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.
  • superguy@lemm.ee
    27·
    2 years ago

    Immutability has always struck me as a fad.

    Aside from declaring variables as FINAL or whatever because I know they won’t be changed, the mere idea of using it as a default just seems unnecessarily restrictive to me.

    It feels like people who bog themselves down in theory to solve their problems instead of practicality think immutability is a godsend.

    For everyone else, it doesn’t really matter at best or is an inconvenience at worst.

  • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
    712·
    2 years ago

    Yes these distros are all about making thing that were easy into complex, “locked down”, “inflexible”, bullshit to justify jobs and payed tech stacks / some property solution existence.

    We had Ansible, containers, ZFS and BTRFS that provided all the required immutability needed already but someone decided that is is time to transform regular machines into MIPS-style shitty devices that have a read-only OSes and a separate partition for configs. All in the hopes of eventually selling some orchestration and/or other proprietary repository / platform / BS like Docker / Kubernetes does.

      • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        2 years ago

        😂 😂 😂 😂 clearly have not worked a day in your life with immutable MIPS devices. If you did I believe your comment would be able to power half of the planet then.

    • superguy@lemm.ee
      4·
      2 years ago

      Yeah, it’s a big reason why I’m never in a hurry to adopt ‘the next big thing’ until it’s proven to be the next big thing or I have an immediate use for it.

      No point in bogging myself down in theory when practicality works just fine.

    • morrowind@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      Take a look at serpent os. It aims to provide a lot of the same benefits without being locked down

      • TCB13@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 years ago

        I believe this answers it in detail: https://lemmy.world/comment/4574094

        the article is very well written and effectively debunks a lot of misconceptions however those distros are still an unnecessary extra step that don’t provide a sufficient gain / improvement over “mutable” distributions and/or properly done setups. (…) it doesn’t really matter if there are truly open-source and open ecosystems of immutable distributions because in the end people/companies will pick the proprietary / closed option just because “it’s easier to use” or some other specific thing that will be good on the short term and very bad on the long term. This happened with CentOS vs Debian

          • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 years ago

            Yes and you did very well on that and I believe as well you can understand my POV on immutable distros after all the posts did. We’re most likely creating the next Docker / Docker Hub / Kubernetes BS by pushing them and immutability was proven by MIPS to be clusterfuck.