this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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It's immutable (aka. atomic), which means the system files cannot be changed, even by root. System updates come as complete system snapshots of the core filesystem, and everything else exists in containers or filesystem overlays (user directory is still writeable). Containers and the user's home directory are unaffected by the updates, so the update process is typically much safer overall.
If an update does break something, you can easily do
rpm-ostree rollback, and everything will be working again. On top of that, you can swap between versions with a simplerebasecommand (e.g. swap between Silverblue and Kinoite, Kinoite and Bazzite).This is a definite “well um actually” moment, but technically immutability can be switched off at any time with
chattr, and “true” immutability will not be achieved until full image signing is commonplace. You can see the ideas laid out here: https://github.com/ostreedev/ostree/issues/2867It does let you do cool things though, like install nix: https://github.com/dnkmmr69420/nix-installer-scripts/blob/main/installer-scripts/silverblue-nix-installer.sh
don't use that use this https://github.com/DeterminateSystems/nix-installer
up-to-date, full support silverblue, don't need to unlock the filesystem, full support for selinux too, they create the /etc/nix forlder and mount it on /nix
Yeah, I was just linking the other one because its usage of temporarily disabling immutability is more apparent. That one also disables immutability temporarily to install nix.