I’ve been feeling gushy about my setup lately, I think I’ve finally found my home on Linux. For decades I’ve distrohopped each year and never was really happy with it all, but Fedora Atomic has changed that.
Some things I can do with Fedora Atomic that I cannot do with other Linux distros:
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I can rebase to Bazzite for gaming performance when I feel like having a long gaming session.
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I can rebase to Secureblue when I think I will not be gaming and would prefer a more secure linux setup.
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I can update my system and not have to worry about special instructions, its extremely stable. Many times in the past, running a small ma-and-pa distro with most things pre-configed for performance would end with it breaking after a couple of major updates. This isn’t true for configs like Bazzite and Secureblue, they are remarkably stable across many major updates due to how rpm-ostree functions.
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Distrobox and Flatpak are more than enough at this stage for most programs and they help you avoid making too many alterations to the base image, greatly speeding up the swaps between major images.
The kicker? Your user configs and home files are never changed when you ‘image hop’. It always feels like you just installed a fresh distro whenever you upgrade, and the performance benefits are noticeable. You don’t have to tinker and do the same changes over and over, its all handled for you by rpm-ostree.
10/10 this is the future of Linux. I hope for a future where I can rebase entire Linux distros while maintaining my configs with one simple command, but for now, Fedora Atomic is fantastic.
The downsides:
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There is one major downside, and its that all of your system files are read-only. Personally, I’ve found a dozen ways to get around this, it requires thinking inside the Distrobox. It is a notable issue for many people, though. This means you cannot make specific tweaks without making a whole new image for yourself. Though in practice, I have found the ecosystem has grown a lot. Other people have already made the best tweaks available for you with only a few simple commands.
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Rpm-ostree also is slow to update because its essentially building a whole git tree to make sure your updates never break and are as stable as possible. You also have to reboot each time you alter it, which can be annoying, but if you stick to flatpaks and distroboxes, this issue is mitigated significantly.
You might wanna rephrase that or some feds are gonna have a field day.
I really like it as well. I did three major version upgrades so far and they have been flawless. I also really like Flatpak, finally a way of easily installing something on Linux without breaking half of the system because the application you wanted to install uses libfoo 2.0 and not libfoo 1.9.9-patch-1337. With my atomic desktop applications that worked yesterday also work today. Things don’t randomly break all the time.
The future of Fedora Atomic also looks exciting; Timothée Ravier is working on sysexts which are a way of installing applications without ostree layering. I could remove most of my ostree layered packages with that.
Oooh, didn’t know about that. Very exciting
did three major version upgrades so far and they have been flawless.
To be fair, I’ve upgraded normal Fedora for like… 8-10 versions in a row maybe, and never had a problem
The biggest issue I’ve had is tweaks causing instability over time. I also have had some issues where I was updating a debian install that hadn’t been updated in 3 years and it broke and would require tweaking to fix (why do this when I can just load a new immutable install and fix it for good?). I have enough computers laying around that I’d really rather it work when I want to as a sure thing. So far my testing with immutable distros has been stellar, I’ll let everyone know if my ostree tweaks and updates don’t load in 3 years, lol.
I think this is a big enough problem that even the Fedora team considered it an issue and therefore pushed out Fedora Atomic.
I’ve updated enterprise Linux machines automatically for decades. The score is tens of thousands of upgrades, 1 problem I caused, 1 packaging glitch.
You don’t need to take on risky drek like flatpaks to get there. It’s one command in enterprise and you’re kinda done forever.
Glad you like your setup. I hope it works for you and you never learn the risks of flatpaks.
Care to elaborate on ‘the risks of flatpak’. If you are refering to the practice of people using unofficial flatpaks: Yes I think that poses a certain risk because you are adding an additional party to your threat model.
I was gonna comment this, decided not to, then decided the info should be part of this thread either for OP or future readers, so here goes:
Enterprise Linux distributions are unbeatable for their purpose. To your point, I’ve never in my entire career had even the smallest issue maintaining one, they’re wonderful. They achieve this, though, by being a stable, truly versioned release that will never see anything beyond minor upgrades. The reason why nobody recommends server distros for gaming is because of hardware compatibility and library support, and you end up maintaining more of your own junk anyway. Got the latest gpu? Great, compile your drivers.
Enterprise Linux distros are awesome and the most painless Linux experience imaginable, as well as a great workstation experience too BUT they typically are among the worst options for gaming if you want a simple system.
EL 7 is EL 7. But that time is over
I appreciate your mentioning the downside. I am way too much of a tinkerer for a read-only root to be acceptable for me, but I’m glad you found something you like.
eh, it’s not all root, essentially just the binaries. /etc and /var are RW
Oh, nice!
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Try NixOS. It’s not that hard to use. And also try Home Manager when you’ll be on it.
Distrobox and Flatpak are more than enough at this stage for most programs
Maybe for you, but personally I could never get by with only that. I have zero interest in atomic distros. To me they look like an inferior version of NixOS, which I have yet to fully wrap my head around. Until then I’ll stick to Arch (BTW)
Same here. I have and will always periodically reinstall no matter which OS I happen to be using. Arch is the only distro that keeps me coming back because installation and setup is such an active process. Every time around I learn something new and get more effecient at the process, which is so much more rewarding than filling a few boxes and waiting on a progress bar as is the case with most distros I have experienced.
I think it comes down to priorities.
Whenever someone mentions Arch the pro arguments are always something in the lines of “I get to tinker”, “I learn so much reading the documentation”, “We are first in line to receive packages”, “We have packages that no other distro has”.
As someone who uses a laptop for work, all of those things sound like a nightmare. If I were a student with spare time on my hands, maybe I’d value such a distro more.
But as it stands, stability without compromising modern technology (I wouldn’t use a Debian-based x11 distro) and minimal options to tinker with, is my sweet spot. Because I need my laptop to have it’s security updates on time, and just work.
I never see the cons (excluding nixos) being that only a few desktops(eg kde,gnome,i3 and budgie) are offered compared to mutable distros
does an Atomic / Immutable distro use more disk space than say my Arch install? if yes, how much more? if no, I am moving immediately.
It uses more, yeah. But it’s not a lot more. You could maybe compare the iso sizes
It’s not the future… it’s the present for all users running mobile linux-based computing devices called Android smartphones. The paradigm is very similar to Atomic distros. As for what the future might hold for linux, that remains to be seen.
The Atomic UX has proven very popular with mainstream users running by Steam Deck and similar devices as running Bazzite. They may not be aware how they are built, they just know it just works and that’s all they need.
As for the maintainers, containerized development removes a lot of development time, provided they have experience in cloud native development environments. Old school developers get annoyed by this constraints.
All in all, it’s just another alternative, don’t diss it out of fear it might take over the Linux scene… let others have what they need, provided by Linux and open source software.
I agree it is great, but am I the only one running Opensuse MicroOS?
I think i’ll be heading back to Pop!_OS for my main rig. While i like Bazzite, i can’t get VR to function on it, or get my 5.1 surround sound system working. I think it’s great for a hand held, but not for a main rig.
You might want to look at the ujust commands on Bazzite, they have some options for setting up surround sound and VR I’m quite sure. I have a pretty simple setup personally so I’ve never used those things.
Why not just run a hypervisor and use containers?
I have a build like this for tinkering but to say it is slow and inefficient is an understatement. Very secure though. I can’t really see daily driving it.
