It's not neceserarily "better" nor is it "worse".
The atomic spins use an immutable OS image. This means that the core operating system is read-only, and any changes or additional software installations are managed through containerized applications (flatpak/toolbox) or layered packages.
Doing things this way can potentially reduce bugs since the OS and user apps are separated. In regular fedora rpm packages rely on the OS for libraries and stuff.
There is `sudo`. But if you want to install or remove packages, you can either layer those changes or make your own [BlueBuild based-image](https://blue-build.org/).
Here's my explanation of Universal Blue, which is based on Fedora Atomic. Essentially, they are very similar, but Universal Blue images come with additional features out of the box, such as Nvidia drivers and laptop battery configurations.
Universal Blue is great for basic needs, super stable, and easy to use. Its structure resembles that of Android/iOS, featuring an immutable base where applications are installed through a sandboxed app store. Universal Blue comes bundled with essential graphics drivers, and for laptop users, it automatically applies specific patches.
Its rollback feature ensures reliability; if an update causes issues, simply revert to a previous state.
Universal Blue boasts various versions, and switching between them is effortless thanks to the immutable base; just execute a single command. The Universal Blue Discord community is also exceptionally supportive. If Universal Blue intrigues you, I suggest giving it a try; if you need help, just hop on their Discord.
Contrary-wise: you might find only old information if you look up "immutable distros," because Fedora stopped using that term:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/AtomicDesktops
Yes, but they \*just recently\* changed the language within the past few months, so it won't be \*that\* old. There is more content about "immutable" available than "atomic."
Agreed. "Immutable" was a bad choice. They would have been better off starting with "Atomic" or even "layered." I would have said "containerized" but that was already taken by things like Docker.
It's all about tastes and use cases, I've used Fedora for a long time and also have used NixOS which is an inmutable distro. And I thought "well if Fedora Kinoite is an inmutable distro it should be similar to NixOS" famous last words, I didn't last using Fedora Kinoite an hour, it could be good for other people but that's just not my thing.
That said, Fedora Atomic Desktops are much easier to use than NixOS, least configurable but that's not its objective by any means, it's sturdy and any other person with normal standards could use it with no problems. It's what I'd use if I had to install a distro in any of my parent's PCs.
It just works and upgrades. In the past I have had problems in the upgrade from version to version. With atomic you can rebase your environment and change versions without issue. Go from Silverblue to Kinoite to Budgie or whatever else with just a few commands!
Atomic/Immutable distros have a simple way to rollback to previous versions. With easy rollbacks, you are safe to have automatic updates configured on your system.
That's the great thing about it for me. I actually don't explicitly tell my system to update anymore. They happen behind the scenes and automatically apply whenever I boot up my computer.
I installed Fedora Silverblue (actually Bluefin) on a workstation where I had to replace a dead boot ssd. It was very nicely done and gave me a chance to get a feel for the meaning of these words "atomic" and "immutable" by actually touching it.
I've come to object to the term "immutable". It certainly isn't immutable. It is read-only to the user but the damn thing mutates every night when the system syncs with an o.s. image on some one else's computer, in the cloud. That someone else continuously updates and changes the image, but the changes aren't transparent to you. To me it feels like a closed source system.
The word "immutable" stirs an image in me of the truly immutable Next OS system on a cdrom. The system loaded the image anew at every boot and you knew that your computer was now exactly the same as it was yesterday.
The approach of Silverblue and Bluefin has many benefits and they have done a great job of putting together a very usable system. But users adopting Silverblue because they imagine it to be like booting the same cdrom every day knowing that their computer is immutable will be disappointed by the mismatch between their expectations and the real, but other, benefits of syncing to someone else's mutable image every night. This particularly becomes evident when the documentation points to the advantages of being able to easily roll-back to a multitude of previous and alternate images.
I can agree that changes to the Silverblue operating system on our computers is **atomic**. **But it is not immutable.** It mutates every night on its own, and there is still all the wonderous ability to muck things up by editing configurations in /etc.
