this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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So I use non-immutable distros in containers to make up for the failings of the immutable host OS?
You use containers for your tooling, you purposely don't touch the host operating system, that's the entire point.
I can do that in Ubuntu... I'll admit I simply don't see the point. Immutable distro users seem paranoid about "some random update messing up their base OS" for some reason and I guess this suits their purpose. I just don't see that as a problem.
Most people aren't system administrators and they end up with broken computers for the most basic tasks. It's one of the major reasons why people hate using Linux desktops.
And even if you're an experienced sysadmin you can't account for the entropy that accumulates on traditional OSes. 18.04 -> 20.04 -> 22.04 doesn't end up being the same as a 22.04 clean install. This is a huge problem, especially for people who don't know how to manage linux systems. And the people who do manage systems at scale don't want that behavior either.
I go over this in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn5xNLH-5eA
But day to day I'm in an ubuntu container and using "normal" package management, I just don't do it on the host.
If you kept a basic minimal Ubuntu host it would be trivial to maintain. And you can still do your "toolbox" stuff on top of it. No weird immutable stuff needed.
I just don't see the point. You want new users to understand containers. And to keep track of all the containers they maintain - possibly with different distros and using different things. And remember the difference between them and what is installed in each. Or just maintain one big container which is exactly what they would do normally anyway.
That's not true for most people.
You don't need to understand containers unless you're using the system for development -- which in Linux land means containers.
If you want it to be then it can. The risk of a failed update is vastly overblown.
Oh but you do. 1 hour into using Silverblue I was chastised by other users for "using it like any other Linux distro" when I started installing things into the "base" system with rpm-ostree. "Don't you know you should be doing that in a container?" I was asked.
I was just installing command-line utilities. Which I'm apparently supposed to do in a toolbox or other container which allows me to have... a mutable distro where I can do all the things I do in a "normal" OS. And which will require updating separately from the host OS. And which don't quite work right for everything because they're containers? Like you can't install
httpdin one.