Atomic Linux Distros: What Barriers Stand Between You and Making the Switch?

Managing 30+ machines with NixOS in a single unified config, currently sitting at a total of around 17k lines of nix code.

In other words, I have put a lot of time into this. It was a very steep learning curve, but it's paid for itself multiple times over by now.

For "newcomers", my observations can be boiled down to this: if you only manage one machine, it's not worth it. Maaaaaybe give home-manager a try and see if you like it.

Situation is probably different with things like Silverblue (IMO throwing those kinds of distros in with Guix and NixOS is a bit misleading - very different philosophy and user experience), but I can only talk about Nix here.

With Nix, the real benefit comes once you handle multiple machines. Identical or similar configurations get combined or parametrized. Config values set for Host A can be reused and decisions be made automatically based on it in Host B, for example:

• all hosts know my SSH pub keys from first boot, without ever having to configure anything in any of them
• my NAS IP is set once, all hosts requiring NAS access just reuse it implicitly
• creating new proxmox VMs just means adding, on average, 10 lines of nix config (saying: your ID will be this, you will run that service) and a single command, because the heavy lifting and configuring has already been done, once -...

Debian just works, it doesn't complain if I forget to update it for a couple years, and I don't feel like reinstalling my os this year

Flatpaks are problematic enough on its own and I avoid them when at all possible.

I’d never want to make my whole system flatpak based. That’s the opposite of what I want.

Customizations, especially theming, at the system level. Or just learning to modify system files on an atomic distro, in general.

I'm sure it's doable and I am genuinely interested in moving to atomic/immutable distros. But more for the security aspect than reliability as I've yet to break my install of Linux in a way that takes more than an hour to recover from. I've enjoyed the predictability of Debian and my very particular taste in UI makes for additional baggage just reinstalling, let alone moving to a very different distro.

I once installed Bazzite on my PC. I am an sway user/addict. So thought about installing sway on Bazzite.

Below is my journey

Let me try to download and compile it.

Downloaded but it won't compile.

The libraries/dependancies are not installed. Here, try installing the packages via brew.

Nope, some of them are available and some are not on Brew.

Now what do I do? Okay, there is something called distrobox where I can install whatever I want.

Looks like I have to learn distrobox. Wait, sway is not a simple application, it's a full blown window manager. Even if it compiles, will it work?

Most of the people online (Discord) told me the process won't be very pretty.

Do I want to invest another week experimenting with distrobox?

Nope, installed Nobara the next day and I'm happy.

Disclaimer: Bazzite is a fantastic distro and it's powering my RoG Ally. Atomic distros are fantastic for the niche they fill.

Lack of interest. It doesn't solve any problems that I have.

oops I bricked my system

I honestly can't think of a single time I've done this in the 20 years I've been using linux.

what’s keeping YOU from switching to an atomic distro

I dunno, it just seems like the latest fad. Debian/Arch work just fine.

I tried Silverblue.
And I wanted to run it without layering, cause everyone tells you to avoid it, since it kinda defeats the purpose of an atomic distro in the first place.

First of all, it was buggy. As an example, automatic updates didn't work, I had to click the update button and reboot twice for it to actually apply, even though it was activated in the settings.
None of the docs helped (actually, there wasn't any in-depth documentation at all). And no one had a solution besides "It should actually just work".
That's the main advantage (the devs test with the exact same system you run) gone right from the start.

Then Firefox is part of the base image, but it's Fedora's version, which doesn't come with all codecs.
If you install Firefox from Flathub, you now have 2 Firefox's installed, with identical icons in the GUI. So you need to hide one by deleting its desktop file. Except you can't. So you have to copy it into your home directory and edit it with a text editor to hide the icon.
Then I went through all the installed programs to replace the Fedora version with the Flathub version, cause what's the point of Flatpak if I'm using derivative versions? I want what the app's dev made.

Then it was missing command line tools I'm used to. Installing them in a container didn't work well cause they need access to the entire system.

Finally, I realized even Gnome Tweaks wasn't part of the installation, and it isn't available as Flatpak.
That's the point where I tipped my hat and went back to Debian. Which isn't atomic, but never gave me any issues in the first place.

Maybe it's better now, I was on the previous version. Or maybe the Ublue flavours are better. But I don't see any reason to start distro-hopping again after that first experience.

I use Gentoo, and atomic just doesn't seem like a fit for me. That said I could see it being great for people who don't tinker. If I were to get a family member to use linux I might pick an atomic distro.

Near as I can tell they're primarily aimed at desktop users who want to treat their computer like a smartphone.

