Hi. I'm not related to either of the two fighters. I do, however, admire your curiosity. Still, I feel a particular sentence made in this comment of yours has to be nuanced. If this endeavor of mine is not appreciated, then please feel free to notify me however you please.

So, without further a due.

If I were to go immutable there are some limits on what I can do

Strictly speaking, yes.

However, we can categorize these as follows:

• Absolutely impossible to accomplish on some 'immutable' distros
• Currently impossible to accomplish on some 'immutable' distros. However, it will be fixed eventually.
• Currently impossible to accomplish through conventional methods on some 'immutable' distros. However, some experimental features do allow these to be accomplished. But, you might have to learn how.

Furthermore, depending on your needs, you may not even have to deal with anything that's either not or less supported.

Finally, as the use of "some 'immutable' distros" suggests, not all immutable distros are created equally. Therefore, it's actually uninformed to lump all of them in the same category. True; they're referred to as 'immutable'. However, descriptions like atomic, reproducible and declarative are perhaps more useful when comparing one 'immutable' distro to the other.

I'm personally a big fan of 'immutable' distros. However, please don't feel compelled to delve into it as long as you're satisfied with your system.

My two cents. Enjoy!

Thank you for the answer and for your time! I wish you a nice day!

Read the rest of the paragraph and also the next paragraph if you haven't yet.

If that didn't answer your query, do you oppose the following statement found on Gentoo's wiki:

"systemd is a modern SysV-style init and rc replacement for Linux systems."

And if so, why?

Depends entirely on what they do on their device.

If it's your average user, it should be sufficient for them to know that new software should exclusively be installed through the provided software manager.

Else, they should check if all their software needs are provided by Linux. And also think about which distro would be best for those specific needs. With Distrobox (and Nix) this isn't as much as an issue as it used to be. But, there's still software out there (like Davinci Resolve and Waydroid) that doesn't like to play nice with all hardware and distro combinations.

Perhaps most importantly, ensure it's a distro with sane defaults for a new user. This doesn't necessarily mean that everyone should just use Linux Mint. However, it's better if the chosen distro makes sense for the user.

You seem to be ignorant; the use of this word is not meant derogatory. In all fairness, it's perfectly fine; we all gotta start out somewhere. So, please allow me to elaborate.

Being the first distro on which new technologies are introduced

Consider checking up on where Wayland, systemd, PipeWire, PulseAudio etc first appeared; so on which particular distro.

Also atomic branch?

Fedora Atomic, i.e. the first attempt to Nix'ify an established distro. Most commonly known through Fedora Silverblue or Fedora Kinoite. Peeps formerly referred to these as immutable. However, atomic (i.e. updates either happen or don't; so no in-between state even with power outage) is more descriptive. It's also the most mature attempt. Derivatives like Bazzite are the product of this endeavour. From the OG distros, only openSUSE (with its Aeon) has released an attempt. However, it seems to be less ambitious in scope and vision. I wish it the best, but I find it hard to justify it over Fedora Atomic.

SELinux might be a fair point, but I doubt that ss unique to Fedora tbh.

OOTB, apart from Fedora (Atomic), it's only found on (some) Fedora derivatives and openSUSE Aeon (which forces you to use GNOME and Aeon's specific container-focused workflow). Arch, Gentoo and openSUSE (perhaps even Debian) do 'support' SELinux, but it can be a real hassle do deal with. And it's not OOTB.

If you make claims, you better substantiate it. I just did your homework 😂. Regardless, I'm still interested to hear a distro with more impressive USPs. Let me know 😉.

Very informative. I appreciate it!

Seems interesting. Got any sources to read up on? Thanks in advance!

I'm not the one you asked your question, but I think I understood what they meant.

First of all, technically MicroOS is the non-desktop version of openSUSE's take on an atomic/immutable distro. The desktop variants are referred to as Aeon (for GNOME) and Kalpa (for KDE).

Secondly, while Aeon/Kalpa definitely is to openSUSE what Silverblue/Kinoite is to Fedora, there's a clear difference in vision and maturity.

