47
Immutable Operating Systems: Yay or Nay?
(lemmy.world)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
Heh, yeah... don't get me wrong, I think that immutable distros have an attractive appeal to them the way that they're often sold - however in my experience its been very rare to come across anything that comes with significant improvements yet doesn't have any trade-offs or a "price to pay" especially when it comes to computing and software.
Do I think the rough parts will shrink over time? Potentially. I mean, macOS has been basically doing this for quite a few years now with its "System Integrity Protection" and it seems to do fine... but at the same time, aside from homebrew shenanigans I never really needed to modify things outside of
/Users
and/Applications
when I used macOS.I certainly would like to hear more experiences about these distros that aren't just evangelizing immutability and mention more about their pain points like I did.