I do software development and need a ton of tools installed that aren't just "flatpaks". IntelliJ, Pycharm, sdkman, pyenv, Oracle libraries and binaries, databases, etc. The last time I tried this I ran into a bunch of issues. And for what gain? Basically zero.

Let's answer your question with a question: Why should I reimage my whole tailored home setup, have to learn a different method of doing everything on my system, and ultimately slow my workflow for an atomic system? Sure, it's cool, but it's not worth upending everything that I use for. I'm glad it exists, but I don't currently have a need for it.

I wonder if OP and about 3/4 of the people in here understand the difference between atomic and immutable.

I like the fact that linux is so easy to poke around in, even if it breaks. Breaking can be a good thing since that way I learn the most. I enjoy rebuilding my entire setup from time to time. I diskile the additional complexity.

I switched to nixos years ago. Its better now than it ever has been as far as available packages and etc. But it does present issues if you get off the beaten path - the "now you have two problems" issue. For instance:

• if software is not packaged for nixos already, you won't be able to follow the 'build from source' directions on its github page or etc. You have to make a nix package or at least development environment first. That can be tricky and you won't have help from the software dev.
• If software downloads exes that require libraries to be in a certain standard location, well, they won't work. Android studio for instance, downloads compilers and so forth. There are workarounds, mostly, but it can take a while to discover and get working and I'm sure many people give up. Again, the android studio software and documentation will be no help at all.

That said, more and more projects are supporting nix, and nixpkgs has gotten really big. I think they support more packages than any other distro now.

I actually used bazzite as my first mainstream linux distro and I hated it because every second command I pasted in didn't work and I didn't understand why. I eventually figured out it was due to the immutable nature of bazzite and began telling everyone to never use bazzite because it doesn't work very well.

Now I actually understand what the actual upsides are and why it's different I will change to mainstream distros to actually get a hold of what it's usually like before considering changing back over.

I think most users just don't really know much about atomic distros. A lot of people in this thread don't seem to really understand the benefits and mention downsides that don't really exist in most of them. I think eventually (and by that I mean in a VERY long time) atomic distros will become the standard. AerynOS is an upcoming one that seems to have a really amazing blend of it's atomic features without disrupting the user experience people expect from more typical distros. It won't replace Nix for me, but I hope it'll convince a lot of people to try it out.

1. I don't really want to use Containerized packaging (flatpak,appimage nixos solves this nicely but its not my distro)
2. They don't offer many desktop envoirments (typo sorry but nixos also solves this )
3. I like my current distro

I use atomic distros on my server and a media centre, but don't see any reason to do it on my main systems. Stability is fine, and atomic distros make said tinkering more difficult.

I use Bazzite on my Steam Deck because I wanted to get LUKS encryption for the hard drive (and otherwise do not wish to manually maintain the computer). I cannot take what is effectively a general purpose PC out and about without encryption. Especially not with the current political climate in my country (USA).

From dealing with SteamOS, I am already familiar enough with how to set up a full dev environment on the immutable distros. So while that is not a challenge for me, it is still a hassle to deal with. I'd rather just directly install my libraries and binaries rather than do workarounds in containers (and then remember the containers).

I think we'll truly be in the immutable desktop distro future when I can do something like install the base distro image AND simply dnf install something (e.g. nvidia-vaapi-driver or gcc) on top without having to layer it with rpm-ostree. That is, my dnf installs should transparently live on top of the base distro, and that way my base system will never break even if something on top of it does. The problem with layering with rpm-ostree is you are running the risk of a future failed upgrade. It would be like if your MacBook said "sorry, you installed a weird XCode library and therefore we cannot upgrade the OS" -- and that should obviously never happen. Restoring my computer to a base state could be as simple as dnf remove * or a GUI option to "Revert to base + keep user files" and that should leave me with a functioning basic system.

Anyway, even though I only use an immutable distro on one device I do see it as the future of Linux desktop computing. I am not up-to-date with the development efforts, but I think we'll eventually reach a day when using and configuring it, even for advanced users, will be no more difficult than traditional distros. Maybe by 2030 that will be the case.

I made my remarks w.r.t. rpm-ostree and the Fedora family of distros because that's what I use. Obviously the other immutable distros have their own versions of these tools and their own versions of solving the problems related to them.

Nvidia RTX graphic card, Valorant, Microsoft Office suite, Adobe Creative Cloud, QuickBooks, AutoCAD, Revit, Visual Studio (full version), DirectX 12-dependent games like Microsoft Flight Simulator, Microsoft Teams, Visio, Power BI Desktop, Windows Mixed Reality, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, CorelDRAW, Ubisoft Connect games, Cricut Design Space, MAGIX Vegas Pro, Acronis True Image, some more industry software.. just to name a few.

