[kwlug-disc] Bad review of "immutable" distros

[Chris Irwin]

On Mon, Jun 22, 2026 at 10:33:29PM +0000, Doug Moen wrote:
>Atomic update means that you accumulate a set of changes to the base 
>system in a transaction, then you make an explicit gesture to cause 
>those changes to go live. The gesture is either a shell command 
>(rpm-ostree apply-live), or you reboot the system.

I somewhat don't mind flatpak for GUI software (firefox, etc). And as 
great as toolbx is for some scenarios (containing a development 
environment in it's own little sandbox, for example), I really don't 
want to deal with it for everyday CLI tools (mutt, etc).

I wasn't aware of `rpm-ostree apply-live` before this, and that would 
likely solve my biggest gripe about atomic fedora: Having to reboot to 
use a new package you just installed.

My current install was done in 2017, and it's still truckin, so I won't 
be migrating it any time soon. But I'll probably try out atomic on 
another PC.


-- 
Chris Irwin

email:   chris at chrisirwin.ca
   web: https://chrisirwin.ca