I find that many Linux users have a misconception about immutable distributions without knowing what it actually is. There is a lot of misinformation and generalization in the Internet about immutable distributions being “locked down”, “inflexible”, etc., when we could argue the same with many traditional distributions. In this article, we’ll look at what makes an immutable distribution, the concept of an immutable distribution versus implementations, misconceptions about immutable distributions (both pro and con), and why they exist in the first place.
Immutable can be flexible, just like NixOS is with
nix shelland other features I don’t yet know about.Containers are great but rootless has issues with programs that need capabilties like CAP_NET_RAW, so I also need rootful containers. That’s annoying and is an advantage with
nix shell.I’m not a fan of A/B root, which I believe VanillaOS uses. Also an advantage of NixOS is it’s big repo… On Fedora I had to package some programs myself in copr (tried out a less well-known wayland compositor) On NixOS I had to too, but it’s far simpler without the need to build on someone else’s infrastructure.
Can be, as in NixOS is pretty much the only one, which I already alluded to.
But despite you and me, some average users would benifit from immutable systems, even A/B root.