I'm on Debian stable on my desktop but I tinkered with SteamOS on the SteamDeck, so Arch.

no more “oops I bricked my system” moments

I don't actually know what that means. If the system because unbootable it's because I explicitly messed it up, for example by editing fstab or tinkering with GRUB. I honestly can not remember an apt update that broke the system, and I don't just mean my desktop (which I use daily, to work and play) but even my remote servers running for years.

So... I think that part mostly comes down to trusting the maintainer of the pinned distribution. They are doing their best to avoid dependency hell in a complex setup but typically, if you do select stable, it will actually be stable.

I do have discussions like this every few months on Lemmy and I think most people are confused about what is an OS vs. what is an application. IMHO an application CAN be unstable, e.g. Firefox or the slicer for your 3D printer because you do want the very latest feature for some reason. The underlying building blocks though, e.g. kernel, package manager, arguably drivers, basically the lower down the stack you go, the more far reaching the consequences. So if you genuinely want an unstable system somehow, go for it, but then it is by choice, explicitly, and then I find it hard to understand how one could then not accept the risk of "oops I bricked my system" moment.

I have to admit, when it comes to new developments in the Linux world, I tend to live under a rock ... never switched to Wayland, not because I have any ideological reservations, but because my favorite WM (a minimalist WM developed by a friend of mine) is available only for Xorg.

I had heard about NixOS before, but until I stumbled upon this thread, I didn't have a good understanding about what an atomic distro is. Now that I have a bit of an understanding, I guess I can only repeat what others said before, it seems to be solving a problem that I don't have. I've been using rolling release distros for a very long time (at first Gentoo, like, 15 or more years ago, but Arch (btw) for over a decade now, with occasional, typically short stints in Debian-based distros), and the amount of problems caused by updates has been negligible for the last decade (Gentoo overlays 15 years ago could be a pain, for sure).

It does sometimes bother me that my OS config seems to so ... static these days, but then again I have so many things going on in life on that I don't feel a huge need to prioritize changing an OS that feels blazingly fast to use, stable, minimalist, and basically checks all the boxes. It just became my high-productivity comfort zone.

nothing. I am a bazzite and bluefin convert. it feels like a dream after 20+ years of futzing about with Linux.

The reason most people still stick with windows/Macs. Current OS just works. I personally run mint, it works.

Before this i run windows 10 LTSC. The only reason i jump to mint is because it is almost the same as windows.

My current setup works perfectly fine, haven't bricked my system in half a decade.
The learning curve seems steep. It seems to introduce a lot of complexity without much benefit for me. Docs are sparse and everything that is already out there is written with "traditional" setups in mind.

Ive been using pop-os for my desktop for years. Ive had no update headaches, roll back issues, or anything else that would compel me to swap distros for one that made these things better.

So to answer your question:

None of the above are compelling features that justify the work to switch off an already very stable distro.

what’s keeping YOU from switching to an atomic distro?

I tried switching to VanillaOS a month ago. I had a hell of a time getting my niche use-case to work, consisting of using Syncthing to sync my Obsidian notes to a server via Tailscale. Apparently, I had to create a custom VanillaOS image just to install Tailscale? Also, I couldn't get wl-copy to work. Also, docs were out of date and missing.

See notes: https://lemmy.today/post/25622342/14849341

I like Arch because I have control over the system. At least with VanillaOS (not sure about other immutable distros), it seems like I'm supposed to give up control or fight with the system to let me do what I want.

I actually have accidentally bricked my Linux system in the past, but that was a long time ago and I learned from the experience. So it's not a problem I currently have.

I still haven't gotten to doing this, but actually, I was thinking the locked down nature of VanillaOS might be fine for my parents. They currently only use their Mac for browsing the web and not much else. Seems like VanillaOS might be a good fit for users that don't have very demanding computing needs.

Really cool in terms of rebasing and rollback, but Flatpak isn't there yet (for me at least). Introduces lots of complexity without much benefit for me. They have their uses, but not for me yet. And honestly, I haven't bricked my system in long enough that I don't consider it a benefit I really care for.

Don't get me wrong, they are cool, and I hope development is continued but they aren't for me just yet.

It's cool but it's just more hassle than it's worth at the moment.

You just said it yourself. I do like to tinker. I can install a distro in 15 minutes. I can fix my system. I do make backups. Why would I need or want an atomic distro again?

Doesn't solve any problem I have. Why switch?

Also, interesting concept the immutable one, but just... Why?

Probably because everyone is still constantly recommending Mint as a good distro for beginners.

