didn't refer to Silverblue and Kinoite as immutable, because it is possible to apply changes to them and these changes will even stick through reboots etc. Hence, you don't deny that some parts are (in fact) deniable, but find that Atomic simply better describes what these distros actually do. And thus are better suited to set up the right expectations.
But, allow me to ask the following question then; do you think NixOS is immutable?
Sorry for the confusion 😅 I don't have any experience with NixOS apart from memes here in Lemmy. So... maybe?
Yes, I love atomic distros and I'm glad the term was changed.
😂. No worries fam.
I'm not sure why it's harder than Arch. It basically has it's own app store and you select the stuff from their website to install through the terminal.
Could you expand in your reasoning?
They have a GUI package manager? That's news to me. When I tried it out last year, package management was handled by
nix-envorconfiguration.nix.Anyway, I found it much harder than Arch because it requires learning a completely new paradigm of system management. There is a very high upfront investment in learning multiple new concepts in order to change even the most basic aspects of your system - What are flakes? What are channels? What is
home-manager?Also, the documentation and online support is far more sparse. If you encounter an issue, it's much more likely that you can find the solution for Arch through the wiki or a forum than it is with NixOS. There also tends to be no single way to resolve a problem, and so a lot of the information you find online may appear contradictory and confusing.
I never said it had a GUI store, but if your installing things for grand parents it's pretty easy through the root account, that the grand parents dont have access to. Go to https://search.nixos.org/packages search for one like Firefox and copy the command.
How is this harder than Arch?
And I never said installing packages is harder than Arch. I said setting up, configuring, and troubleshooting the system is harder than Arch.
In any case, the original point was that NixOS is a weird choice for an atomic/immutable system for grandparents when compared to something like Silverblue.
This is why we don't give terminal to the grannies.
I was wondering if someone would suggest Nix. Even Slackware would fit this use case better.