FWIW, I just noticed this thread

That's the most wholesome reply I've had in some time. Thank you for making my day! I appreciate it 😊!

Thank you for reading through that info dump and thank you for your reply!

I see where you are coming from but I for example never head about Fedora Atomic whilst I am familiar with OpenSUSE MicroOS, GUIX, NixOS.

Interesting. So, you never heard of Fedora CoreOS, Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, uBlue, Aurora, Bazzite and Bluefin?

ANYWAY, all this immutable talk is anyway pointless, because I was talking about general distributions and not a discussion about immutable distros.

On the topic which distro adopted what first, my confusion did stem from by what context. As I tried to make clear with my confusion about fedora not being rolling release.

Thank you for clearing that up!

To cut all this talk short here my answer to your question:

Finally 😜.

The default value of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is pretty strong because

Thank you for your answer! First of all, regardless of which distro you would have chosen, I would have respected your answer. Though, depending on your answer, I could have definitely judged you for it 😂. Thankfully, however, you've shown to have great taste; openSUSE Tumbleweed is indeed a formidable distro. Unfortunately, I'd argue it's (somehow) underrated and underappreciated; which is really a pity for how excellent of a distro it is. I hope it will garner a bigger audience, because it simply deserves better. Regardless, openSUSE Tumbleweed is definitely a top contender for best traditional distro IMO and I might have been daily driving it were it not for 'immutable' distros.

Secondly, while I agree with you generally, I can't deny that the total package deal specifically is what makes openSUSE Tumbleweed special. So, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

• rolling release

Rolling release distros aren't that rare by themselves. And, as even Arch is an independent distro with a rolling release cycle, it becomes very hard to regard this selling point as unique.

• zypper having sane args for regular tasks (install, search etc.)

zypper's args/syntax don't seem very different from dnf and apt in terms of saneness. But, if this is a selling point for you, what prevents dnf (which is found on Fedora) from being a selling point for you?

• btrfs as default filesystem

Fedora also ships Btrfs by default, though TIL that Btrfs was first adopted by openSUSE. But, once again, this begs the question why this isn't a selling point (according to you) when it's found on Fedora?

• optimal snapper integration which leads into

Snapper also seems to be properly integrated on the derivatives of other distros; e.g. Garuda, Siduction and SpiralLinux to name a couple. So, again, this selling point doesn't seem unique.

• making a rolling release distro suitable for non-technical people/daily usage without fear of regular updates

Excellent. This is openSUSE Tumbleweed's USP (if it's combined with the fact that it's a well-funded independent distro, great security standards et cetera et cetera). And if this is precisely what you seek from your distro, then openSUSE Tumbleweed is what you rightfully should stick to.

But this is just a general recommendation for "distros".

Fair. I'm not necessarily opposed to it.

If the requirements get more specific it makes much more sense to make proper recommendations.

Interesting. Like, in which cases would you recommend something else for example?

Glad to be of help!

And thank you for reporting back!

Enjoy 😊!

It has been my pleasure!

It used to be called Sericea. However, the obscure names started to become very unwieldy. Therefore, they chose to preserve the naming for earlier established and recognized names (i.e. Silverblue and Kinoite) while Sericea became Sway Atomic instead.

It's found here. It's called sericea-nvidia. For this image, please refer to the installation guide found here if you're interested.

Thank you for your reply!

Thank you, this helps even further.

It has been my pleasure 😊!

I scratched the surface of immutable and this further dissects it into deeper "categories".

Yup. For your information, 'immutable' distros have only gained popularity relatively recently. In fact, for a long time, it was pretty obscure.

In 2003 we had the initial release of our first 'immutable' distro; NixOS. Then, inspired by it, Guix System was released in 2012. After which, within a couple of years, the distros with connections to enterprise Linux got their first 'immutable' distros:

• Fedora in 2014 with Fedora Atomic Host (later CoreOS)
• Ubuntu in 2016 with Ubuntu Core
• openSUSE in 2017 with openSUSE MicroOS

However, these three were primarily meant for server and/or IoT. Then, in 2018, Fedora released Fedora Atomic Workstation (which later changed its name to Fedora Silverblue). I'd argue we owe the current renaissance of 'immutable' distros to it. And then, inspired by Fedora Silverblue, we've had the release of dozens of 'immutable' distros in the last 2/3 years (including openSUSE MicroOS Desktop (later openSUSE Aeon) in 2021). Ubuntu has yet to release their Ubuntu Core Desktop. Though, it's in active development.

However, even if we'd limit ourselves to the earlier mentioned 'immutable' distros (i.e. Fedora Atomic, Guix System, NixOS, openSUSE MicroOS and Ubuntu Core), we find that they're very different to one another. Heck, by comparison, e.g. Arch, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu aren't actually that different to each other.

Though, perhaps curiously, we find that at least 80% of the user base of 'immutable' distros are using either Fedora Atomic (and/)or NixOS.

My first thought is that, if I didn't know about immutable distros in the first place (aside from the meaning of the term), I probably wouldn't know what I'm missing or gaining.

Exactly.

My uses for Linux will grow across 3 categories.

1. Business and office work. Mainly spreadsheets, documents, presentations, and virtual meetings

2. 3D Design, 3D Printing, bitmap and vector graphics editing, coding, and retro video game development

3. Streaming via OBS, ATEM, webcam, HDMI capture, and various USB inputs and devices.

As far as I can tell, none of these should necessarily bring up problems or troubles on 'immutable' distros.

To give an example of something that's not or less supported on 'immutable' distros: Unified Kernel Image with Secure Boot.

AFAIK, openSUSE Aeon can do it currently. But IIRC, there's no documentation. NixOS can actually do it as well and there's plenty of documentation on it. Fedora Atomic can't yet, but there's active development surrounding it. However, I don't expect this feature on the smaller 'immutable' distros. Hence, for them, I'd regard this as absolutely impossible.

I have tried building machines on non-tablets and have got 80% of the way there with all 3. The tablet has me 100% with 1 & 2.

I'm glad to hear that!

This all gives me a greater understanding that helps me avoid and research more into the options based on needs.

Great! FWIW, if there's anything to take from this interaction, then it's definitely this.

Ideally I would use an existing atomic distro with both Sway and Nvidia drivers

Consider taking a look at uBlue's base image with Sway and built-in Nvidia drivers or wayblue's image with Sway and built-in Nvidia drivers.

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?

What’s your end goal here?

Incoming XY problem.

I want to prevent myself from reinstalling my system. The trick I came up with involved the use of files that couldn’t be disk cloned. However, if it’s far far easier to accomplish it through other means, then please feel free to enlighten me on this.

You try to keep files just on that one media without any options to make copies of them?

Yes.

Or maintain an image which has enforced files at their directories?

No, not necessarily.

And against what kind of scenarios?

Protecting myself from myself. That's where the password requirement comes in: I can send a delayed message to myself that holds the password. The end result shouldn't in the absolute sense prevent full access for always. Unlocking the protection should be possible and should require the involvement of the earlier mentioned password that is received through a delayed message. That way, those files can be accessed eventually, but only after I had intended to.

ACLs and SELinux aren’t useful as they can be simply bypassed by using another installation and overriding those as root

Excellent! I didn't know this. Thank you for clarifying this for me!

Only thing I can think of, up to a degree, is to use immutable media, like CD-R, where it’s physically impossible to move files once they’re in place and even that doesn’t prevent copying anything.

The files should remain on the same disk that I run my OS from. So, unfortunately, this doesn't quite help me. Thank you regardless!

Understood. Thank you!

It's definitely a hidden gem. Enjoy!