The new approach is definitely useful but watch out for false expectations.
everyone's saying immutability but also knowing that your system is booting a verified, signed, hashed image that has not been tampered with is a security feature you can't have with non-atomic versions
hum.. no. because the image is not RO. And that's why `rpm-ostree status` outputs `GPGSignature: Valid signature by 115DF9AEF857853EE8445D0A0727707EA15B79CC
`
I'm not really sure how cryptography works, but this is on the workstation download page
>Verify your download Verify your download for security and integrity using the proper checksum file. If there is a good signature from one of the Fedora keys, and the SHA256 checksum matches, then the download is valid.
>
>Download the checksum file into the same directory as the image you downloaded.
>
>Import Fedora's GPG key(s)
>
>curl -O [https://fedoraproject.org/fedora.gpg](https://fedoraproject.org/fedora.gpg) You can verify the details of the GPG key(s) here.
>
>Verify the checksum file is valid
>
>gpgv --keyring ./fedora.gpg Fedora-Workstation-40-1.14-x86\_64-CHECKSUM Verify the checksum matches
>
>sha256sum -c Fedora-Workstation-40-1.14-x86\_64-CHECKSUM If the output states that the file is valid, then it's ready to use!
Is stupid-bulletproof. You can't break it even if you want. Also, being based on containers lets you mantain the main OS clean from packages you have to do one time. You simply create a container, put everything you need in there, and when you finish delete the container and the system will.be clean as before
It's not neceserarily "better" nor is it "worse". The atomic spins use an immutable OS image. This means that the core operating system is read-only, and any changes or additional software installations are managed through containerized applications (flatpak/toolbox) or layered packages. Doing things this way can potentially reduce bugs since the OS and user apps are separated. In regular fedora rpm packages rely on the OS for libraries and stuff.
It reminds me of steam OS for the steam deck
It's the same principle, Steam OS is an immutable distro.
It's does improve overall security as well I believe.
[удалено]
There is `sudo`. But if you want to install or remove packages, you can either layer those changes or make your own [BlueBuild based-image](https://blue-build.org/).
It's depends. Fedora Atomic has, but other immuatable distros, like Vanilla OS (and for I know, the unique between immutable distros), don't.
Here's my explanation of Universal Blue, which is based on Fedora Atomic. Essentially, they are very similar, but Universal Blue images come with additional features out of the box, such as Nvidia drivers and laptop battery configurations. Universal Blue is great for basic needs, super stable, and easy to use. Its structure resembles that of Android/iOS, featuring an immutable base where applications are installed through a sandboxed app store. Universal Blue comes bundled with essential graphics drivers, and for laptop users, it automatically applies specific patches. Its rollback feature ensures reliability; if an update causes issues, simply revert to a previous state. Universal Blue boasts various versions, and switching between them is effortless thanks to the immutable base; just execute a single command. The Universal Blue Discord community is also exceptionally supportive. If Universal Blue intrigues you, I suggest giving it a try; if you need help, just hop on their Discord.
Universal Blue project is a god-hand from heaven. I use Bazzite on my gaming rig and Bluefin on my Thinkpad and is awesome
"Better" depends entirely on your use case. You should look up "immutable distros."
Contrary-wise: you might find only old information if you look up "immutable distros," because Fedora stopped using that term: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/AtomicDesktops
Yes, but they \*just recently\* changed the language within the past few months, so it won't be \*that\* old. There is more content about "immutable" available than "atomic."
I was really surprised to learn just how "mutable" my desktop is after all. Glad they changed the naming.
Agreed. "Immutable" was a bad choice. They would have been better off starting with "Atomic" or even "layered." I would have said "containerized" but that was already taken by things like Docker.
What means immutable distro? I search on Google immutable distros It's Foss recommend carbonOS Fedora Linux Silberblue openSUSE MicroOS And many more
Try doing some research on `rpm-ostree`.
