Look, I've only been a Linux user for a couple of years, but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that we're not afraid to tinker. Most of us came from Windows or macOS at some point, ditching the mainstream for better control, privacy, or just to escape the corporate BS. We're the people who choose the harder path when we think it's worth it.
Which is why I find it so damn interesting that atomic distros haven't caught on more. The landscape is incredibly diverse now - from gaming-focused Bazzite to the purely functional philosophy of Guix System. These distros couldn't be more different in their approaches, but they all share this core atomic DNA.
These systems offer some seriously compelling stuff - updates that either work 100% or roll back automatically, no more "oops I bricked my system" moments, better security through immutability, and way fewer update headaches.
So what gives? Why aren't more of us jumping on board? From my conversations and personal experience, I think it boils down to a few things:
Our current setups already work fine. Let's be honest - when you've spent years perfecting your Arch or Debian setup, the thought of learning a whole new paradigm feels exhausting. Why fix what isn't broken, right?
The learning curve seems steep. Yes, you can do pretty much everything on atomic distros that you can on traditional ones, but the how is different. Instead of apt install whatever and editing config files directly, you're suddenly dealing with containers, layering, or declarative configs. It's not necessarily harder, just... different.
The docs can be sparse. 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.
I've been thinking about this because Linux has overcome similar hurdles before. Remember when gaming on Linux was basically impossible? Now we have the Steam Deck running an immutable SteamOS (of all things!) and my non-Linux friends are buying them without even realizing they're using Linux. It just works.
So I'm genuinely curious - what's keeping YOU from switching to an atomic distro? Is it specific software you need? Concerns about customization? Just can't be bothered to learn new tricks?
Your answers might actually help developers focus on the right pain points. The atomic approach makes so much sense on paper that I'm convinced it's the future - we just need to figure out what's stopping people from making the jump today.
So what would it actually take to get you to switch? I'm all ears.
I honestly can't think of a single time I've done this in the 20 years I've been using linux.
I dunno, it just seems like the latest fad. Debian/Arch work just fine.
I bricked it because the Ubuntu LTS 22 to 24 upgrade failed and I forgot and rebooted anyway
I've used Arch for 10 years as a primary desktop (well, Artix for the last 4) and barely had it bork on me. When is has, I've been able to boot it from grub in single user mode, mount my LUKS root drive, and downgrade whatever broke.
SteamOS has been fine for me on the SteamDeck.
I tried Bazzite for about a month then one day networking just broke and the documentation just wasn't there.
idk I've gotten mine into a state i couldnt fix more times than I can count. Immuteable distros have been a game changer for me and if I'm being honest I think they're going to be the biggest thing for mainstream adoption in Linux's entire history.
I'm curious what you're doing to your system that bricks it so often that would be considered a risk for a normal every-day normie user?
I didn't say bricking, I was responding to the bit you wrote about immutability being "a fad".
Upvoting but please stop using the term "bricking" this way. Bricking is permanent and there is no recovery. You have turned your device into a useless brick.
I'm quoting the OP. His argument is that atomic distros are the future because people are out there bricking their systems.
Doesn't mean you have to repeat it 🙂
The entire premise of this post is that people are supposedly bricking their systems, and atomic distros fix this.
My argument is that nobody is bricking their system. I will repeat it, because that's the assumption made by op to argue in favor of atomic distros.
You are free to disagree, but at this point you are just arguing to argue.
I think "atomic" means "a bunch of actions grouped together as one action", so that the system won't end up in a state where some required actions are missing and becomes unusable. But it doesn't mean it's unto itself making a system unbreakable: If your system starts in a state of malfunctioning, then it also takes a series of actions to fix it, be it atomic or not.
Most Linux distributions start in the state of functioning after installation.
Yeah you're right, "atomic" is not the same thing as "immutable", but they are related terms and OP appeared to be using them interchangeably so 🤷♀️
All "atomic" distros I've encountered allow booting into previous versions, so this is simply not an issue.
Ohh well go up a half a percent point boys. If we don't include the steam deck.
Nothing good ever comes from 'mainstream adoption' though.
The whole "I bricked my system" thing is just ridiculous.
It actually happened to me today on Arch.
I the system, including the kernel, everything went smoothly with no errors or warnings, I rebooted, and it said the ZSTD image created by mkinitcpio was corrupt and it failed to boot.
I booted the arch install iso, chrooted into my installation and reinstalled the linux package, rebooted, and it worked again.
I have no explanation, this is on a perfectly working laptop with a high end SSD, no errors in memtest, not overclocked, and I've been using this Arch install for over a year.
The chances of the package being corrupt when I downloaded it and the hash still being correct are astronomically low, the chances of a cosmic ray hitting the RAM at just the right time are probably just as low, the fact that mkinitcpio doesn't verify the images that it creates is shocking, the whole thing would have been avoided on an immutable distro with A/B partitions.
Something like this happened to me once. Now I'm on Bazzite on my desktop and Aurora on my laptop.
Pure bliss.
You could have booted the old kernel in Grub.
I agree. I have become more amenable to things like Flatpak or Podman/Docker to keep the base system from being cluttered up with weird dependencies, but for the most part it doesn't seem like there's a huge upside to going full atomic if you're already comfortable.
I love flatpak lol. something like debian + flatpak is win-win imo