Vision

Fedora Atomic is a very ambitious project; everything points toward it being Fedora's take on NixOS. But, unlike NixOS, it couldn't start from scratch nor did they intend to. Instead, it's the process of evolving their existing products into something special. As such, it has been over two years since Fedora has even explicitly stated that they intend for Fedora Atomic to become the default eventually (without saying anything about sunsetting the old). While, AFAIK, openSUSE has yet to make similar statements regarding Aeon/Kalpa.

Maturity

Everything points towards Fedora Atomic being more mature than openSUSE MicroOS; work on the project has started earlier, Fedora Atomic is almost done with their transition (from image-based) to OCI while I don't recall openSUSE mention anything regarding their transition (from 'snapshots') to image-based since they mentioned it briefly last year. Furthermore, Bazzite (based on Fedora Atomic) has become the face of Gaming Linux while openSUSE' MicroOS fails to deliver on anything but Aeon. Which, to be fair, is absolutely fine. But not everyone is fan of GNOME.

So, use Tumbleweed if:

• You prefer the traditional model
• You like YaST
• You like the rolling release model and not being tied to GNOME

Use Aeon if:

• You like GNOME and an atomic distro on a rolling release distro
• You prefer the opinionated, hands off, little to no customization path that openSUSE has currently chosen for its Aeon
• You like a containerized future

Use Fedora Atomic if:

• You want an atomic distro, but don't like any of the decisions made for Aeon; i.e.
  • prefer to use KDE, Budgie or Sway (or any other desktop environment through uBlue)
  • aren't that big of a fan of container workloads
  • prefer having the choice of installing native packages
• Prefer atomic on top of a point release distro

Finally, regarding containers specifically; let's say you want to install package X.

• On Tumbleweed, you just do sudo zypper install X and you're done with it.
• On Aeon, if it's available as a Flatpak, you do flatpak install X. If there's no Flatpak of it, you install it within a container that you access through Distrobox. Within the container, use the package manager corresponding to the container. Technically, while inside the container, the environment is very similar to Tumbleweed. So, say you got a Tumbleweed container, then you can continue using sudo zypper install X.
• On Fedora Atomic, you can layer onto the system through rpm-ostree install X; this is very close to how installing packages work on Tumbleweed. And, you can continue using both Flatpak and Distrobox; like how it's done on Aeon. Note that Tumbleweed also allows access to Flatpak and Distrobox. So, Aeon is most restricted as it can't install packages onto the base system. Btw, Fedora Atomic accomplishes this through layers that can also be peeled off later on (through uninstalling for example). With this, the base system actually isn't affected, but the end user doesn't notice it.

Until now I used distrobox but I always wondered which distro/ package manager to use. What’s your experience with it?

The answers found below this post resonate with my own experiences.

I do have a question: When you run the sestatus command in the terminal, what string/description is found corresponding to "Current mode"?

That makes a lot more sense. Thank you for clarifying!

Thanks!

It has been my pleasure 😊.

Is there anything to be expected when updating the system to a new version?

The write-up found above ensures that the two systems don't share any space within the same drive. Therefore, there's nothing to worry about.

For example, I've upgraded Fedora from 39 to 40 about two months ago without any troubles. Heck, I'm on Bluefin's :latest. So, the update to 40 happened automatically in the background without notifying me. So, with the very next reboot I suddenly found myself on 40 😅. I probably wouldn't even have noticed any difference were it not that some GNOME extensions didn't work right away. Otherwise, it was a perfectly smooth update.

Out of curiosity, what’s the issue with installing a different DE?

There doesn't necessarily have to be an issue. Heck, this simple operation (i.e. installing an additional DE on an existing system) works pretty fine on Arch/Debian etc.

However, as Linux Mint (and its family/brand of related distros) are designed/setup/opinionated in a certain way with a specific scope/vision, just installing Xfce on top of Linux Mint (proper/regular) doesn't just give you Linux Mint Xfce Edition; you can try this out for yourself if you'd want to. Instead, you get something that looks more akin to Ubuntu with Xfce installed and some Linux Mint tools. Similarly, installing Xfce on top of LMDE doesn't give you a proper LMDE Xfce edition. Which, to be fair, isn't the worst thing out there and I'm pretty sure that someone out there will be pretty happy with it. But, one might also argue (as I certainly am) that, instead of that amalgamation (read: FrankenDebian), one would simply be better off with the Linux Mint Xfce Edition for which the ISO can be acquired directly from the Linux Mint team.