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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.

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What's up with all these immutable distributions? What are the benefits and disadvantages of them? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For once I feel a little out of touch after I took a bit of a break from following the news to focus on studying, and suddenly everyone is talking about immutable distributions. What are they exactly? What are the benefits and the disadvantages of immutable systems?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

uBlue is great. After using Fedora Silverblue for more than a year I used it to have the same OS on my laptop and desktop. It's works great and is quite simple if your already familiar with building containers. But the constant reboots and rebuilding an image taking minutes made me switch to NixOS.

The advantage of uBlue over NixOS is imo that the former is configured like any other Linux by placing files in the traditional file system hierarchy (e.g. binaries in /usr/local/bin). NixOS throws most of that over board and makes use of it's own configuration language and package manager. Getting started with uBlue is definitely easier, while NixOS is a time-consuming rabbit hole (not that uBlue isn't...). For a tiling wm setup I definitely think NixOS is the better choice, since changing core system components is quicker.