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[–] 9 points 2 years ago (6 children)

(correct me if I'm wrong, I'm also new at this)

There are two partitions. One with the current system, one with the previous system. Updates are applied in a whole batch at once, once in a while.

Current system is cloned into the old one and an update is applied to the clone.

Once the update is complete, system reboots in the clone, and what was the current system becomes the previous one.

If something goes bad, you can reboot into the previous system and fix the clone.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    This is how the steam deck works. I think newer android phones do this too.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    that is one way to do it, and it's a very common one - it's robust and simple. So I can't correct you, but thought I would add to it. In NixOS, they've improved it by making sure all your apps are symlinked, and when updating, these symlinks are updated. That way you can start using your newly updated system straight away, without a reboot. When rebooting, you are prompted to which generation you want to boot into, (defaulting to "latest" after a few seconds of no input) making rollbacks a breeze.

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