8 ms·

The State of Immutable Linux

44 points by JustinGarrison 6mo ago

bjoli 6mo ago
I went all in about a year ago after running microOs for some time. I am pretty happy with the situation, and while I do like the transactional-update way of microos, their immutable desktops have been too much work for me. Kalpa is alpha, and aeon runs gnome. I tried for a year, but one day I had enough and installed kinoite and haven't looked back (although I have been looking at Aurora). Since you never touch the base system, you get more or less a rolling release distro, since updating between fedora versions becomes even simpler.
madspindel 6mo ago
> It’s 2026, if you’re not using something immutable (or at least reproducable) you’re doing more maintenance work than you should. I used to use MicroOS on Raspberry Pis and NUCs but the rolling release actually led to more maintenance work (fixing breaking changes like config changes). Eventually I moved to Ubuntu but kept the mindset that all installed applications should be podman containers. I don't miss MicroOS...
- precompute 6mo ago
  Yes! This is the way. https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian/ https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian/
evanjrowley 6mo ago
Glad to see Talos Linux there! Another interesting, though less radical take on an immutable container OS is IncusOS. Made by the same people behind LXC: https://github.com/lxc/incus-os https://github.com/lxc/incus-os I wish the article's NixOS section had mentioned impermanence features which can be used to make NixOS actually immutable: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Impermanence https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Impermanence
- JustinGarrison 6mo ago
  I work at Sidero, but I'm glad that wasn't obvious from the article because I'm trying to be fair. I heard about Impermanence right after I gave the talk so I'm looking into it.
  - evanjrowley 6mo ago
    Good luck! Talos Linux seems like an amazing project. I wish Sidero much success.
- dizhn 6mo ago
  I am not really interested in an immutable desktop OS but that incus OS sounds interesting. I use Proxmox and if prox were to be immutable I wouldn't mind that.
  - evanjrowley 6mo ago
    I totally agree with the idea of replacing Proxmox with something more immutable. IncusOS seems like a strong contender. I've also considered installing Proxmox with ZFS Boot Menu to get a rollback capability. I'd need to figure out how to properly manage state when multiple storage providers are in use. Like for example, what would happen if the pool for VMs had newer data than the root snapshot I roll back to? Even with the answer, obviously the overall theme is Proxmox is not designed to operate this way.
- dindresto 6mo ago
  FYI that is the old unofficial wiki, the official NixOS wiki is at https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Impermanence https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Impermanence (although this particular article is also outdated there)
  - evanjrowley 6mo ago
    Thanks. One of the things that confuses me about the wiki is the official one contains a disclaimer about the potential for the content to be out of date. The unofficial wiki has an easier to use domain name and no disclaimer, so unless someone find it beautiful the wiki home page, it can be easy for them to interpret the unofficial one as being the de-facto/preferred source of information.
fuzzfactor 6mo ago
I always thought the best idea was having the OS in ROM.
mt42or 6mo ago
You have https://rancher.github.io/elemental-toolkit/docs/ https://rancher.github.io/elemental-toolkit/docs/ also
tmtvl 6mo ago
Aw, no love for Arkane Linux (<https://www.arkanelinux.org/ https://www.arkanelinux.org/>)? It seems a bit more 'properly immutable' than the 'distributinos' listed in TFA.
- Imustaskforhelp 6mo ago
  I once talked to someone on iirc Linux discord server about their project which was very similar to this (An Immutable arch/(maybe cachy?)) which they had built. There is quite some innovation within this space of (atomic-arch?) which I am interested about because I wish to recommend arch's bleeding-edge/aur to people and the ability to have snapshots etc. is interesting, which is something that I might need myself as well... as I really get too lazy at times for snapshots. With their talks, I used to think that it would become very bloated distribution/might not work fast but that's not really the case. In future, I will take a look at arkane as well!
- JustinGarrison 6mo ago
  Thanks! I didn't know about Arkane. Ill check it out.
bfrog 6mo ago
NixOS can be all of these things given a nix expression to make it so
hasperdi 6mo ago
So which one is recommended for running on servers in production?