I have a small testing field. My mother is using Opensuse Aeon and my father in law is using Fedora Silverblue. Since I am their IT support it's fine. I asked what they wanna do on their Laptops and figured it doesn't matter if they use windows, mac or any linux distro. Since I am most comfortable with linux, it is what they are using now. They are happy and I am getting the same amount of questions as before. Had no real trouble since then.

i'm currently using bazzite and nixos

two very different approaches to atomic, i'm not sure which one is better

one does the stable gaming thing very well and the other does magical things that are very impressive and efficient

honestly don't know which approach will prove to be most beneficial

I really like Debian stable, and have for a very long time. I'm not too fearful of fucking up the system because Debian stable is more stable than most anvils, and I have timeshift installed with regular backups configured which get stored locally and to a RAID 5 array on my NAS system (which is also running Debian). Anything super duper important I also put onto a cloud host I have in Switzerland.

If I want to do something insane to the system, which is rare, then I test it extensively in virtualization first until I am comfortable enough to do it on my actual system, take backups, and then do it.

I am working to make my backup/disaster recovery solution even better, but as it stands I could blow my PC up with a stick of dynamite and have a working system running a day later with access to all of my stuff as it was this morning so long as a store that sells system hardware is open locally. If it were a disk failure, or something in software, It would take less than a day to recover.

So what keeps me from switching is that I really do not see a need to, and I like my OS.

Atomic/immutable distros are just another tool in the tool box. It is great for systems with a limited use scenario like the SteamDeck or HTPCs. I also love to install immutable distributions on systems where the user (often IT-illiterate) and the administrator are different people.

On my desktop PC I will, for the foreseeable future, use a normal distro (ArchLinux in my case) but i am planing to look into changing my servers to immutable with docker. That could make updates/maintenance easier and reduce the risk for full server compromises

My main reason is one you listed. My setup works well for me; I enjoy it; and I don't feel the need to fix what ain't broke (when the "fix" likely involves breaking a lot of things I need to fix, and generally a lot of time and effort). Plus, from what I can tell, if you are particular about parts of your system, the immutable distros on offer are not diverse enough to cater to you—eg can I use my preferred init system, runit? All the immutable distros I know are systemd (which I am not a big hater of, but I like and am accustomed to runit already).

Edit: saw what you said at the end about what it would take for me to switch. It would be if I had a real use case for it, eg I regularly had problems that an immutable distro would solve, or I could see a way that an immutable distro would drastically improve my workflow.

I like fucking around and finding out. I also don't like roll backs, real men only roll forwards :)

(don't take that too seriously please)

Look, I'm a Slacker. It's not the Slack way.

Long, LONG, time linux user here, but to answer your question, most general users don't tinker. They want it to 'just work,' which is why Apple, and to a lesser extent Windows, has dumbed everything down and made it proprietary (beyond just the locked in money thing) so users don't have to think. Plus, support is a big money maker, for the corporations anyway.

I haven't tried them, so I cannot judge, but I'm just afraid I'll run into issues when I will have to go off the beaten path. Inevitably I'll have to do something hacky in order to fix some obscure software that the maintainers of the distro didn't think of, and that's currently already a big pain. But in such a strict setting it will be even more difficult. There will be no documentation and probably no guide or questions/answers on any forum either.

I'd be willing to try it for a productivity setup if I needed a reinstall, but not for my main PC because I just rely on too many hacks to get shit working.

i use arch. I've got it set up and it works really well for me. I'd only switch if I had some feature I needed in atomic that I can't have in arch. (not just a feature atomic has, but a feature I need that atomic has)

Back in the day when embedded devices are running Linux kernel 2.6, the kernel is gzipped and saved to an SPI flash, then extracted to RAM and run from there.

Does that sound immutable enough to you?

The decision on this design wasn't for an immutable system, but just that flash chips were expensive. Immutability was an accidental achievement.

Actually we developers dreamed every day we can directly modify the operating system ad hoc, not needing to go through the compile-flash-boot agonising process just to debug a config file.

You see, my point is, when a system is in good hands, it just does not break. End of story.

Maybe the next time before you guys press Enter after pacman -Syyu (not exclusively saying your distro is bad, Arch pals, sorry), think about the risk and recovery plan. If you are just an end user expecting 100% uptime and rarely contributing (reporting bugs at least), consider switch to a more stable distro (I heard Debian is good), and ask yourself if you want an immutable distro, or do you just want a super stable system.

I switched a workstation to Secureblue for the very specific security priorities targeted by that project, but I think for the majority of users, the main reason for not switching to atomic is one you mentioned: why fix what isn't broken? The main selling point promoted to potential new users seems to be that updates don't break anything, but I can't remember a single time since Debian Sarge that an update broke anything for me, and I actually find the rpm-ostree package layering and updating process to be far more of a headache than otherwise.