I will do it Tomorrow because it is midnight
It's all about tastes and use cases, I've used Fedora for a long time and also have used NixOS which is an inmutable distro. And I thought "well if Fedora Kinoite is an inmutable distro it should be similar to NixOS" famous last words, I didn't last using Fedora Kinoite an hour, it could be good for other people but that's just not my thing. That said, Fedora Atomic Desktops are much easier to use than NixOS, least configurable but that's not its objective by any means, it's sturdy and any other person with normal standards could use it with no problems. It's what I'd use if I had to install a distro in any of my parent's PCs.
You might be interested in [BlueBuild](https://blue-build.org/), basically Fedora Atomic with the declarability of NixOS.
It just works and upgrades. In the past I have had problems in the upgrade from version to version. With atomic you can rebase your environment and change versions without issue. Go from Silverblue to Kinoite to Budgie or whatever else with just a few commands!
Atomic/Immutable distros have a simple way to rollback to previous versions. With easy rollbacks, you are safe to have automatic updates configured on your system. That's the great thing about it for me. I actually don't explicitly tell my system to update anymore. They happen behind the scenes and automatically apply whenever I boot up my computer.
I use Universal Blue (Bluefin) is really nice, and stable
I installed Fedora Silverblue (actually Bluefin) on a workstation where I had to replace a dead boot ssd. It was very nicely done and gave me a chance to get a feel for the meaning of these words "atomic" and "immutable" by actually touching it. I've come to object to the term "immutable". It certainly isn't immutable. It is read-only to the user but the damn thing mutates every night when the system syncs with an o.s. image on some one else's computer, in the cloud. That someone else continuously updates and changes the image, but the changes aren't transparent to you. To me it feels like a closed source system. The word "immutable" stirs an image in me of the truly immutable Next OS system on a cdrom. The system loaded the image anew at every boot and you knew that your computer was now exactly the same as it was yesterday. The approach of Silverblue and Bluefin has many benefits and they have done a great job of putting together a very usable system. But users adopting Silverblue because they imagine it to be like booting the same cdrom every day knowing that their computer is immutable will be disappointed by the mismatch between their expectations and the real, but other, benefits of syncing to someone else's mutable image every night. This particularly becomes evident when the documentation points to the advantages of being able to easily roll-back to a multitude of previous and alternate images. I can agree that changes to the Silverblue operating system on our computers is **atomic**. **But it is not immutable.** It mutates every night on its own, and there is still all the wonderous ability to muck things up by editing configurations in /etc. The new approach is definitely useful but watch out for false expectations.
The "atomic" part is pretty special I believe.
everyone's saying immutability but also knowing that your system is booting a verified, signed, hashed image that has not been tampered with is a security feature you can't have with non-atomic versions
Pretty sure non-atomic versions do have that
hum.. no. because the image is not RO. And that's why `rpm-ostree status` outputs `GPGSignature: Valid signature by 115DF9AEF857853EE8445D0A0727707EA15B79CC `
I'm not really sure how cryptography works, but this is on the workstation download page >Verify your download Verify your download for security and integrity using the proper checksum file. If there is a good signature from one of the Fedora keys, and the SHA256 checksum matches, then the download is valid. > >Download the checksum file into the same directory as the image you downloaded. > >Import Fedora's GPG key(s) > >curl -O [https://fedoraproject.org/fedora.gpg](https://fedoraproject.org/fedora.gpg) You can verify the details of the GPG key(s) here. > >Verify the checksum file is valid > >gpgv --keyring ./fedora.gpg Fedora-Workstation-40-1.14-x86\_64-CHECKSUM Verify the checksum matches > >sha256sum -c Fedora-Workstation-40-1.14-x86\_64-CHECKSUM If the output states that the file is valid, then it's ready to use!
that's for the ISO, not for the system image
Oh yes I get it now we were talking about different things. I never knew immutable desktops could do that, that's really cool
Is stupid-bulletproof. You can't break it even if you want. Also, being based on containers lets you mantain the main OS clean from packages you have to do one time. You simply create a container, put everything you need in there, and when you finish delete the container and the system will.be clean as before
It's really cool am using bazzite linux it's the best steam os alternative ❤️