bjoli 6mo ago

I went all in about a year ago after running microOs for some time. I am pretty happy with the situation, and while I do like the transactional-update way of microos, their immutable desktops have been too much work for me. Kalpa is alpha, and aeon runs gnome. I tried for a year, but one day I had enough and installed kinoite and haven't looked back (although I have been looking at Aurora). Since you never touch the base system, you get more or less a rolling release distro, since updating between fedora versions becomes even simpler.

madspindel 6mo ago

> It’s 2026, if you’re not using something immutable (or at least reproducable) you’re doing more maintenance work than you should. I used to use MicroOS on Raspberry Pis and NUCs but the rolling release actually led to more maintenance work (fixing breaking changes like config changes). Eventually I moved to Ubuntu but kept the mindset that all installed applications should be podman containers. I don't miss MicroOS...

precompute 6mo ago
Yes! This is the way. https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian/ https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian/

evanjrowley 6mo ago

Glad to see Talos Linux there! Another interesting, though less radical take on an immutable container OS is IncusOS. Made by the same people behind LXC: https://github.com/lxc/incus-os https://github.com/lxc/incus-os I wish the article's NixOS section had mentioned impermanence features which can be used to make NixOS actually immutable: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Impermanence https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Impermanence

JustinGarrison 6mo ago
I work at Sidero, but I'm glad that wasn't obvious from the article because I'm trying to be fair. I heard about Impermanence right after I gave the talk so I'm looking into it.
- evanjrowley 6mo ago
  Good luck! Talos Linux seems like an amazing project. I wish Sidero much success.
dizhn 6mo ago
I am not really interested in an immutable desktop OS but that incus OS sounds interesting. I use Proxmox and if prox were to be immutable I wouldn't mind that.
- evanjrowley 6mo ago
  I totally agree with the idea of replacing Proxmox with something more immutable. IncusOS seems like a strong contender. I've also considered installing Proxmox with ZFS Boot Menu to get a rollback capability. I'd need to figure out how to properly manage state when multiple storage providers are in use. Like for example, what would happen if the pool for VMs had newer data than the root snapshot I roll back to? Even with the answer, obviously the overall theme is Proxmox is not designed to operate this way.
dindresto 6mo ago
FYI that is the old unofficial wiki, the official NixOS wiki is at https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Impermanence https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Impermanence (although this particular article is also outdated there)
- evanjrowley 6mo ago
  Thanks. One of the things that confuses me about the wiki is the official one contains a disclaimer about the potential for the content to be out of date. The unofficial wiki has an easier to use domain name and no disclaimer, so unless someone find it beautiful the wiki home page, it can be easy for them to interpret the unofficial one as being the de-facto/preferred source of information.

fuzzfactor 6mo ago

I always thought the best idea was having the OS in ROM.

mt42or 6mo ago

You have https://rancher.github.io/elemental-toolkit/docs/ https://rancher.github.io/elemental-toolkit/docs/ also

tmtvl 6mo ago

Aw, no love for Arkane Linux (<https://www.arkanelinux.org/ https://www.arkanelinux.org/>)? It seems a bit more 'properly immutable' than the 'distributinos' listed in TFA.

Imustaskforhelp 6mo ago
I once talked to someone on iirc Linux discord server about their project which was very similar to this (An Immutable arch/(maybe cachy?)) which they had built. There is quite some innovation within this space of (atomic-arch?) which I am interested about because I wish to recommend arch's bleeding-edge/aur to people and the ability to have snapshots etc. is interesting, which is something that I might need myself as well... as I really get too lazy at times for snapshots. With their talks, I used to think that it would become very bloated distribution/might not work fast but that's not really the case. In future, I will take a look at arkane as well!
JustinGarrison 6mo ago
Thanks! I didn't know about Arkane. Ill check it out.

bfrog 6mo ago

NixOS can be all of these things given a nix expression to make it so

hasperdi 6mo ago

So which one is recommended for running on servers in production?