Unless it's prepackaged like a steam deck, moving from the traditional way of doing things to atomic is a major change. Like any major change, people need a good reason to make it, and I think right now the only compelling ones are either hyper-specific (switching to okd and needing to build it on coreos, wanting to move to a specific atomic project, etc.), or just general curiosity.

Most of the ones out there are weird, anti-configurable systems like mobile phone OS.

The only ones that really seem like "the future" in my eyes are Nix and Guix.

And I'm not going to use those because I already have a good setup with my conventional distro (Debian). Anything less than absolute perfection will not get me to switch.

Nix is imperfect because it uses systemd. Guix is imperfect because it has a smaller selection of packages, and a more difficult configuration system.

I'd have to relearn a bunch of shit.

Don't feel up to it. I'm so used to my setup.

Even using SteamOS ("Arch but we modded it to be sorta kinda like an immutable distro but not really") miffs me more than it should.

Traditional distros have decades of guides, forum posts, and StackExchange answers. Atomic systems? Not nearly as much. When something breaks at 2am, knowing there's a million Google results for your error message is comforting.

This is my reason. I've been using Arch exclusively for a few years, but have used it on and off since 2008. I still don't consider myself an expert by any means, and I frequently pull the docs and old forum threads to solve issues I run into.

Documentation is the most important deciding factor for me. I didn't use more fully featured distributions, even if they were "easier" becuase if I can't look up the answer, and I have to live with something because I don't know what button to press... I mean you may as well just give me a windows box again.

ive been meaning to even try another distro for a while, regardless of being immutable or not.

but my machine works just fine how it is. why change it?

For me it's too much time investment, I don't want to tinker with my OS. The fact that it's so common to screw up a system that atomic distros are becoming much more popular is a good example, I want an OS that doesn't get screwed up in the first place.

Because it took me a few years to create my perfect Fedora workstation installation.

If one days it becomes bricked, I’d probably switch to an immitable distribution, but I’m sticking with workstation as long as it works.

Also there is no real upside to switching for me.

An atomic distro is one which is in my understanding, has a basis in libostree, right? I'm familiar with the Fedora/RedHat versions but not any others.

Immutable distributions, for me to are wonderful when they are sparse. I don't want anything on my OS which I don't use at least once on a while.

If I install Fedora (RPM) Workstation to a large extent I can remove programs that I don't want. Whereas SilverBlue (libostree), I'm stuck with whatever the maintainers template (is there a blocking mechanism?).

However, with sparse Fedora-IoT, I can't break it - to a large extent - and it doesn't have anything I don't want.

I always install minimal versions of OSs, from Fedora (Everything iso), to Debian (debootstrap) to ArchLinux to Exherbo to Talos, just keep them cleaner longer. Then I fix them until they break!

I think they're ideal for those starting out in Linux because they are not ready to break; not saying that they're not for others too.

There's enough documentation, at least for Fedora atomic distros, to make your own custom spin.

I'm not switching for any desktop, unless the basic OS is minimal; but have switched for Raspberry Pi OS to Fedora IoT (atomic distro), at least temporarily.

I'm currently testing fedora (upgrading from mint) and since I'm fairly new I don't want to venture into the fairly unknown territory that is Immutable atm.

Plus, I using a VPN, its crucial for my work, and I already see there are some issues with it because it has to be layered and blá bla bla.

Basically I'm just giving Atomic distros one or 2 years more so that the technology matures, software developers start taking it seriously enough to work around them, and for guides to start coming out.

I did, then I came back to arch because I couldn't get vr working after more than a year of using nixos. I may come back though, my config still exists

My current distro uses APK 3 as a package manager and that is already atomic. So I guess my current setup works fine, without any of the other hassles and limitations.

Immuteability is what enabled me to finally switch over full time. I don't think a lot of geeks yet realize how huge they are going to be for wider-spread adoption.

The biggest thing for me is that a lot of them don't officially support dual-booting on one disk, e.g. Kinoite. I like to have multiple distros installed so I have a fall-back. I love using Tumbleweed for gaming, but I'd love to use an atomic distro for my development work. But I don't want to use one in an unsupported way, as that defeats the point in my eyes.

Tried one of the universal blue images on a Chromebook. It was nice. But it didn't contain the scripts/configs to make the audio work. So that was that!

I like the concept, though.

I have already switched after arch out of nowhere disabled ipv4. I tried using fedora atomic but the lack of non-free software just didn't work for me (blender + hybrid NVIDIA graphics). I am using bazzite for a week or two and so far so good.